Matthew Kelly is a fellow Australian based in North America. He is a real force for change in the world of great work and following your dreams. In his 12 books, his consulting work and speaking work (he’s spoken to over 4 million people in the last 20 years!) he addresses how we fulfill the best version of ourselves.
Matthew has sold millions of books, including The Dream Manager, The Rhythm of Life and The Seven Levels of Intimacy. He has also created the The Matthew Kelly Foundation to spread his strategies on how we become the best version of ourselves and to help high school kids figure out what they’re going to do with their life.
In this interview we talk about:
- The insight that people don’t exist for organizations. Organizations exist for people.
- The 12 dream areas: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, psychological, material, professional, financial, creative, adventure, legacy and character
- How to get members of your team to become dream managers for each other
- Why you need your own dream manager, whether you’re the janitor or the CEO
Visit www.floydconsulting.com or www.thedreammanager.com to learn more.
Posted on August 18, 2010
I met Annie McKee, one of the world’s top advisors on leadership, at a conference in Dubai last year. I was excited to meet her because her work as the founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute focuses on creating large-scale change in organizations to evolve and do more great work.
Annie is the co-author of several groundbreaking leadership books: Primal Leadership, Resonant Leadership and Becoming a Resonant Leader.
Annie has been dubbed the “High Priestess of Executive Coaching” by Business Week. With a title like that, you may picture her dressed in flowing white robes and carrying a sacrificial dagger. But the truth is—her approach to finding meaning (at work and in life) is incredibly down-to-earth.
In our conversation, we discuss:
- How all people wake up with intentions to do good work, and how to rekindle their spark when they get knocked off balance
- 3 magic words that could revolutionize every conversation you have at work
- Tools for defining a “noble purpose” to drive you forward in your personal and professional life (believe it or not, this may include tarot cards!)
- How playfulness, taking a walk, and the “perceived weird index” can get you from good to great work
NB-Although Annie’s voice comes through nicely in this interview, I sound a bit like I’m standing in a wind tunnel. Sorry about that.
Posted on July 15, 2010
I’ve spent a number of years in the “OD” space – thinking about organizational development, how companies change and evolve, what it takes to engage and inspire people who work in those organizations.
And I reckon I know a fair bit. That is, until I talk to someone like Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge. I was lucky enough to meet her through a colleague who told me in no uncertain terms, this is a woman who is deeply wise and deeply compassionate about people and organizations and change. Mee-Yan is the founder of Quality and Equality and has worked with more than 300 different types of clients from her base in the UK. She has written numerous OD articles and is the UK lead for the NTL Institute, the pre-eminent force for training and developing folks to know about OD.
We talk about:
- the key moment when she stopped tolerating Good Work – and how she changed things around
- why self-work is the foundation for the impact you have in the world
- how to raise your eyes to see where you might have impact in the world
- the six steps to achieve a deep sense of self
You can learn more about Mee-Yan and her company Quality and Equality here.
Posted on April 14, 2010
My first job, when I finally stumbled out of university, was with a small creativity and innovation company. It was pretty fantastic – sort of a ‘Fast Company’ company before such a thing existed. And we truly felt that we were in the vanguard for making innovation and its attendant skill creativity important in organizations.
But vanguard? No, not really. Roger von Oech – now he was in the vanguard. He started his company Creative Think back in the mid 1970s and his book A Whack on the Side of the Head is a classic in the creativity field.
In this interview we talk about:
- The power of persistence, and some of the early struggles to get creativity seen as something that matters within organizations
- The importance of embedding creativity into the structures of your organization
- The role of the warrior in helping creativity flourish
- And a certain activity that can increase your ability to be creative (And David Rock agrees.)
You can follow Roger on Twitter at @RogerVonOech and on his website.
Posted on February 5, 2010
