The Heart of Making a Difference: Being of Service, Coaching Others, Enrolling Others, Speaking Up

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What is The Heart of Making a Difference?

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Enrolling Others and Creating Possibility

Connecting, or hooking people up, with new life giving possibilities (enrolling them) that they may be stopped from engaging with or may not even be aware of or know about, is not only part and parcel of coaching well but also part and parcel of Life! (whether you are a parent, a manager, a leader developing others to lead, or a son, daughter, sibling, etc). There are no relationships that are not contributed to by someone else being an opening and source of enrollment. That art of enrolling others (whether they be resistant, recalcitrant, and not interested OR a big opening already), is at the heart of the matter of making a difference.

“What does it take to enroll others?” is a central question, when one has dedicated one’s self to making a difference. Our capacity to serve is directly related to our capacity to move someone – not by force or power – but through graceful conversation, from wherever they are starting into a new place. Sometimes that place may be being curious, sometimes that new place may be a request, sometimes that new place may be a possibility not seen before or an opportunity not even imagined. With enrollment, people are empowered and nurtured. They experience being served, not being pressured. The opportunity to choose is present. Productivity expands.

Without enrollment, coaching can not happen; without someone requesting coaching, coaching is impossible. Enrollment is the art of creating conversations that allow people to see benefit for themselves, condition the opportunity, and, ultimately, choose. It is an integral part of developing others and creating possibility for others. Enrolling others takes dwelling in the distinctions, finding and using the keys, to creating conversations that open the doorways to possibility and pave the way for people to step across those doorways or thresholds into making commitments. Enrollment is the opposite of force, control, domination, persuasion, manipulation. Enrollment allows for possibilities to be seen and heard, beyond that which the person could, at first blush, even consider. Enrollment can breathe life into a conversation or a human being.

It is an essential art, when one is out to make a difference in the lives of others.

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Speaking Up

Often, our timidity and reluctance to be straight forward, our fear of what others will think, and our internal judgments of ourselves, stop us from speaking up or intervening or inserting ourselves into a current conversation. We all have stops to courageous speech.

“Speaking up” ranges from not being able to transcend those stops (wanting to be nice, wanting approval, wanting to be liked, fear being judged, etc) to speaking whatever is being called for, in behalf of intervening in the conversation and making a difference, or altering the course of events, or coaching another, or talking straight, or shifting the nature of the conversation from no possibility to possibility. In a way, we are always speaking up, even in our silence. As Sartre says, “We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and as mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.”

Who we are speaks up. Our very nature teaches. The question is: What is it we are teaching?

“Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one’s inwardness, for better or worse.  As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.”  

                                                                 — Parker Palmer, The Heart of a Teacher

Courageous speech often frightens and eludes us. We ask: Who am I to speak up? Who am I to be listened to? Who am I to make a difference? And because we listen to our own internal voices telling us we are small, we stay small. Our intention, in this aspect of the program, is to name and dissolve the barriers between you and speaking up, and to free yourself up, owning that your very being is not only a valid but necessary voice in the conversation, and if a difference is to be made, we must reveal our selves, and come out into the light of day. Here, you have the opportunity to not only increase your awareness of your stops but, ultimately, transcend and disappear the stops between you and making that difference you are here to make.

Who is this program for?

This is a program for people who have covered a certain amount of ground in the developmental distinctions offered by the foundational Gale Leadership Development programs, and particularly The Heart of Leadership. Through it, we intend to provoke a new opening, like an evolutionary possibility, in your ability to connect with others and open up space for others to tap into their own power, brilliance, and wisdom.

“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies Half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, Gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, But rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”

— Gibran, from The Prophet

This is a conversation for graduates of previous Gale Leadership Development LLC work who

• Are out to make a difference in life
• Are committed to developing others well
• Are in development themselves; are committed to deepening and embodying the principles of the developmental work that they have already done, and in which they are currently engaged, and are intensively exploring new distinctions that allow for the empowerment of others
• Intend to support people working together and working well with others
• Intend to build, expand, and sustain capabilities engendered in their business lives by Gale Leadership Development work already completed
• Are ready to expand their own developmental maturity through enhancing their ability to contribute to and develop others
• Are asking for enhancing the ability to develop the next generation of leaders
• Are interested in exploring the opportunity of building a coaching capability within their own organization or business
• Intend to create in their life and their work a reliable way to increase others’ power, ease, satisfaction in life and in work and enable others to create possibility in the apparent face of no possibility
• Have, as a dimension of their job, supporting others in achieving high performance breakthroughs
• Work with high performing people who are not good with others

Why this now?

