Unwrecking Your Place | How to Be Present, Part 3

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

Defying Displacement In her book This is Where You Belong, Melody Warnick tells the story of Jay Leeson, a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, and his efforts to rally a community behind Leonard Fitch and his local grocery store. The store had been in the family for fifty years and served as an institution in Wilmore, Kentucky. Hit hard by the economic downturn, Fitch couldn’t keep his doors open. When Leeson heard, he organized a group of volunteers from the community to repaint and refresh the store. They called themselves “Fitch’s neighbors,” and in repainting that store, they revitalized Fitch: “New paint has given me new life!” he said. Last week, we introduced an important topic from How to Be Present in an Absent World: the difference between topos and chora. Where topos is a “mere” location, a place in space, chora names the stories and experiences that layer on …

Ash Wednesday: a time to think on death and legacy

You Are Going to Die | How to Be Present, Part 1

Daniel Montgomery Reality, self awareness

Death Makes You Fully Human DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO, Leadership Reality Lent: The Season of Death Many of my readers know about Ash Wednesday, and the familiar words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return”. If you’re not a churchgoer, you may have seen people sporting smudges of dirt on their heads in the vague shape of a cross. Maybe you asked why—or maybe you assumed that person needed a shower and kept your distance.  Church-goers and church skeptics alike live in the legacy of the Liturgical year. Even if you have no idea what that is, you still likely gather with the family on Easter. You bluster through the malls when Christmas comes around. And you probably know that the season of Lent starts a week from today.  The Liturgical Calendar is as old as Christianity itself. It has less to do with worship, …

Mindful Leader Walking Architecture

The Mindful Leader | Part 5

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO Leadership Reality How close are you with your employees? Do you feel very connected? I once saw an episode of the Office where Michael Scott spent the entire episode trying to work his way into the “loop.” In scene after scene, he’d awkwardly insert himself into conversations and ask cringe-inducing questions like, “What’s the scuttlebutt?” Michael Scott is a farce, for sure. Still, the image of lonely manager floating around the office and trying to force a connection with his employees sends shivers down my spine. Leaders struggle to connect with their people. Half of the CEOs out there wrestle mightily with loneliness. When asked, 61% of them say it negatively impacts their job performance. What contributes to leader loneliness? Really, what doesn’t? The corner office The exalted title The pay disparity The authority barrier The generational gap Leadership is an inherently lonely enterprise. The …

The Mindful Leader Pt 3

The Mindful Leader | Part 4

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO Leadership Reality How’s your body doing right now? I’ll admit, that’s a strange question to lead with. I’m not a doctor, and you’re not my patient. This is a blog, not an exam room. Still, I’ve been amazed to see just how easy it is to get so engrossed in our work that we fail to notice what’s going on in our bodies. Do you have a headache right now? Are you clenching your jaw? How’s your lower back doing? What about your shoulders? When was the last time something on you didn’t hurt? Unless you’re on a construction site or a battlefield, leadership for you probably happens more in pixels and ink than in sweat and toil. For the office-dwellers among us, we just don’t think about our physical condition very much at all. The trouble is, our minds really do matter when it …

neon sign you are here

The Mindful Leader | Part 3

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO Leadership Reality Are your employees disengaged? Would you notice if they were? According to Gallup, only a third of Americans are engaged at work. The rest are either passively skating by (50%) or actively trying to bring down the company from the inside (17%). Every year, disengaged employees cost American business billions of dollars. In combatting this epidemic, smart leaders have discovered that workers—especially millennials—need more than a parking spot and a paycheck to engage with their work. What is that more? Some call it passion. Others call it purpose. I call it place. Mapping Our Place as Leaders In simple terms, place is where you find yourself at any given point in your story. Yes, that includes space (where you are) and time (when you are). More than that, place describes the social, emotional, and cultural environments in which you live and work. For …

