Pick Your Parade

For the two of us, our friends and clients are equally divided between Canada and the United States. Each year at this time we happily and gratefully celebrate the freedoms we enjoy by acknowledging Canada Day (July 1) and Independent Day (July 4). We are also mindful of those within and without our countries who are deprived of the freedoms we enjoy.

We hope your holiday is rich and full. We ask that you honor the freedom you have by spending yourself constructively and in ways that honor your purpose of contributing to the human condition.

Each of us is, at our core, unique. While many people may share similar strengths, talents, drives and "essential energy", we all express them in our unique ways. Over time, it is the full expression of this uniqueness that we believe is a person's contribution to the world.

An example is Dr King's description of himself as "Drum Major For Justice." The drum major of a marching band  leads the band by setting the direction and the tempo. In most parades, the band leads the parade. Based on the results in his life, it is easy to conclude Dr. King's self-assessment was highly accurate. In many arenas this is the way he expressed himself - from the pulpit to leading the parade for justice in the civil rights movement and the quest for peace during the Vietnam era.

We are really attracted to the idea and visual image people approaching life as the leader of the parade for what is most important to them. John Naisbitt, the highly respected author of the 1982 mega bestseller, Megatrends, said "Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it."

Graduate of 21st Century Leadership have all the information anyone might require to find their parade. They have "done the work" to assess with a high degree of accuracy who they are at their cores and what matters most to them. They are connected with their desire to contribute. And, unlike most people, they have an elevated sense of ownership; they are more skilled than most at avoiding the victim trap.

During the first week of July, when you and yours are celebrating your freedoms (and maybe even watching a parade), we ask you to take a moment and think about the extent to which you are consciously leading your parade. Are you connected with who you are at the core and fully expressing that part of yourself? Is your frame on your life big enough so that most of what you do furthers your greater purpose - moves your parade down the road? Are you so wrapped up in juggling day-to-day life that you are about many things rather than the one thing that matters the most, your parade?

Lori and I know, from our own experience and from the experience of most 21st Century Leadership graduates, how easy it is to become disconnected from the very ideas, information, ground and motivations that are most important if one is to show up fully in life - to contribute fully and to create a rich and fulfilled experience in the process. If you have the thought, or if your results reflect, that you have dimmed down and are on a treadmill without a strong sense of purpose, let us know. Our parade of learning, growing and leading has room for you. The only thing in your way is your thought that something is in your way.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become  silent about things that matter." - Martin Luther King, Jr.