It is time. For some of us, it is time to be a vital participant in the expansion and evolution of human consciousness, to take on expanding our ability to serve humanity, to be of Service, to make a difference. Dwelling in these distinctions and acting in this capacity to expand and own our commitment to making a difference at ever increasing depth, may well be the most critical work we have to do in our lifetime.

What are the intentions of this program? 

The over-arching intention of The Heart of Making a Difference is to create an opening for you to live (ever more deeply) as a clearing for powerfully and meaningfully making a difference (living a life that matters), contributing and being contributed to throughout your life….

…to awaken, open, deepen, expand, and fulfill your making a difference in the lives of yourself and others,

…to have leadership live for you as a creative art; to open you to the rhythms of your own longing, including your longing for being of service/ being a contribution/ making a difference in the lives of others and giving you access to the conversational pathways that allow you to make that longing fulfilled and realized in the world.

The specific purposes are:

1. You clarify (and make one) your inner and outer voice, releasing the heart of yourself as a contributor and as a difference maker.
2. You have access to empowering others through courageous speech; you actively open people to their connection with Heart and Life – Givingness through generating conversations for Trust, Possibilities and Opportunities which serve them and through opening a space in which they can commit.
3. You have a new opening in your ability to mentor, coach, and develop others, realizing that as a viable path to developing your self ongoingly; you bring people more powerfully into the wisdom of their own mind, the wisdom of their own heart, and the wisdom of their Spirit (You expand your ability to forward the power, effectiveness, performance, and fulfillment of others. You identify and let go of your own traps, internal voices, and patterns, which constrain you from being powerful in developing others and making a difference in their performance and their lives).
4. You have an opening in your fierce courage to speak up, (or not speak up), wherever, and whenever, in behalf of creating the fresh breath of possibility into a conversation.
5. You distinguish the many resonances of your own voice, connecting and weaving your particular colors, textures, longings, delights, talents and gifts of “All-that-is” into a strength that is put into service of making a difference.
6. You have access to creating environments in your life such that enrolling, developing, and creating possibility for others naturally occurs where appropriate and people experience being freed up through their relationship with you.
7. You have a new access (beyond your current perimeters) into the beingness of Being-of-Service in all of your communication relationships; with respect to making a difference, you are clear what you stand for.
8. You are easing into “free fall” and fluidity as a way of being, opening the territory for yourself to live as an explorer, an experimenter, a risk taker, investigating the confluence of intention and detachment as a source of power.
9. You have a breakthrough in your relationship with language as a source of power for creating creating.
10. You know yourself as one who is contributing to and accelerating the transformation of consciousness on the planet.

What are the fundamental inquiries and distinctions of the program?

Each program is individually designed to draw from the following questions and distinctions in behalf of supporting the particular participants of that particular offering of the program the most productive, most enlivening pathway for growing their power in the area:

