my intro on saturday morn

speak to me ... the audio of last saturday's class is available. i decided to relive the moments for four reasons -

• to share on this blog what i said as part of introductions to the class and why i'm taking the course,
• to remind myself of my classmates' reasons for taking the course,
  
• to listen for other learnings, and
  
• to inspire me some more as i answer several of the questions posed for our first class assignment - questions about don frick's robert k. greenleaf: a life of servant leadership
  

and although i am still reading the book (even while taking this week's u-turn detour to the central valley via harris ranch and avenal), i do have answers to several of the questions - answers of which i will share some of them here on this blog, while others may be in more detail as part of my class journal (public or private versions). and there are existing posts that are, in fact, responsive in part or in whole, for my classwork that are even responsive, so i'll incorporate that into the discussion.

oopsie, more than a minute ... we were asked to share with others a little about ourselves and about our taking the class. the following (without sprinkled "uhms") is the ~ 3:38 minutes (from 33:15 to 36:52) introduction i shared with my fellow servant leadership class mates -

i came across servant leadership as a recommendation from a colleague of mine back in the early 90s ... i work in the environmental arena ... i used to have my own consulting practice for 13 years. and when i was talking to a colleague of mine, he had mentioned that when their consulting team was being contracted with (a large corporation) when they were thinking of rolling out energy/environmental, like clean air energy, they were given a pile of books to read, and alot of the books effectively dealt with servant leadership. so that was back in the late '90s, actually.

and i guess i want to say, i want to try to figure out how to do this more - not as much as stream of consciousness - but i'm taking this class as a result of some stream of consciousness writing that i did in december. each day i was participating in an on-line blogging exercise. and what came out of that was me reconnecting with something that i had done back in 1994.

i left the corporate structure, a utility down in san diego, because i had this idea that i wanted to have a different affect on the consulting world as it supported the air quality and environmental and energy arena. and mainly that people didn't seem to work with each other in a particularly respectful or mindful or ... just the manner - it used to break my heart just to see corporations and regulators and non-profits just really labeling people based on that. and so when i stepped out, i just started pursuing a different way of doing my consulting practice, which was just a solo practice. and ultimately by the time i met this gentleman he said, "hey! it looks like you're kind of doing some of this servant leadership...".

so fast forward to this stream of consciousness piece - for whatever reason over the past maybe 4 or 5 months, i've just been reconnecting with what affected me back in 1994, in a different setting ... it is extremely bureaucratic ... it breaks my heart to see people who are so interested in the environment - i'm sorry i'm getting emotional but - and i feel like for some reason when servant leadership popped back into my life, it just really warmed my heart. and i feel very compelled to create a way to help people better interact in the workplace.

i'm a staff level person, so having come from 13 years of owning and business and managing contractors and mentoring people, it's a much different role. so i'm looking forward to seeing how i can bring this class, this coursework, and learn from the people who are on the phone, their experiences, how to make that come alive. and ultimately, i feel like there is some sort of blog that i want to write or a book or some speaking, i don't know yet, but that's where i'm at.

stream of consciousness in december ... the daily december blogging i mentioned was through reverb10, with links to my 31 posts over here. from a different perspective on my reverb10 responses, i revisited reverb10 in february and grouped my reverb posts that related to manifestations (13 posts) and relationships and connections (9 posts). of the 22 posts, i chose my "top 10" posts. THEN of the top 10, i chose my "top 3" posts which are -

• future self (vision board, authenticity, cubeopolis, fair, forthright, self-aware),
• friendship (silver lining friendships, preferred)
• defining moment (on cubeopolis, with recap of related reverb10 prompts)

1994, back in the day ... the first prompt of reverb10 (on dec 1) was one word. this is where i shared a little about my epiphany at the time, which, included in the post, came with my take on mission, vision, values statements.

why i chose to re-enter cubeopolis ... back in november, i expressed interest in a position. i wrote a cover memo pretty much from stream of consciousness (particularly given the limited time i had to submit my paper work). the contents of the cover memo is over here. i share this because in the last 2 paragraphs of that content - My personal Mission, Vision, and Values Statements - i express the importance of my mission, vision, values. AND i remind myself not to be affected by dream zappers.

2 weeks after re-entering cubeopolis ... on the bureaucracy - here are my thoughts after 2 weeks. i can see that i will be revisiting this as part of my class work.

thank you for letting me share