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artistsintheclassroom9 · 7 years ago

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Wisdom 2.0: The School Of Following Life: A Special Year Long Course With Soren Gordhamer: Scholarship Application (May 2018)

The School Of Following Life. May 2018. Somewhere on the Internet.

I’m applying for a scholarship to Wisdom 2.0′s The School Of Following Life. Like with my scholarship application to Strozzi Institute’s Embodied Leadership Level One, answering these questions was helpful to me as I reflect on where I’ve been, where I am at, and where I’m going. The content also highlights the realities of being a public educator in San Francisco - incredibly rewarding in many, many ways, and simultaneously, financially unsustainable, for me at least (I have more thoughts on this topic, that I’m planning to explore in future writings).

Below are my answers to some of the questions asked to all applicants, and highlight the meat & potatoes of where I’m at.

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3. What interests you about attending this course?

Everything written in it's description resonates with me. I feel as though I'm truly at a cross-roads, and like there's something that's been gestating inside me for years now, that's ready to emerge. In fact, it feels like it almost can't not emerge, if that makes any sense -- and that's both exciting and scary, and I think I, and it, would benefit from & appreciate support through the process. More below.

4. What is the current state of your life? Happily working, sadly working, in between jobs, etc?

For the past 7 years I've been working with the San Francisco Unified School District as an intinerant dance teaching artist, blogging about my work, and studying both my settings and myself, through an ethnographic, sociological, spiritual, and artistic lens. With the exception of this school year (as I’m on a year’s leave / personal sabbatical), I work with approximately 1,500 - 2000 elementary age students per year, as well as hundreds of teachers, parents, staff, and administrators. Concurrently, I’ve been attending Wisdom 2.0 conferences & meet-ups, and practicing Transcendental Meditation since 2012.

The question I’ve been carrying, and continue to carry through my journey is “How do we create more loving, supportive, equitable, human-centric systems?”

I just LLC-ed a little less than two weeks ago (still getting used to that idea), and just last Wednesday let the district know that I won't be returning next year. I've received awards (SFUSD Dream Catcher Award, SFUSD Rave (Recognizing All Valuable Employees), and nominations (I've been nominated for Teacher of the Year). Generally speaking, my work couldn't be more well received; From an outside-educator's perspective it could seem crazy to part from a job in the arts that's both stable & unionized. And simultaneously, I feel pulled toward something bigger that I can't explain. I feel similarly to how I felt while walking the Camino (2004, 2008, 2010) - pulled & called, and in the process of making sense of it all. To myself, primarily, and also to my colleagues and a system that operates differently, I think.

My blogs (all housed here: www.artistsintheclassroom.com) also seem like they've started to serve a purpose that's bigger than I am, and I'm trying to figure out what that is, what to do with this, let's call it "voice", and why, for all these years, for no reimbursement, I've felt so compelled to take notes & photographs, and reflect & write, and send my work out into the universe through the internet.

5. What would you say is the primary vision or mission that drives you?

I think my work has been trying to answer this question, primarily: “How do we create more loving, supportive, equitable, human-centric systems?"

I also - out of personal self respect, and respect for my art & craft - feel there must be a way to make a substantial contribution toward this vision AND earn an income that's commensurate to it's quality & impact.

I have a deep drive to support individuals (both little & big :) in being embodied, moving, and dancing, as well as make a descent living that enables me to both live & save in the city in which I teach.

This is what this vision looks like:

•Dance. In. Community :)

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#wisdom2conf #TheSchoolOfFollowingLife #SorenG #SorenGordhamer #jakey #toor #jakeytoor #jakeyinsf

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artistsintheclassroom9 · 7 years ago

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Wisdom 2.0: New Leader Summit | The Computer History Museum (May 2018): My Notes

Wisdom 2.0. New Leader Summit. The Computer History Museum. May 2018. Mountain View, CA

Disclaimer: As with all of my published notes from workshops or conferences, these are in no way comprehensive. Nor are they a literal summation of what was said. They are simply my notes, my interpreted, perspective-ed reflections, photos, and jottings, that occasionally combine my own records & thoughts with those of the speakers. There might be some typos.

Good Morning! ☀️

The Vision of the New Leader | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

“I didn’t just want to do it for 30 minutes, it needed more breathing room.”

“Maybe instead of having all the answers, a leader knows how to ask the right questions”.

Wisdom & Compassion in Business | Scott Shute (LinkedIn):

Old wisdom is making its way into boardrooms.

Holding the tension between what’s easy and what’s right.