• What are my own personal stops between me and making a difference?
• What are my stops to speaking up, when I know speaking up would matter?
• What does it take to live my life, out of my expanded commitment to be of service in the world?
• What allows people to develop themselves with me?
• What are the kinds of conversations that allow development to occur?
• Where and when does coaching take place?
• What is teaching? What is it to teach? What is at the heart of being a teacher?
• What are the ways I can develop my own intuitive ability for unfolding new possibilities for creation from within the world of others?
• What listening allows me to coach another powerfully? What listening limits me?
• How do I invent and engage a conversation that causes a new way of being?
• What is my relationship to making a difference? What is it I bring to the conversation? What are the gifts, talents, and, most particularly, BEINGNESS that I bring to bear as a strength in contributing to others and to various conversations? What is my signature?
• What conversations enable and disenable a developmental relationship?
• How do I hold others to account in such a way that they hold themselves to account?
• What are the distinctions that forward people being at stake in a coaching relationship?
• How do I take what’s invisible in the background and is contributing to the person’s unworkability and then disrupt it in a way that empowers rather than disempowers?
• What do I stand for with respect to those whom I am coaching?
• What is the value of declaring breakdowns in a coaching interaction?
• When I recognize a barrier that hinders the performance of another, what is the work I can do to enable people to disappear those barriers?
• Am I being responsible for the level of integrity that is required of me as a coach?
• What are the derailers to good coaching to be on the watch for? What are the pathways for shifting gears when I find myself reactive in a coaching interaction?
• What is the distinction between expectation and intention, obligation and commitment? (And why is this question important?)
• What are pathways for dealing with my own disappointments and failures as a coach when my coaching is not accepted?
• What are my pathways for dealing with failure when I have failed to make a difference?
• How do we create a project so that the accomplishment of coaching or developing another is clear? How do we measure progress/ breakdowns/victories?
• Am I willing to be vulnerable? How critical is being vulnerable?
• Do I have the humility to sustain myself as a good coach? What internal dialogue will alarm me such that I can exercise eternal vigilance about keeping the bulldogs of arrogance and complacency away from my door?
• What is my own commitment to and structure for truing myself up over time? For sustaining myself in development through time? For seeing the world as a source of revelation on an ongoing basis?
• Are there any dangers to this orientation of making a difference? If so, what are they?
• What are pathways for transmuting those dangers into opportunities?
• What is the source of intimacy as a critical ingredient in a coaching relationship? What stops it? What forwards it?
• What progress (or lack thereof) have I made in treating the world as a source of revelation on a daily (if not ongoing) basis? What hides this possibility?
• What is the source of velocity in developing others?
• What is the role of Grace, Faith, Surrender, Love and Healing in Developmental relationships?

Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve.  You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.  You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve….you don’t have to know the second theory of thermo-dynamics or physics to serve.  You only need a heart full of Grace.  A soul generated by love. Everybody can be great.  Because anybody can serve.  You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.  You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve….you don’t have to know the second theory of thermo-dynamics or physics to serve.  You only need a heart full of Grace.  A soul generated by love.

Martin Luther King

Is there anything else I should know? Yes.

Being good to masterful in developing others through coaching them requires you to be authentically and powerfully in development yourself. Without that, you have an integrity issue, an authenticity issue. Because you are asking others to press beyond the boundaries of who they consider themselves to be (their “small self”), you also need to require that of yourself. Living at that boundary where you are at the cliff’s edge, at risk, brings you into discourse with elemental forces that bring you vitality, life, even revelation.

On the other hand, being at that frontier requires, as David Whyte says, “constantly resuscitating yourself from the self enclosed tombs in which you put yourself.”

Also, coaching demands that we be present –without judgment—to whom we are coaching. It requires appreciation for who is in front of us: compassion, acceptance, yes, and love. And, again, to quote David Whyte,

“We could say that love is the name we give that depth of attention that allows the essence of someone else to speak back to us in their own voice in their own way. We let them become visible but in the same moment, because of the selfless nature of attentiveness, also reveal ourselves.”

That’s why turning yourself into someone who reliably and powerfully makes a difference in the lives of others is inherently risky; you have to be “on” for it: you have to be willing to be vulnerable.

At the same time, the opportunity to expand the vitality, aliveness, competence, power, self-acceptance, and performance of others, the power of opening territory for human beings to create their own voice, is the biggest privilege we have. It brings us all into an aliveness, a poetry, an awareness of the power and graciousness of others and ourselves that is astonishing.

Because development occurs in the room beyond what the person you are coaching originally gave you, carving out the space for coaching requires your creativity, your edge, your originality, your authenticity, and your depth. You can’t “float by” and be a great coach. You must carve out an opening for your speaking (and their listening) that wasn’t there when you started.

This makes the opportunity very exciting, very interesting, very at risk, and very enlivening. For those of you who already coach powerfully, you know

It is a game of no certainty and pure Life-Givingness!

