I blog, randomly about the things I observe and the things I learn.
There is a blog around my new learning adventure on my yacht, called Wright Away, or find a category and explore.
Categories
Exploring Agency
Becoming Autonomous
Within the corporate world the word ‘Autonomy “is becoming a biggie! The problem is how to create it when the cultures in most large corporates are designed to do anything but create autonomous staff. Our corporate cultures tend to be about hierarchies where a select few get to make decisions [...]
You aren’t looking in the right place – The power you have to change the world!
We all know the quote, be the Change. It is quite tired and hauled out regularly to inspire us workers. Ghandi's actual words are quite different and perhaps more powerful, "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world [...]
How to Find Your Dare
I wish I could draw you a map, a way to get from where you are to that place where anything is possible. I know it exists because I have been there once or twice, but even I battle to find it when I change the starting point. In diving [...]
Exploring Curiosity
The Struggle to Learn
A longtime diving friend reminded me that starting a new journey can sometimes be hard! She is starting technical diving and the skills aren’t the same as sport diving. I was reminded of what it is like to go from being competent and capable and then find myself struggling – [...]
The How of “How” – Making the Unknown Known
If I had to sum up the one skill that a world record needs it is the ability to turn the unknown into the known (and dare I say, make it boring). To shift a limit – be it a personal one or a world one – you need to [...]
Living with Dare – Questions for Creation
Living with Dare is something that has evolved over the last decade. I realised that I wasn’t happy with who I was or the life I was living. It looked good, but it didn’t seem to fit! I had a world record but couldn’t seem to take that limit shattering [...]
Exploring Momentum
Leaders who create High Performance
When I get asked about what makes high performance and what makes good leaders, I tend to find myself in conversations around what a people do and what they know. It seems to be all about how well everyone knows the theory. All well and good, if you are inside the team and in the doing of the work. Only when I check in and observe really good leaders at work I see something else. The magic isn’t in what a leader knows, it is in how they use what they know. The difference is not doing! Let me [...]
The Wright Adventure
In October I found my boat after a long 6 months kissing frogs. Since I immigrated to New Zealand in 2019, I have been looking for my new adventure. I was scuba diving, then it was solo camping trips in my Land Cruiser to Norther Botswana. In New Zealand there isn't much land, but there is loads and loads of ocean, so how hard could it be ? After all, I learnt to sail in my 20's. So I got onto a sailing course and, well, decided that the best way to learn was with my own boat. Remember that [...]
Fear as a Positive Force
What if...instead of fear freezing and paralysing individuals and teams, what if fear was a positive force.......??? Fear inspires courage! ... Courage inspires Curiosity! ... Curiosity inspires action! ... Action inspires practice! ... Practice creates confidence! ... Confidence builds courage! ... Courage transforms fear! There is always fear! What if we saw it differently ? What if we integrated it into what we do and used it ? What could you create if fear was just another tool you used ?
Activate Myself
Fear as a Positive Force
What if...instead of fear freezing and paralysing individuals and teams, what if fear was a positive force.......??? Fear inspires courage! ... Courage inspires Curiosity! ... Curiosity inspires action! ... Action inspires practice! ... Practice creates confidence! ... Confidence builds courage! ... Courage transforms fear! There is always fear! What if [...]
Living from Personal Mastery
Process and skills are only part of the equation. How you use these shifts you into awesome. This is the ‘how’ of Personal Mastery. When you have the ability to choose your actions rather than react then you have the ability to choose your experiences and what happens next. Where [...]
Stepping Past Fear
The one reason most people never step into their awesomeness is that their fear is too strong. I can relate. Nothing brings fear to the fore quite like doing a dive only 4 other people have done before (and have died doing). In fact, my strongest memory growing up is [...]
Activate Team
A New Way of Using Information – Distributed Intelligence
"Could the next leap in evolution arise out of a shift in identification, in which we shed the story of battling for supremacy and move instead to playing our role as part of the larger team of life on Earth? Could the creativity and survival instinct of humanity as a [...]
Lessons from a World Record – Teams and Vision and Leadership
You may think that a world record is a solo thing, it isn’t! It requires a team of 6 to 10 people, some of whom are in the water, some of whom are ensuring people get into the water at the right time and know what they are doing. On [...]
When People Are the Problem!
One of the biggest stumbling blocks reaching 221 meters was the fact that I needed a team. To get a team I needed to convince people to believe that I could do this and want to be a part of the journey. The more I tried to convince the people [...]
Activate Leadership
Leaders who create High Performance
When I get asked about what makes high performance and what makes good leaders, I tend to find myself in conversations around what a people do and what they know. It seems to be all about how well everyone knows the theory. All well and good, if you are inside the team and in the doing of the work. Only when I check in and observe really good leaders at work I see something else. The magic isn’t in what a leader knows, it is in how they use what they know. The difference is not doing! Let me [...]
And That is How Leaders Create Compliance, Thinking it is Great Leadership
LEADER (as a participant in the room), " So we all agree it is....." or the faster, "Does everyone agree ?" ROOM ..... some nods, mostly that suspicious silence that indicates disagreement LEADER (as a participant in the room)... takes silence as agreement and carries on Sound familiar ? 'Does everyone agree' Forces Compliance It closes the space to differences, forces consensus and creates compliance. It also relies on others perception of your authority and their willingness to submit to what you have declared as being the 'right' answer! Even more insidious, this simple sentence and its many variants subtly [...]
How You Show Up Matters – Creating Leadership Presence
One of the things I have struggled with my whole life (well, almost my whole life) has been showing up in a way that allows what I have to say to be heard. It isn’t something that is really taught – you have it or you don’t and for those of us who don’t have it, well, sorry for you. Then one day my boss asked me a question that got me curious, what impact do you think you are having ? I had no idea how to answer that, how would I even know ? She then mentioned a [...]
Personal Mastery
Fear as a Positive Force
What if...instead of fear freezing and paralysing individuals and teams, what if fear was a positive force.......??? Fear inspires courage! ... Courage inspires Curiosity! ... Curiosity inspires action! ... Action inspires practice! ... Practice creates confidence! ... Confidence builds courage! ... Courage transforms fear! There is always fear! What if [...]
We Live in a Culture of Small – No Greatness Allowed
We Live in a Culture of Small - No Greatness Allowed. I know this because of how I am corrected by those around me when I do something that exceeds them. I am put in my place. I live embarrassed of how I am knowing there is something wrong with [...]
Living from Personal Mastery
Process and skills are only part of the equation. How you use these shifts you into awesome. This is the ‘how’ of Personal Mastery. When you have the ability to choose your actions rather than react then you have the ability to choose your experiences and what happens next. Where [...]
Leadership Mastery
Unpacking that word ‘ Service’ – Why it is sometimes really not about you at all
I hate the word ‘service’. Hardly an enlightened stand, but I have never been able to understand it. It seemed forced on me, as if somehow to qualify as spiritually advanced I needed to be living a life of service. Ugh! Why ? What was it I was supposed to [...]