By Jim Selman | Bio
I cannot remember having experienced or even
having read about a time when there have been so many “extremes”
co-existing in terms of political points of view and ways of
understanding the world. All seem to simultaneously have the quality of
being both ‘life threatening’ AND intractable. Whether we’re discussing
climate change, social justice, lifestyles, civil rights, the economy,
our political process or the price of oil, everyone seems to have a
strongly held point of view without much evident interest in learning or
working toward some common resolution of our differences. It would seem
collaboration is fast becoming extinct—an endangered competence.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Leadership
Tagged with:
collaboration
communication
competence
conflict
critical_thinking
leaders
point_of_view
trust
By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio
I read somewhere that good
decision-making—indeed, good relations—depends upon a virtuous cycle of
respect, trust and candour (which takes some time to establish, but
which can easily be interrupted). Attitude, after all, is everything.
Perhaps that last statement needs a bit of refinement: the ethical attitude is everything. By that I mean the determination of the answer to the age-old question: who is right? Was Harold right to[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
age
candour
decision-making
ethical_attitude
experience
judgement
justice
moral_choice
respect
trust
wisdom
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
While waiting for the results of the U.S.
presidential election to come in, I was musing on what patience is and
how valuable it will be in the days ahead. Patience is the ability to
endure without complaint, to persevere when things get rough, to
tolerate without annoyance or provocation. Being patient is one way of
relating to our circumstances and to time that allows us to avoid being
victims. The way of patience is the way of surrender and
trust—surrender to ‘what is’ and trust that our intentions will unfold
in time. The American people have patiently endured this months-long
campaign…and, for the most part, have not been upset or annoyed with
the slow playing out of their democratic process.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
obama
patience
surrender
trust
 By Jim Selman | Bio
One
of the central tenets of my work is that everything happens in a
context of relationship—a shared background of concerns, commitments
and practices—what I call a background of relatedness. We may make
commitments as individuals, but we always fulfill them in networks of
relationships with other people. The other day I was asking,
“What does it mean for an economy to collapse?” What is the worst-case
scenario of the current ‘meltdown’ and ‘freezing of credit’?
(Interesting that these two most frequently used metaphors, extremes of
‘hot’ and ‘cold’ are referring to the same thing and both are ‘state’
changes.) My conclusion is that...[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
economy
elders
possibilities
privatization
relatedness
trust
By Shae Hadden | Bio
My life is my game—no one else’s. And I create the rules. What freedom,
what choices, what responsibility! Playing ‘by the rules’ means playing
according to choices I’ve made about what’s ‘best’ for me. And that’s
left me in a quandary, because many ‘old rules’ don’t fit anymore. It’s
time to examine them, keep the ones that still suit me and replace any
unworkable ones. So here I am, wondering how to pick and choose from
the rules I have been playing by. Yet is it possible for us to know what choices, what rules will be ‘right’?[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Tagged with:
choice
faith
freedom
future
responsibility
rules
trust
In the late 80s, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel wrote a book called The Addictive Organization.
While I have a very different experience and theory than what they were
proposing, I think their metaphor was perfect. For me, the idea that an
organization or society can become ‘addicted’ is not a metaphor. I
believe, like Charles Horton Cooley, that “Individuals and
organizations are not separate phenomenon; they are the collective and
distributive aspects of the same thing”. The way I express this idea is
that “the ego is to the individual what the culture is to the
organization (or society”). What I am saying is that, from a phenomenological perspective, the ego
and culture are both self-referential structures of interpretation. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Tagged with:
addiction
breakdowns
control
faith
perspective
trust
I have been having a lot of ‘state of the economy’ conversations
lately. The consensus is that we are going in the wrong direction and
the only question is how long, how deep and how prepared we are for the
long haul. I made the observation that the economic consequences of a
recession are only part of the problem. A recession is a trust issue.
When credit dries up, it means that lenders don’t trust the borrowers
to keep their commitments. It creates a kind of double-bind. Here is
how it works.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at The Great Turning
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
boomers
economy
future
intergenerational
recession
trust
Well, it happened again. I was mugged and robbed on the street in
Buenos Aires—this time at 7:45 in the morning while walking on a major
thoroughfare. I am normally pretty vigilant at night. This time, I
stopped to window shop and before I knew it I was on the ground and the
guy had pulled my wallet from my front pocket. I instinctively tried to
kick him from the ground as he leaped over me and started running down
Avenida Florida, which is a wide pedestrian boulevard. The next thing I
know I am sprinting after him shouting “PARED, PARED, PARED” which
means "STOP!".[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
acceptance
intentionality
reality
surrender
trust
My friends and I have been told by a couple of our wives and
girlfriends that we are a unique group of men. It is ironic that we
don’t really understand why, but we are all extremely open, vulnerable
and nurturing in our relationships with each other, as well as with
other people in our lives. I don’t know why, perhaps it comes with time
and the fact that we’ve all worked in some form of transformational
training for most of our careers.
Whenever
we ‘Souls’ get together, we follow a simple format: each one of us
shares what’s going on in our life and what’s bothering us, and then
the rest of us say whatever we have to say.[ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Personal Empowerment
Join discussion COMMENTS [0]
Tagged with:
possibility
prayer
relationship
trust
wellbeing
Most of us are fans of the idea of ‘dialogue’. Dialogue is generally
touted as the answer for resolving conflicts, building trust and
crossing cultural divides of all kinds—be they national,
organizational, ethnic, racial, gender-based or generational. I was
having a conversation recently with a very bright young woman in the
same business as me and we were swapping stories and ideas and
experiences.
Although we are both professional communicators and teach others how to
communicate more effectively, it became obvious after a while that we
were talking ‘at’ each other. I began to experience the same kind of
tension I sometimes feel when I am speaking with my son. Nothing was
wrong per se, but I had the feeling that she wasn’t really listening to
me. As we began to speak about what was going on, I found out the same
was true for her. I felt like she either wasn’t interested in what I
had to say or didn’t care about or respect the breadth and depth of my
experience and knowledge. She also felt I wasn’t ‘getting her’ and
wasn’t respecting her and her considerable knowledge on the subject at
hand. We were two professionals from two generations who were more
competitive than collaborative, and at the end of the day we were both
frustrated at not being able to ‘connect’ the way we do every day with
people of our own generation. There was no dialogue and we ended up
with, at best, a discussion that will not in all likelihood make the
slightest difference in either one of our lives. [ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Wisdom in Action
Join discussion COMMENTS [2]
Tagged with:
culture
dialogue
generation
listening
trust
|
RSS Feeds