It demands of us that we shake off our various mantles of imprisonment and let our hearts be moved by the astonishing beauty of the human spirit.

What other details are there about the program?

The dates for the next offering of The Heart of Making a Difference are TBD. It is a five-and-a-half-day program, configured as four days and two evenings, plus an afternoon and a full day as a completion and new opening.

Days 1 and 2 take place between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm each day with two evening sessions as well between 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm. The evening sessions open up room for the participants to initiate inquiries that matter to them and are very much a part of the program. Days 3 and 4 are 8:00 am 6:00 pm. Day 5 is an afternoon session, 2:00pm to 6:00 pm and Day 6 is 8:00 am to 6:00 pm. The cost of the entire program is $3450. Lunches are included. Participants are responsible for their own lodging and other meals.

To participate in this program, you must be a graduate of The Heart of Leadership, been developing yourself through time, and must have an orientation around expanding your commitment to make a difference, through coaching people, enrolling people, creating possibility, and/or speaking up.

How do I enroll?

If you have any questions about this program or wish to talk about it or look at its appropriateness for you with me, please call. To enroll, please fill out the registration form, and fax or email it back to me.

There is a quote that I like that one of my earliest coaches said, and I end this invitation to engage with this conversation through this quote:

All it takes to make a difference is the courage to stop proving I was right in being unable to make a difference, to stop assigning the cause of my inability to circumstances outside myself, and to be willing to have been that way, and to see that the fear of being a failure is a lot less important than the unique opportunity I have to make a difference.

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Participant Comments following The Heart of Making a Difference:

The work on identity and integrity in this course fused my inner and outer life in a way that makes speaking up, even in the most difficult circumstances, a constant, necessary reality of life. I know this commitment has been a tremendous breakthrough in my professional and personal effectiveness. It’s amazing how productive a meeting can be when everyone at the table is listening deeply and speaking courageously.

Courageous speaking has particularly transformed my worklife. Through this course I experienced a transformative shift from pleasing to serving. It’s amazing how what I perceived to be “serving” had been distorted by my desire to get along. Doing what is of service is not always doing what people want— sometimes it’s disruptive and unpleasant— but I’ve found that it is the clearest pathway to really making a difference. There’s real freedom and power in true service as a compass.

Really it was a series of shifts that led to the courageous speaking. It required:

1. Awareness of what I feel and what my heart desires.
   – Hearing my heart when it said to speak up or do something. A major part of this was a breakthrough in trusting my intuition, which has affected so much about the way I experience and view my life.
2. A deepened commitment to my own integrity.
   – Recognizing that restraining my voice keeps me from being whole.
3. A recklessness that allows me to be unattached to the fixtures of my security.
   – A committed willingness to speak up even if it costs me my job or something else that’s important to me. I realized I’m much better at my job when I’m not attached to it.
4. A focus on honest expression, and a trust that the words will come.
   – Speaking from my heart as the norm rather than the exception has meant removing some layers from my social filter and just saying what I’m compelled to say. This has been so cool to watch as I notice the listening of others and the connections that are made. One cool revelation came the other night when I gave a talk at church that I thought would be controversial, but decided to speak my heart anyway without editing. I also thought that this different kind of preparation would mean that I might come across less polished, but ultimately might be more powerful. As it turns out I received some of the most generous comments about my voice and polished speaking style that I’ve ever received in my life. Hearing how effective this was really confirmed these ideas that I had been experimenting with: that if I can keep my eye on my heart and my listener, everything else fills in between us.

For me this was a critical follow-up to Heart of Leadership as it anchored that work into a series of ongoing practices, and gave me the tools to bring this conversation into every conversation. Awareness and intuition are so important in business and in life, and yet they are among the first things drowned out by the busyness of the day. In this course I feel like I found an amplifier for those two things, heightening awareness and making my intuition impossible to ignore.

Ryan Joy
Sr. Manager, DW Green Company, Inc.