“You’re going to have to make that right.”

Do what you say you’re going to do.

Your work matters.

Finding our community & making the world a little bit smaller.

“Maybe they’re going to want to have you deprogrammed if you talk about this...” (on mindfulness & meditation..).

The tension between one’s authentic self, and the person we’re brining to work.

My question: How do we hold that? And how do we close that?

The Growth Edge.

Business As Community | Giving Back and Moving Forward | Ebony Frelix (Salesforce) | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

If you can’t describe your job to your Mom or a third grader, you’ve failed. (Agreed! )

Modeling starts at home, and in the community.

Stressing the value of focus.

You only have so long to burn the candle at both ends.

Battling what’s taught about leadership and the leader I was becoming.. (me too).

Balancing the drive between growth & results, and growth & vulnerability.

Something that you thought was a disaster, and failed, was actually something people admired.

Often, the meditation room is something equated with the looser room (glad this is changing ).

The opportunity to unplug at work.

Vet & EMPLOY.

Not every job needs a degree.

Equity In Tech | Shifting Power Dynamics And Reimagining Leadership | Scott Shute (LinkedIn) | (Karla Monterosso (Code2040):

Started at the intersection of poverty & health work.

“The whole next economic & social contract of the country is being built in the cloud, and no one that looks like me is there.”

Often companies do not have enough people of color concentrated in one place to understand their experience, and it’s not safe for those people to speak up.

Software creates the world ethos; you’re going to have a future developed by what’s happening right now.

AI is not machine learning, AI is pattern matching, and those patterns are being discerned / navigated by humans.

Our program is set up with the understanding that “minorities” are not the problem.

Temporary strategy? Permanent strategy? Where is it?

Failing to evaluate their own hiring processes.

You want & need data.

It’s not a feelings problem – we don’t need to feel better about having more diversity in the work place - it’s an operations & management problem.

Setting goals that give us direction.

Evaluate your systems & processes..

“Stanford” is not a skill.

Tech Justice League.

This is not about lowering the bar; it’s about creating it (Woot Woot! ).

By 2040 there are going to be more Latin & Black people in America than anyone else.

Affinity groups are being asked to do the heavy lifting that leadership should be doing. (Agreed. I’d say that’s true in public education as well).

We need training in how gender bias and racial bias operates at a deep level.

We’re treating inclusion as an add-on program, and that’s not right.

Leaders need to understand the experience that their ethos has created.

How do personal & institutionalized power work? (My question as well).

The flow of data, and capital.

WE COULD BE BUILD SUCH AN EXCITING WORLD!

We don’t have to take advantage of some people to make the pie bigger. (Amen! ).

Wisdom @ Work | The Modern Elder | Chip Conley (Joie De Vivre) | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

Liberating “Elder” from “Elderly”.

We’re living longer, and power is moving younger.

Intergenerational Collaboration.

A wisdom seeker as much as a wisdom keeper.

Rethinking what it means to be valuable & relevant in the workplace.

Rites of passage happen in cultures to help people through transformative places in their life.

How do we help re-value, and re-purpose people @ mid-life?

Age agnostic – valuing people regardless of age.

Re-purposing yourself at any age.

Emotional Intelligence grows over time.

Editing your identity – What is it that is no longer serving you? Let it go.

Environmental Mastery.

What & How are optimization questions.

“Why” & “What If” actually uncover blind spots.

Asking questions that uncover blind spots…. That’s wisdom.

Evolve, Learn, Collaborate.

DQ – Digital Intelligence.

EQ – Emotional Intelligence.

A confidant, is also a person that gives you confidence.

Who in the organization do you go to for advice?

Who in the organization is generating invisible productivity?

Environmental Mastery – Where are you putting yourself when you’re at your best?

On reclaiming terms.. “Queer”, for example.

Owning the term doesn’t just allow you to re-claim it, it allows you to organize around it.

Find the habitat that is going to embrace the demographic that you are.

Encapsulate your wisdom in a way that helps people “get it” very quickly.

Thinking of systems & organizational issues around a societal problem.

The system needs to be changed.

Changing the system & disrupting ______ (cant’ read my writing) in the work place.

It’s not just about the length of your life, it’s about the depth of your life.

ERG = Employee Resource Group

Less than 10% of companies in Silicon Valley have ERG’s for people who are older.

How do we find spaciousness?

Being curious enough to not know the answer in advance.

Collateral costs & benefits of decision-making.

Re: Coaching – Is this a knowledge share? Or is it creating more internal awareness, and awareness development?