person meditating on a dock

Leader Archetype #9 | The Peacemaker

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

SARAH BRAUD Contributor & CEO Braud Creative Leadership Style of a Nine The Nine. The Crown of the enneagram. The Archetype that reflects all the other numbers, so much so that they have a hard time identifying themselves as Nines. Accommodating, supportive, non-judgmental, practical and hard-working, the Nine leader will sacrifice extensively for a genuine concern for those on their team, working tirelessly to promote the agenda of their organization or community. Every true Nine would cringe at any description that draws such positive attention to themselves, however, these leaders are so easy to like. The archetypal leader who is digging in the ditches alongside her people, often called The Peacemaker or The Mediator, leads by example and by reaching consensus. The Problem with a Nine Leader The leadership style of the Nine begins with gathering people together and then letting everyone else shine, often leaving their own opinion out …

clocks on a wall

The Mindful Leader | Part 2

Daniel Montgomery Reality, self awareness

DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO Leadership Reality Have you ever had a morning like this one? It’s 9 AM. For the past hour, you’ve tried (and failed) to start in on your to-do list. For some reason, you can’t stop stressing about that upcoming meeting with senior leadership. So, you distract yourself with a little email. 30 minutes later, you decide to get back in the saddle and make a few phone calls. As soon as you pick up the phone, you remember the call you blew yesterday. Afraid to repeat that ugly performance, you fire up Facebook instead. You’re just going to check in and make sure you didn’t miss anything important, of course. Another half hour goes by. The phone rings. There’s an emergency in production. Congratulations! You just lost the rest of your day to crisis management. So much for that to-do list. Time is on my …

male weightlifter

Leader Archetype #8 | The Challenger

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

SARAH BRAUD Contributor & CEO Braud Creative Leadership Style of an Eight The Challenger. The Protector. The Boss. All these title descriptors couldn’t encompass the larger-than-life style of the Eight leadership archetype. These assertive, confident, powerful people came out of the womb knowing what they wanted and who should get it for them. Sometimes aggressive, Eights are motivated by the desire to control their environment, for good or evil. These black & white decision makers easily fill the leadership void wherever it may be and makes up the majority of CEOs in the US as their personality is focused on strength, avoiding weakness, protection for the underdog, and moving the ball forward at any cost. While many find Eights to be intimidating, Eights are often surprised to hear that others fear them because in their core, this archetype is incredibly sensitive. They are drawn to defending the oppressed and look …

Silhouette mind clouds

The Mindful Leader | Part 1

Daniel Montgomery Reality, self awareness

DANIEL MONTGOMERY Founder & CEO Leadership Reality Tell me if this sounds familiar: You’ve been heads down for hours working on a critical project. You finally come up for air, only to realize it’s 6 PM and you’re not even halfway done. Your back is in knots from an entire day spent hunched over a laptop. You’ve not seen any of your team members since the morning huddle, much less interacted with anyone outside the digital wasteland that is social media. You’re tired and dejected. You’ve been busy for hours, but you have no clear sense why. You wonder whether anything you’ve accomplished—this week, this month, this year—is of any real and lasting value. Oh, and you just realized you promised to pick up the kids from soccer at 5:30… Have you been here? I know I have. For business leaders, it seems like we’re always chasing after that mythical sweet …

rainbow confetti on the ground

Leader Archetype #7 | The Enthusiast

Daniel Montgomery self awareness

SARAH BRAUD Contributor & CEO Braud Creative Leadership Style of a Seven “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.” – Steve Jobs A notorious leader, Steve Jobs is also listed in various enneagram articles as a Seven leader. This Enthusiast leadership archetype is known, much like Steve Jobs, for their innovation and imagination. Forward-looking planners who are constantly on the move for the next best thing, imagine all the creative possibilities connected to whatever interests them. Options make Sevens feel good, so don’t try to put constraints on them. They are quick, spontaneous and engaging storytellers, but rarely have the patience to get those stories down on paper; they are much to pre-occupied in collecting, living, and experiencing the next adventure. As leaders, they celebrate …