Participants in our seminars tell us that these are the most memorable and empowering experiences they have ever had because of the clear sense of purpose they find during the event. Each manager peels their own onion to find purpose and to discover the words that hold its meaning and essence.

The journey to discover purpose includes a series of steps and explorations. Reflecting on the question of what we are here for is the key. Here are 10 themes to start your exploration into – what are you here for?

1.    To listen, observe and learn.
2.    To serve the needs you meet.
3.    To do what’s most difficult for you to do.
4.    To do what is easiest and most natural for you to do.
5.    To enjoy and create joy.
6.    To first, do no harm and to wait patiently.
7.    To make the higher choices.
8.    To expand your range and develop versatility.
9.    To connect and to make meaning.
10.    To transform and to lead.

The tree knows what it is here for. It’s here to grow. The tiger knows what it is here for. It’s here to get its next meal and to raise its young. The tree and the tiger are locked into their purpose. You have the benefit of choice and of range. What are you here for?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jan.27.2010 :: Know Thyself, Personal Growth :: No Comments »

Anita Campbell and Small Business Trends Radio interviewed Aviv about The Peak Productivity Zone – The Most Important 120 Minutes of Your Day.  Aviv shares critical strategies to help you create your Peak Productivity Zone and realize your business and entrepreneurial potential.

Click here to listen to Aviv’s full interview on Small Business Trends Radio (Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the red and yellow player.)

.

Aviv Shahar :: Dec.22.2009 :: Coaching, Entrepreneur, Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

Most of the currently available training methods in businesses are accented on brain learning. This is evident in the rampant usage of four-quadrant frameworks. There are dozens of strategies based on the four quadrants, the ‘important/urgent’ being one of the most popularized. Many of these are useful but are limited because they miss the insight communicated by The Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonaro da Vinci. Namely, that the human soul is five-fold as expressed by five fingers, five senses, five extensions of the body and so on. The Vitruvian insight points to the five-fold information processing and learning of the human.

By analogy, the human is a radio-set designed to process and interpret five dimensions of intelligence which is codified by the colors: Green, Yellow, Blue, Red and White. Soul learning is five-fold.  It goes beyond brain learning (four-fold) and creates faster, deeper and more sustainable results. So many of the intractable problems witnessed in organizations today and in the world at large are a symptom of brain fixation on outdated systems.  The next frontier of learning and development design is in reintegrating the five dimensions of intelligence. Together with our network of colleagues, we have been for three decades on the forefront of developing advanced coaching modalities to help professionals meet 21st century challenges and thrive. The Ten Faces of Leadership is one aspect of this body of work, which has helped create breakthrough results in Fortune 100 companies around the world.  This body of work also includes:
* The five color intelligences
* The leader coach and the five steps of coaching
* The five colors of learning and process inclinations
* The five emotions (higher and lower)
* Overcoming the five resistances
* The five elements of resilience
And more.
© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.14.2009 :: Coaching, Organizational Development, Personal Growth :: No Comments »

True success is not simply getting to the top. You do not need to win a gold medal. Not at all. True success is doing what you love to do and doing it fully well to create results that last beyond you. Success is to find your sweet spot and express your passion and capabilities in ways that make a difference and create significance.

To succeed is to do what you have chosen to do and to be free to do it fully.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.12.2009 :: Happiness, Personal Growth :: No Comments »

Reflections for Rosh Hashanah:

Have you lost your capacity for reverence?

Remember the feeling you experienced when your child stood on her/his own for the first time and then took their first steps?

Better still, remember how you stood up for the first time? Remember the first time you noticed a butterfly, the tree outside, the rain? Remember how special your secret place was? How meaningful everything around you was? Can you remember the sense of vitality and how each and every day was unique and full of texture? Do you remember how meaningful your first time away from home was for you? The first kiss, the first love, the first time driving on your own, your first solo flight…

Reverence was your daily bread. The world was filled with questions, wonder and great mystery. We now live through times of great uncertainties and a great many questions. My question to you is – have you lost your capacity for reverence? Is the uncertain and the unknown a burden and a stress or can you rediscover the spirit of curiosity, of reverence? Can you embrace living with new excitement in the face of the unknown?

Reverence is the medicinal remedy for a sense of shortfall.

If you tell me you failed, my question will be can you access your capacity for reverence?

If you tell me you are frustrated or you are afraid, my question will be can you get in touch with your capacity for reverence?

What else can survive cruelty, defuse hatred, alleviate pain and redeem stupidity? It’s your capacity for reverence.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Sep.17.2009 :: Personal Growth, Reflections :: No Comments »

Are you growing?

The spiral of learning and development works in each of the Four Ways to grow. The mechanics are situational and unique, but the anatomy is similar:

A. You learn a new skill, gain a new insight – because you decided to do it, because you needed to, or wanted to accomplish something.

B. You then apply the new skill, put the insight to work.

C. You then have success with the new skill, and the insight opens up further.

D. The success generates propulsion and power to continue using the skill and learn more advanced skills, gain further insights.

And then the spiral leads again to new learning and growth. Every completion of a cycle brings increasing development and propels you forward.