Community Connections | Harnessing Group Wisdom | Scott Shute (LinkedIn):

You have one mouth, and two ears.

Lean, teach, share.

A book that was recommended to me in our breakout group: Unstoppable, Cynthia Kersey

Coaching The New Leader | Jonathan Rosenfeld (Trium Group) | Michelle Gale (Author):

Educating leaders of teams on systems theory. (YES!)

How do we need people to contribute to the room?

Being personally responsible for the success of the group.

How is this team operating as a highly complex system?

It’s the most adaptable that succeed, not the smartest or the strongest.

On Coaching – You don’t want to foster dependency, you want to come in, do an effective intervention, and then get out. (YES!)

Fostering behavior that’s in everyone’s best interest.

What serves both us & the group?

What do you notice in some of the healthiest company cultures?

It starts at the top (Indeed!).

Courage (to venture into uncomfortable spaces) & Humility (to trust the process).

Care about people.

BREATHE

The Role of Diversity In Tech | Eddie Medina (BetterUp) | Jennifer Fonstad (Venture Investor) | Rachel Sheinbein (Lemnos):

Public trust & moral leadership.

Not just building valuable companies, building good companies.

There’s power in diversity from an economic perspective.

Teams perform better when they’re diverse.

#FoundersForChange

Flipping the power dynamic.

A lot of women & minority groups are often told “You need to work harder than anyone else..”, “Don’t stand out too much, don’t piss anyone off..”

You need to be able to take risks & fail, if you want to do anything audacious & big, and simultaneously, if you fail, you just confirm everyone’s unspoken beliefs.”

Vacillation between fear & greed.

Being committed to being a diverse employer from Day 1.

Building an inclusive culture.

Bringing diversity to a company doesn’t really matter if you’re not allowed to voice anything (YES! – Think this is a prevalent norm in student & educator culture in Public Ed.).

The problem is treating inclusion as an HR Program vs. a business strategy (it need to be a business strategy)!

The hard thing is to be courageous in environments where you don’t feel like your voice will be valued or heard. (YES!)

(#MeToo) - that sense that we’re innocent, and then there are those bad apples… Isn’t helpful to anyone.

A reminder about the biases that everybody brings to the world.

The New Leader | Harnessing Wisdom & Compassion | Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

Spoke a lot about Ray Chambers

Embodied Leadership (YES ).

Walking the walk.

You need to recruit & onboard against your culture & values.

It’s not just about the What, it’s also about the How.

Transformation, Integrity, Honor, and Results.

What we’re looking for:

Steep learning curves, vertical learning curves.

People who don’t take themselves too seriously.

People who you look forward to coming in to work with everyday.

A multi-varied equation in terms of the constituents you’re trying to service.

Is this in service of our vision?

When you’re an individual contributor you tend to be more focused on the work, and more in your own head.

Awareness.

Managing with compassion.

There’s a difference between egocentricism and egomaniacism.

Expecting other people to do things the way you did is extremely uncompassionate.

It requires a lot of energy to manage compassionately, to sit with someone when they’re suffering.

There’s a difference between Managing, Coaching, and Mentoring. Rare individuals can do all three, but they’re different.

Managing = making sure the work is getting done.

Coaching = helping someone learn & grow.

Mentoring = helping someone understand what they ultimately want to do with their career, or life, and then sharing your experiences with them.

Re: Checking in with someone right away if there seems to be tension, or a misunderstanding. A certain kind of intensity – we need to address this right now.

Seeking to understand, so we need to be in conversation.

If you don’t nip it in the bud right away, if becomes way more than the actual issue, because they might speak about it with their colleagues, and then their team, and before you know it, it becomes about the team, and then perhaps the department, and eventually thousands of people.. And then all the energy goes into navigating the politics of that.

You never want to be giving your power away to things you cant control (YES!).

Education Reform, and managing compassionately.

“A Class Divided”

Compassion should be the operating system upon which we teach everything else.

Actually operationalizing the vision statement.

Creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

We don’t need other people’s charity. We need access to opportunity.

There are fundamental difference between managers & leaders.

The clarity of ones vision, the courage of ones conviction, and the ability to lead from both of these places.

Who are you serving through your products & services? And even more importantly, who are you not serving?

Emotional intelligence & grit; Founding is a lonely job.

Just because someone was one way before doesn’t mean they will be that way in the future.

There’s a lot of risk.

80% of all start-ups don’t even return capital.

Venture Capitalists (VC’s) questions when considering funding / backing:

What is this person like when they’re at play?