 

The primary three sustaining effects (from this course) have been:

• My taking responsibility for “getting in touch with my heart” each day – and understanding the cost and benefit, to myself and the world, of opening my heart every day through deliberate practices that I have implemented.
• A new opening and pathway for enrollment.Primarily, I find myself not over-analyzing the process and, more importantly, not getting attached to the outcome.  This has been a big deal for me.
• Revitalized my respect for the importance of rigor and precision when using language. And, along with that, restarted my practice of designingimportant conversations and reminded me of the power that conversation has to change the world.

The Heart of Making a Difference produced immediate results in my business: giving me access to new clients and their referrals.  My company was also able to redefine what we mean by customer service,which produced results within weeks.  At home, I was able to repair long-standing communication issues with my wife, dispel misunderstood expectations that produced anxiety, transforming those expectations into commitments to my family that inspire us and are joyful to satisfy. More-so than in previous courses, I was able to adopt regular practices in my daily and weekly routine that continually renew the openings that The Heart of Making a Differenceprovided to me.

Eric Cress
Owner, Urban Development Partners

 

I got so much out of Heart of Making a Difference. I was opened to the power and importance of enrollment, of inquiries and of language. I am committed to heart listening. I believe my human experience is about the journey toward wholeness. And the light of my wholeness brightened from the richness of content and through my listening. I know more of what I didn’t know I didn’t know!

My opening was to be of service. To be of service; to myself, to my family, to my friends, to my employees, to my community and to all living things in the world, is to make a difference in the lives of others and to make a difference in the world of which I am apart. And if my being of service opens being of service to others for others it will contribute to the transformation of consciousness on the planet! Understanding the distinction between fixing, helping and serving was critical for me to begin my journey, my discovery of being of service. For me being of service is about touching the heart, the soul, the consciousness of another person with a genuine, authentic, deep appreciation and attentiveness to their uniqueness, their gifts and their wholeness.

The Heart of Making a Difference is the ultimate sequel to Heart of Leadership. There is a powerful, and rich connectedness that makes the total experience incredibly beneficial.

DW Green
Owner, DW Green Company, Inc.

 

I have a greater trust in myself. Before The Heart of Making a Difference, I experienced courage, faith and self-confidence fleetingly. Now, they feel renewable and ever-present. I know that I am bigger and stronger than the circumstances that surround me. I feel like I have a greater sense of ownership of my life, and a stronger commitment to myself to nourish and celebrate all of the things that make me who I am.

The readings were phenomenal, and the freer-flowing evening conversations were extraordinary. It was an incredible feeling to be in a room where true conversations and real listening were happening. It was an amazing thing to experience. The discussions about courageous speech and the conversations about being open to new horizons, surprises, and living on the cliff edge also made a huge impact on me.

Amba, the way you let the conversation flow organically, while still keeping us ever mindful of the intentions you had for us in this conversation, was incredible.

My sincere appreciation and thanks for having the privilege to engage in such a powerful conversation with you and the other participants, who astounded and inspired me with their courage and insights.

Erica Hutchinson
Sr. Manager, DW Green Company, Inc.

 

The first breakthrough for me was to enroll myself into a committed belief that I can make a difference. By stepping into that belief, it made a difference in me personally. This class IS appropriately named.

I found it much easier to grab onto the distinction of “making a difference” vs. “developing others”. “Making a difference” feels more rooted in service than “developing others”. I know it is a subtle distinction, but it was significant for me and allowed more access to the work.

This course was one of the BEST!

Greg Johnson
Sr. Manager, Town & Country Markets

 

Prior to HOMD, self-doubt and fear had me stopped in all areas of my life. I covered much ground dealing with grief and loss, and shedding old skin, prior to the course. I made courageous leaps by starting my own business and ending a long term relationship. As exciting as that can be FEAR came along with all of it!

This course was an awakening experience for me. I came into this course being at stake for accepting FEAR for what it is, having my powerful voice be heard always, and to live each day with strong intentionality in behalf of making a difference in the lives of others and my own life.

The title of the course, The Heart of Making a Difference, is dead on. Through the conversations I reconnected with who I am, my Heart, and my soul’s purpose. I would have to say that the courageous speech conversation and enrollment conversations were very powerful for me.