What are you learning? How are you growing today? In what direction is your spiral of growth moving?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jul.24.2009 :: Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

You do not bridge the capacity gap by trying to solve deficiencies.
Values-based behavior is how you grow inside out.
The tree is not a solution for itself – it enables the fruits.
The fruit is not an answer to satisfy itself – it is the distribution mechanism of the tree.
You get results by focusing on process.
You improve the process by deepening the purpose and values that guide it.
You affirm purpose and values by getting results.
You lead by refusing to compromise the long term for the short term.
You bridge to opportunity by growing you,
and by directing action to be a congruent expression of values and purpose
in both the short and the long terms.

Aviv Shahar :: Jul.21.2009 :: Personal Growth :: No Comments »

“Why Do Big Name leaders and CEOs Mess Up?” was the question I was asked at a recent leadership seminar. The seminar focused on the energy zones of leadership and the leader’s assets. “Why do so many known leaders and CEOs mess up their health or end up with ethical or relationship breakdowns?” the executive asked.

H.E.R breakdowns (breakdowns in Health, Ethics & Relationships) are often given the simplistic explanation that it happens because of the stresses of the job. The deeper answer is that the CEOs involved did not internalize the growth and development of their responsibility in a whole and balanced way.

The voltage analogy comes handy. When a CEO takes on a 500 volt responsibility but only grows and develops internally to contain 200 or 300 volts the capacity gap leads to a breakdown. Health, Ethical and Relationships (HER) collapse are symptoms of the incongruence. You must grow on the inside to make the outer development safe and stable. If done wisely, your development on the outside helps accelerate the inward journey.

In our recent KEY we explored the Four Ways to Grow. The best accelerated growth and development may have aspects of all four paths. You have to balance the external development with the internal growth. As you evolve in managing the organization’s strengths and weaknesses so must you gain a deeper insight about your own.

The fourth path (pilgrimage journey) begins on the inside and may lead you to a life of service into the world. The first (immersion), second (apprenticeship) and third (project, vision or crises) may begin the development on the outside but as you grow in your exterior capabilities, you must also work to find the internal growth to balance and match it.

The HER breakdown syndrome takes place because the increased responsibility on the outside is not supported by an inner growth. The inner structure cannot support the weight of the building and it gives in at the point of weakness.

What do you do to strengthen your inner journey? How do you internalize the development needed to support your growing responsibility?

Our executive coaching covers the 12 dynamics of growth and wellness. We help you identify what needs critical attention. We help you and challenge you to evolve in balanced way.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jul.09.2009 :: Leadership, Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

What do Vienna and the Silicon Valley have in common? What do Rembrandt and Warren Buffet have in common? In this KEY we answer these questions plus another one posted on our blog – a truly $64,000 question – one of the biggest questions of all times: How does one grow oneself? We explore the four ways you can grow and offer six questions to help you focus on your growth. Click here to read the KEY: Four Ways To Grow.
© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jul.02.2009 :: Personal Growth, The Key :: No Comments »

Do you go with the flow or do you follow structure?
What do you include and what do you exclude?

Depending on the nature and focus of your endeavor, a different discipline may be required.

Take an honest look at your life: what would help you increase effectiveness and creativity? Do you need more structure? Do you need greater freedom?
To run the 100 meter dash at the Olympics, or to play Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in Carnegie Hall, you have to have total concentration. Concentration is focusing on what you do to the exclusion of all else. Your ability to exclude everything else is essential in certain roles, functions and situations. In fact, your ability to progress and succeed depends on your ability to concentrate – to exclude all other things.

There are other situations and functions where your ability to include and to facilitate engagement and cooperation of all parts is what wins the day. When organizing a family gathering, managing a complex project or producing a large event – your capacity to include all aspects and details and engage every person is the recipe to success.

You may have seen Usain Bolt doing his “dance” before his wins in the 100 and 200 hundred meters at the Beijing Olympics. There were complaints that his behavior was disrespectful. Some thought it was showmanship. Others felt he was just a little strange. Here is what we think – he was keeping himself free, fully present in the moment, deflecting all the nerves and noise, defying the rules, maintaining complete and total relaxation inside. His dance was the act of excluding all else, to be in the moment, in touch with his inner rhythm.

Freedom and structure come together. Chris Rock and Jon Stewart are examples of the complete spontaneity of an in-the-moment comedian. What provides them such freedom? They are able to be free, in the moment, because of their practice and form, an inner structure, a template and cadence they know. To be free you have to have a form, a structure that can contain and support your being in the moment.

In your life and in your work too, you can find a golden point, where what you exclude provides you freedom to include a great many things; where the structure and practice of form gives way to the freedom of spontaneous emergence.

Reflect on these questions:
1. What helps you concentrate and exclude all else?
2. In what aspects of your life and work do you need to bring greater structure? Where do you need to work on your form?
3. In what situations are you able to “go with the flow” and be highly productive? What can you learn from these situations?

To be free, more productive and creative, discover the exclude and include disciplines.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.28.2009 :: Personal Growth :: 2 Comments »