Joe Harder's Blog – June 2008 Archive (7)

I have shared this with many SNW classes, but I routinely forget to do this myself, so I thought I'd write it down in a blog post here to solidify it in my mind (and, ideally, in my practice).



One great way to start a day is to take ten deep breaths first thing upon awakening...yes, maybe the dog needs to go out (hello, Katrina!), or you need to get up and go into the bathroom, but taking a couple of minutes to do some conscious deep breathing, for me at least, gets the day off to a… Continue

A few years after I started teaching Spirit of the New Workplace, I reconnected with a former Darden student (MBA '96) named Neeraj Bhagat, who was in the process of becoming an executive coach. One of the things that he shared with me is something that I now think of as "Neeraj's Wheel," although my colleague Jim Clawson (as well as many others, I'm sure) have their own approaches to it.



Essentially, you draw a circle and break it… Continue

I've been doing yoga for about four years now, primarily enjoying the teachings of Jeannette Payne, and recently I have also added a weekly men-only "stretching" class with Allison Wilkie, that a "Rude Boys" softball teammate (and intense rugby player) got me involved in.



Then, today, I went to a mat… Continue

I've shared this in a few Spirit of the New Workplace courses, but I wanted to make it more widely available. Some years ago at a FastCompany conference in Phoenix that featured both Jim Collins and Play's Andy Stefanovich, I had the fortune of sitting in on a session by Richard Leider in which all participants were given a deck of… Continue

I wanted to share a valuable coaching resource with you all. Doug Silsbee is the author of Mindful Coaching and has a series of six weekly newsletters on "Presence-Based Leadership Development." He has given me permission to share these (with attribution to him), so if you'd like to see them, just let me know!

I remember listening to Jim Collins, co-author with Jerry Porras of Built to Last and author of Good to Great, share how people could use his three overlapping circles of Passion, Genetic Encoding, and Monetarily [or otherwise] Rewarding to find their own best work. One SNW group (anyone want to take credit?) coined the term "Sweet Spot City" to refer to that in their "What's Your Perfect Day" group… Continue

From time to time it is useful to ask ourselves the following questions:



- What are my dreams and goals?



- What am I working towards?



- What sort of future am I building towards?



- Can I clearly see this future?



- What specific difference could I make right now that will ensure I am getting closer to what I really want in my life?



Take some quiet time and reflect on the questions above, the answers you give could be the key that… Continue