Category Archives: Entrepreneur

Making Space for Connections

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 2 Comments

Our social fabric is a most valuable asset, the invisible woven net in which we live, exert influence, find resources and collaborators, solve problems and make up what comes next.  I pay attention to people who foster ways of strengthening that fabric and want to share here a few recent experiences with people who are doing just that.

On Saturday April 14th, I gathered with about 40 other folks in my neighborhood, the Laurel district in east Oakland, CA to participate in the Laurel to Redwoods Walk led by Oakland Urban Paths.  OUP host Paul Rosenbloom and special guest, local historian Dennis Evanosky, led us on a meandering journey through our streets, introducing us to off-the-beaten-path public pathways that some of us knew nothing about, including passages between private property lines, pedestrian bridges and trails.  OUP’s mission is to raise awareness of these pathways to increase public usage and enjoyment of them and to get support for signage and maintenance that keep them accessible.  Dennis continually fed our interest with “here on this very spot” tales of Oakland’s early development by native peoples, Spanish settlers, gold miners seeking real estate, greedy lawyers, and more!

I enjoyed the exercise, the adventure and the history.  But what thrilled me most was the way connections formed during this hike.  I noticed this in several ways. A few times, as our serpentine group stretched along sidewalks, we inspired curiosity and connection. People came out on their porches calling out “Who are you?” and we replied “Come with us for a hike!”  In an improvisational moment, one man even ran inside to get his hat and joined us.  Gerald, owner of Scheberies Used Cars, paused to talk with the group as we followed the path next to his chain link fence.  His business has been there since before 580 was built! As we walkers warmed up to each other, making introductions and falling into stride with different companions, our conversations deepened.  I participated in problem-solving discussions about how to slow traffic on the 35th Avenue hill and how to get trails and bridges in the redwoods fixed after the winter’s rains.  I’m sure there were many other productive threads that I never witnessed.  It was heartening to sense how this random group of people on a hike was so naturally creative and willing to serve this place we love living in.  I want to celebrate Paul and Oakland Urban Paths who so obviously make space for connecting people to the land, to history, to each other and to our future.

A week later on April 21st I attended the business launch party for BASE Landscape Architecture, owned by my fun and talented clients, Patricia Algara and Andreas Stavropoulos.  Even after years of being a networker, I find it challenging to walk into a room packed with people I don’t know.  I explored their office digs, got a glass of wine, and discovered the Zome in their shared workspace where I settled in.  (Patricia and Rob Bell construct these beautiful, whimsical wood structures that are a regular feature in Burning Man’s desert landscape.)  Benches with pillows lined the inside making an inviting space for quietly taking in the visual and energetic aesthetic and/or connecting with the people next to me.  There just is something about sitting in a circular space that facilitates ease of connection.  I leaned on the cushions to take in the ceiling, was entertained by two lively musicians, and had an engaging conversation about economics, organizational behavior and the self-organizing system we call the Internet.  I also heard a story about how the Zomes at Burning Man “create a space in the middle of the desert and everyone inside is like at a cocktail party.”  Andreas, Patricia and Rob understand how to make space for connections through building the kinds of environments we humans need to relax and engage.

As a final thought…

I notice that making the space for connections means slowing down our pace, at least a bit.  If you want more and better relationships, teamwork, and community in your life, work, and neighborhood, take the time to make space for connections.

Happy Earth Day!  Nika

Nika Newcomb Quirk, MBA PhD
facilitating the emergence of systems savvy, resilient, artful, and collaborative leadership
NikaQuirk@mac.com
+1 510-381-5350
facebook: nika quirk
linked in: nika quirk

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Posted in Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Playful Practices, Sustainable Living

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What’s your evolutionary strategy?

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Realistic” people who pursue “practical” aims are rarely as realistic or practical in the long run of life as the dreamers who pursue their dreams. – Hans Selye

As it’s the beginning of the year, I find myself defining and discussing strategy in many aspects of my life and work.  Entrepreneur clients working with me as a business coach want to figure out how to make 2011 a better year.  My housemates and I regularly fall into co-imagining (and drooling over) what we’d like to produce in the garden this season.  Headed into the final production of my PhD dissertation, I’ve been assessing how I can bring an artful and practically successful approach to reviewing mounds of data and articulating what’s essential, meaningful, wonderful.  The non-profit board I lead works collectively to shape a sustainable path that supports the organization’s long-term benefit to human life and social change.

The word strategy tends to bring business and/or military contexts to mind.  But I’m attracted to this definition: an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success. Strategy is about learning and changing. It’s a process of reflecting on factual and experiential intelligence, evaluating success, imagining possibilities, and forging these combined insights into a plan of action that we sense has the potential for greater success.  Through strategy, we adapt consciously with an orientation to our values, desires and dreams.

Organizations make large investments in strategic planning.  But, in working with EveryDay Leaders, I find that strategy is overlooked or seen as a mystifying process for which people are unsure they have the time. “Who me? Have a strategy? That’s someone else’s job. I’m not big or important enough!”  So many of us live immersed in the streaming river of our experience, rarely mining the learning through which to shape ourselves, our endeavors, and our human future. And yet, right now, our adaptation to the ever-more-apparent-Big-Changes-on-the-planet is the main work at hand.

I hope you really grasp how important you are in the bigger picture of “making up what comes next”. I eagerly invite you to step into leadership, into active engagement with yourself, your life, and your environment. Know your fears but don’t sink to their level. I challenge you to create an evolutionary strategy. Yes! This is tough and worthy work! Take the time to honestly reflect, alone and with others, on a regular basis. Combine the factual and the imaginal to see yourself, your work, your family and community, your environment (both natural and human-made) – in 5, 10, 20 years. Believe in a satisfying and joyful future.  Take action on adaptations – what you can do now that contributes to both current and evolutionary success. I’m right there with you.

Namaste, Nika

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Posted in Dealing with Change, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Power, Reinventing Self, Strategy, Sustainable Living

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Playing with Shared Power

Posted on February 1, 2011 | 2 Comments

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness – Thich Nhat Hanh

Sharing power is an ongoing human dilemma that is rising to critical priority in this century because of increasing planetary, economic and social pressures beyond historical precedent. In his recent State of the Union address, U.S. President Obama called repeatedly for unity of purpose and cooperative practice to “win the future”.  Listening to him triggered my ongoing questions about how we move a nation of individualists into successful, skillful collaboration with each other.  My longtime curiosity about this has become my all-absorbing focus in both my research and professional practice.

My experience indicates that playing together helps us to explore and learn about sharing power, and I’ve made this the core of my approach to cultivating teams. Moving, artmaking and storytelling as a group and in pairs provides an opportunity to step out of competitive or emotionally laden life and work scenarios, and play with power.  When we step back into our daily contexts, we can bring along insights and alternative patterns that seed and nurture more cooperative behaviors and relationships.  After all, Daniel Goleman advises in his book Social Intelligence, “Nature [in the form of our primate social brain] tends to foster positive relationships” and “even among complete strangers, a moment of playfulness, even outright silliness, forms an instant resonance.”  But, in the U.S., play (of this artful sort) is more often than not viewed as frivolous and merely entertaining, not a valid element in the formula for creating productive and successful leaders and contributors in the workplace.

Follow the leader(s)

“Play isn’t a character defect; it’s the builder of character, developing persistence, competence, mastery and social skills that take us beyond perceived limitations” (Joe Robinson in the Huffington Post).  Two weeks ago in London, I led a group of consultants, artists and activists through a morning of following and leading, pausing occasionally to process and learn from their experiences.  Collaboration emerges from the interplay between individual power and collective power. Grounded in confidence from knowledge of our inner authority, our power to choose and act, we are readied to face the uncertainty of interacting with the will and ideas of others.  We test our expectations and limitations about group performance.

Creating a shared story

Many participants in this group, as in others I’ve led, commented on their enjoyment of finding an ease-filled active space between leading and following, where shared leadership emerged without strain or confusion.  For some, it was an uncommon experience or one they desired to have more of.  They expressed being tired of just leading or following, especially in their work.  For others, it was their natural approach to life.  Pouring the composite power of partners or the group into this space between, possibilities are seemingly infinite and innovation sparks.  And did I mention it was Fun? Faces lit up, bodies were alive and the energy in the room was palpable.  Out of playing with shared power, we can learn to reap the full harvest of inspiration, learning, creativity and healthy community needed to evolve sustainable organizations.

Know a team that wants to collaborate better and has the willingness and courage to Play with Power?  Workshops and longer term consulting support available.  Contact NikaQuirk@mac.com or 510-381-5350.

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Posted in Arts and Organizations, Dealing with Change, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Playful Practices, Power, Sustainable Living

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I will follow you…

Posted on January 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Have you seen the YouTube of solo jumping dancing guy who eventually inspires the entire crowd? One person begins to follow him, transforming him from lonely outlier to focal center. Leadership is esteemed; followership, though undervalued, can shift reality. Seems to me that the art of following deserves some attention as a skill for the changing landscape of life in this time.

Sitting here at Julie’s Tea in Alameda CA over an elegant Sunday breakfast tray, I’m designing the workshops I’ll lead in the UK over the next two weekends. Follow, Lead and In-Between: I mull over the options for content and structure How will we learn to follow each other? How will I describe what I know so well – the mysterious connective tissue that seems to grow between us when we wholeheartedly follow each other?

As I sip this cup of black lavender tea, I recall a moment in my own learning about following. As a woman born into no money or influence, I worked hard to be seen, heard and recognized as a leader with a credible voice. Sitting in a women’s group, a wise member told me to “step back into the circle.” I learned to listen and follow what arose from those gathered, and to recognize when what I had to offer lent clarity, strength or creativity.

Sometime today, I encourage you to take a breath and relax into following some pattern you notice. The pace of someone walking in front of you. A child’s zigzagging run or playful storytelling. Your friend’s ideas about what you could do together. Lean into following, and see what happens.

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Posted in Dealing with Change, Entrepreneur, Leadership, personal growth, Playful Practices, Reinventing Self, Sustainable Living

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2011: Living and leading through interdependence

Posted on January 5, 2011 | 5 Comments

I’m going to put a stake in the ground and claim that each of us needs to add “Live more interdependently” to our resolutions this year.  Goals focused on personal acquisition are out of step with current reality.  A sustainable way of living together needs grounding in sharing and collaboration in all parts of our daily lives.

My life depends on my collaborative relationships. I’ve always been drawn to working with partners and in teams, but moving into my current cooperative household on an urban homestead has made me realize how deeply I believe in living and working interdependently.

I’ve been amazed at how many of my friends are deeply curious about how well our household works. It’s spurred me to pay attention – just what is our secret?  One fundamental element is that my housemates and I hold a shared belief that the level of attention, connection and communication we invest in our successful interdependence produces individual and collective benefit.  Together, we are productive, learn, have fun, and expand the scope of what’s possible in so many ways.  Second, we are pretty skilled at following and leading.  I notice that we all have fairly strong ideas about some things and we’re not afraid to take the initiative, but we also know how to discuss things that have group impact, respect each other’s values, follow each other’s lead and actively lend support to each other’s ideas.  I’ve had very similar experiences when working in very high functioning teams in organizations. In this kind of environment, mutual trust, connectedness and care about the group’s success grows strong through lived experience.  Joyce Fletcher, research scholar at Simmons School of Management, states in her book Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at Work:

working to create the experience of team is leadership of a different sort. Activities…are…intended to create the background conditions in which group life could flourish.

Developing these conditions for flourishing group life is the focus of my scholarly research on leadership and my consulting work.  On January 16 in London and January 22 in Bangor, Wales, I’ll be facilitating my workshop Follow, Lead and In-Between, exploring with participants how we can gain insights and embodied experience following, leading and building connectedness in relationships.

With sincere wishes for a satisfying and interconnected new year,

Nika

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Posted in Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sustainable Living

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Practicing Discipline

Posted on April 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

Do you struggle with discipline? I do, and have all my life. With a strong fear of losing my freedom and an equally strong avoidance of dreariness, I defined Discipline as “chaining myself down” to a repeated pattern of activities or tasks. Thus equating it with burdensome drudgery. Many of my clients have shared with me their aversion to discipline, wanting to achieve their goals and yet bumping up against this barrier time after time.

Both being self-employed and developing my PhD dissertation have required that I face the hurdle of discipline again. I’ve had to step up and I’ve found that both belief and behavior must change. I now define Discipline as ” the intentional practice of applying my resources to make my dreams and goals real”. I laugh as I schedule “butt in the chair” time that recently resulted in finishing my PhD proposal and my Quickbooks data entry. I laugh but it works!

If we are leaders in our own lives, then clear intentions, values, priorities, choices and actions are how we practice leadership. Discipline is a mindful practice of grounding that clarity to make our lives and our world. Whatever we tend – gardens, children, projects, etc. – we must come back and invest ourselves continuously. We must say yes to discipline.

Enjoying life,
Nika

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Posted in Entrepreneur, Leadership, personal growth, Playful Practices

The Power of Alignment

Posted on October 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

“To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life – bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.”  - Peace Pilgrim, 1908-1981

This afternoon, I visited Dr. Dannielle Mutch, a healer with truly magical abilities, at Radiant Life Chiropractic. The work I do with her is all about alignment and again today, I am awed and grateful by the release and shift we co-facilitated in me. Over the years, I’ve learned that being in alignment is more complex than just adjusting bones and muscles and the flow of breath and neurological energy.  Like everything, there’s micro- and macro- levels of alignment that are deeply interconnected.  My body’s alignment so often reflects, not only my inner state, but the state of my alignment with what I’m engaged in and with in both the manifested world and realms unknown.  I have a belief, like Peace Pilgrim, that when I am practicing what I value and believe in, then I am creating alignment at all levels.  And I also notice from daily experience that being in and taking action from alignment brings about “the good” that I intend, with ease, grace and fun.

I see this expressed in the most fascinating ways.  Yesterday, I was coaching a client by phone who had a very common misalignment that was blocking her from networking, connecting with customers, and making much needed sales.  She had not yet developed a way of speaking about her services that felt true to her and really expressed her passion and competence in her work.  So, she wasn’t speaking to anyone about her services.  I inquired about her work from several different angles, then we co-created new language for her to use in introducing herself and started to discuss how conversations with potential customers might go.  Suddenly, she said “Oh, this is so great. I’ve had this really tight spot in my chest whenever I thought about needing to talk to a client.  About 5 minutes ago, it just completely relaxed!”  There was the moment of alignment! I love witnessing that and I regularly do! I was so grateful that she experienced the physicality of that shift because I notice that those body-based realizations are powerful anchors for confident, sustained behavioral change.  From now on, she will have an embodied sense of knowing when she is authentically presenting herself in her work.

orchidEvery day for weeks now, I have been lovingly watching an orchid in my kitchen window, first grow a curving stem, then unfold it’s blossoms, one by one, orienting each bud and flower to stem, sister blossoms and source of light.  All in all, a profound and beautiful lesson in alignment.  Namaste.

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Posted in Entrepreneur, personal growth, Reinventing Self

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