During and since the course, I have formed new and exciting partnerships with people that I would not have imagined partnering with, in behalf of forwarding our businesses, rekindling relationships, and being of service to others. I am so grateful for those partnerships and the difference it has made in my life.

To me, the HOMD was a barometer for where I am in my own development. I found myself constantly checking myself (catching and correcting) as though it was automatic. I am still in that mode. I think HOMD is distinct from AODL because a lot of time is spent on enrollment and courageous speaking conversations. The readings and evening sessions were deep and enlightening. The distinction drawn between help vs. service was the biggest nugget of them all for me. Once I got that, it was easy for me embrace enrollment as an expression of contributing my true authentic self to others in my business and my personal life. This was my wake up and come out of hiding moment!

LaDonna Duhon
Duhon Financial Management

 

I started in this conversation with a question in my mind. My inquiry was this: how much of “contribution to others” is self-serving? I thought that, in order for me to be in service to others, this act must be completely unselfish and not out of any self driven agendas. By the end of the course, what opened up for me was, that in order for me to serve others, I must serve myself and that is by no means a selfish act. When I serve others I am serving myself.

I think that the AODL/ AODO was a perfect spark for this conversation and it was through HOMD that I had the chance to deepen my commitment towards developing others and for being a contribution to others.

My recommendation is, for those who are in the same quandary as I was, to consider this course to discover their own level of commitment to this idea of being in service to others.

Mo Aliabadi
Owner, South Tacoma Auto

 

This course is a deeper dive into some of the same areas that make up the different courses coupled with new cuts into uncharted territory. This course peels back the layers that we wear and opens up our true self to the world. For some people they were able to find direction for themselves while others worked on critical relationships they have. This course is for people who are ready to contribute to the world around them in a way that is both powerful and meaningful.

For me, the course opened up a few things for me. It gave me time to construct some very important conversations that are coming up for me in the future and it allowed me to open up my true voice for the sake of the company. Journaling was an unbelievable blessing for me. It gave me a chance to seed thoughts and turn ideas into reality. I have continued to use it as a form of reflection, inspiration, organizing thoughts, and declaring my voice.

Joel Larway
Store Director, Shoreline Central Market
Town & Country Markets

 

I have so much love for you and the work you provide for us. This was the most powerful environment I have been blessed to be part of. I have a shift in who I am and the way I do things that is deeply life changing. I am blessed and I am grateful.

Virginia Bobrow
Human Resources, Town and Country Markets

 

The class “H.O.M.D.” contributed to me at a different level than previous courses I have taken from you. The ease with which we got into each other’s worlds (be of service to each other) was much more accessible at this level…It is critical for me to stay connected and practice what I have learned from previous courses with folks who have the same or similar desire to carry on in development.

I found that we, and you, have recognized that there are different levels of work that require different attention and different involvement from those attending. The opportunity to experience the wealth of growth and work that people in this group put into their own development is essential to my own development. These folks taught me. They helped me to listen. They helped me to speak. They helped me to teach. I felt totally accepted and loved by this group, therefore I was able to clear the way sooner to share who I am.

What has opened up for me is a simple, pure concept that I used to practice but have put on the back burner the past 18 years. The concept is being of service.

I am inspired.

Chris King, Seafood Specialist
Town and Country Markets

 

We all long for making a difference, to truly contribute to others. And many of us feel that we are well prepared to do just that. But until you understand the importance of getting your own house in order, to live a life fully at stake and in alignment, you discover that your ability to truly make a difference grows exponentially. The Heart of Making a Difference takes you on such a journey, with such depth, that it becomes life changing.

There are two themes that keep coming up for me when I think of this course. The first, paying “profound attention” to yourself. And second, “living courageously”. Obviously these were my openings but I think they are central to making a difference in others
When I first took The Art of Developing Others, another participant proposed a new name: The Art of Developing Oneself to Develop Others. I think The Heart of Making a Difference did a much deeper take on truly developing yourself. Or at least discovering where you are in your development and what is essential to get in order so you truly can make a difference in others.

Bill Weymer
CEO, Town and Country Markets