What are they like when they’re under deep stress?

Do they know their core wound, and are they aware of it?

(On a promising founder..): They deeply know who they are and what they want to do, and what is right for them at that moment…. And how to get the resources they need.

The best way to be different is to be true to yourself.

(For founders of prior failed start ups, that want to try again): Outcome doesn’t matter, but I’d like to know what they learned from it, what was their learning.

A learning opportunity & a lack of luck.

Something that keeps you going when the times gets tough..

When you feel present & at ease, you’ll probably feel wiser.

The human mind clutches on recency.

All misery comes from over-attachment to outcomes, and if outcomes are all you talk about, well…

The narrative that’s working really well in venture capital is diversity.

Our wealth disparity is greater than ever.

Advice for a potential entrepreneur (like me )

You’re never as good as you think you are.

You’re never as bad as you think you are.

Develop a practice of self-compassion & kindness.

Who are you really? Keep double clicking on that.

What do you really want? Keep double clicking on that.

What are you in service to? Keep double clicking on that.

On pitching: Explain why you are uniquely qualified and have an unfair advantage to do this.

Show me why now is a particularly interesting time.

Sell it.

If you don’t believe it, I’m not going to believe it.

Leadership As Alignment | Directing without Dictating | Joshua Reeves (Gusto) | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

What does a CEO do?

They’re a steward of the purpose of the company.

Doing an “all hands”.

We went from 50 people to 500 people (!), in a relatively short amount of time.

How have you navigated that growth?

How have you maintained culture throughout that growth?

No one there wears shoes. Seriously.

A program focused purely on motivation & values alignment.

Focus on “Alignment” when hiring.

It’s not about a company trying to get someone, or an individual trying to convince someone to hire them, it’s “are our paths / values aligned?” (YES! And I’d say this can only happen when neither side is desperate.).

Show, don’t tell.

Am I eager to say what I’m doing? Do I want to evangelize about it? Or am I in stealth mode?

Introspection – the why & then the how.

Entrepreneurs have to be inherently optimistic.

“It’s just really fun to fix stuff.”

Can you fix something?

Can you do it in a way you are proud of?

Wisdom-Based Leadership | Lessons In Guiding People & Teams | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0) | Karen May (Google):

Originally she was an organizational psychologist & coach.

As a leader, it’s important to own the seat that you’re in, and take that responsibility seriously, and also know that you’re not the seat that you are in.

Leader with responsibility vs. Leader with ego.

At the end of the day we’re just talking about humans trying to get things done, through & with other people.

It’s really difficult to give something up that’s worked for you in the past.

What got you here, won’t get you there – (Conditions of growth, from my perspective – the next leg of the journey requires new skills).

Watching people trying to unlearn old habits.

When we look at old successes, where we came from: luck & skill -- putting it together -- is almost worse, because you can’t help but feel like it had something to do with you.

Withholding feedback from someone is also a disservice.

Being aware of your conditioning.

You have to be self aware enough to know what your intentions are in giving the feedback.

Often people giving it really want to see the other person be successful.

Sharing that you get what they’re about is helpful.

“And I think you’re getting in your own way in couple of ways..”

“If I were you, I would sure hope that someone was telling me this.”

Check your intensions first, then think about how you’re going to deliver feedback.

If there’s a power dynamic, give choice to the receiver about how & when it will happen.

If we continue on, doing exactly what we’re doing today, we won’t be successful. Because you’re not evolving.

At Google you’re rated on your feedback giving, and it’s public.

The world is a difficult place to be in if you don’t want to hear feedback.

Things need to be taken seriously, and also not very seriously.

What gives you the most satisfaction at the end of the day?

Self-Awareness.

Being open to the possibility of working in a different way.

Compassion.

Gratitude.

Enabling others & seeing them.

Inspiration.

Bringing Mindfulness To High Performance Environments | Scott Shute (LinkedIn) | Alexis Pokorny (Mindful Millenial Leader):

Overnight, I lost 48% of my business.

People have been recognized at an operational level.

Doing an “All Hands” call.

(On mindfulness in the workplace): It’s got to be relevant to the business, and align with its’ goals.

And then just start DOING IT!

Productivity & Fulfillment

Perspective.

Results?

More thoughtfulness in hiring.

Meetings take less time.

Giving people permission to leave; Having the right people in the room.

An understanding of what’s being said that isn’t actually spoken?

Closing | Soren Gordhamer (Wisdom 2.0):

The Universe is here to help us. It’s on our side. How do we partner with it? 😊

My Experience in Photographs: