Listen To Your Heart and With Your Heart

“If we know how to listen to our own heart”, writes the late Stephen Covey, “we can listen to the hearts of others.” I think one of the greatest challenges to walking a path with heart is being willing to listen to your heart and to listen with your heart. The former is to tap into the deep inner wisdom that resides in each of us, and the later is to be willing and open to the wisdom and insights that others have to share. The difficulty of this twofold commitment is that you have to be open to just listening.

When we choose to listen to our own heart, and to tap into the deep inner wisdom that reside within each of us, we must recognize that most of us on a daily basis are caught in a cycle of hyper-vigilant reactivity. We, myself included, are constantly on our phones, iPads, or laptops responding to e-mails, watching YouTube videos, or reading the latest news. This addiction to screens and the subsequent responding to ever-pressing inputs prevents us from taking the time to step back, reflect, and listen. 

Listening to our own heart is deep work. It requires us to create periods of uninterrupted time and silence. For when we give ourselves permission to be still in the midst of this uninterrupted silence, we find that our lives are filled up and defined by so much noise, especially non-urgent and non-important activities and information. It is in the silence and subsequent stillness that we listen and re-discover the importance of living a life that reflects a complete alignment of body, mind, heart, and spirit. And with this understanding, we can then reprioritize our focus and our choices. We can discover new ways of thinking, working, and living.

When we choose to listen with our heart during a conversation with others, we must recognize that we often listen to respond rather than to understand. We hear the opening part of someone’s communication and we are already figuring out our response. Routinely, we listen to fix something or someone. We want to offer our advice, or to solve a problem. While these may be worthwhile elements and may even need to happen over time, in the beginning, the middle and the end, we must listen less with our head and more with our hearts. For it is from this place that we bring compassion, empathy, and openness to the moment.

Father Gregory Boyle in his book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (Simon & Schuster, 2017) uses the following mantra in his head when visiting with people, namely “stay listening.” He also reminds himself to “listen here and now and only to this person.”

My wife, Jane, and I were discussing the subject of teaching people when she shared that a friend of hers had pointed out that many teachers focus on education as a form of transmission. However, this friend explained that great teachers focus on education as a form of liberation.

The minute she shared this insight with me a light bulb went off inside my head. Many people listen as a form of transmission. It focuses on the message sent and the message being received. But the great listeners I have met, the ones who truly listen with their hearts, engage in the process as a form of liberation for the person speaking and for the person listening. This type of listening frees the speaker and the listener to achieve a deeper and more meaningful level of connection. And ultimately, this helps both as they move forward through life.

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Life Is Difficult - part #3

The second step to quiet compassion is to assist someone in understanding the “big picture,” and to help them understand how that big picture is changing. When overwhelmed and struggling, many people choose to control their life. They want everything, including people, children, and pets, to be orderly and to be predictable. While this is admirable, it is not always realistic. Instead, there is a better choice and that is to help people see the big picture within which they are living and working.

Drawing on the work of Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen in their book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperCollins, 2011), the goal is to help someone learn how to “zoom out before they zoom in.” In particular, this requires people to learn how in the midst of their challenges to stop and take stock of what is happening within them and around them. The goal here is to better understand what they are feeling and thinking rather than just getting caught up in a loop of constant reacting. 

As people learn how to zoom out before zooming in, it is important to support them in understanding how the big picture is changing. In the beginning, we must ask questions to help people sense and name what they are experiencing. Then, over time, to assist them in understanding how their big picture is changing. In particular, we want to help them to determine if the risk profile, using a common business term, is changing and whether or not these changes require an individual to change their short term choices, or long term plans. 

For those who are offering quiet compassion, this level of work requires great focus and determination. The goal is not to tell people what is their big picture, but instead to ask questions to help people see it and to offer unconditional support as they grasp the magnitude of what is before them. Then, we also need to help them to find the resources and people who will assist them moving through these challenges. 

For all involved in this level of work, having a growth mindset rather than a solutions mindset is critical. We need to support someone to grow a deeper and more holistic understanding of their life and their life situation, rather than simply defaulting to a solutions mindset where everything and everyone is a merely a problem that needs to be fixed. This is easier said than done, but it still is important. 

The fourth step to quiet compassion is to recognize that many people are struggling with “tangled networks,” a term defined by John Paul Lederach in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005). Every day, people engage with their work networks and their personal networks. The former helps them with their current job responsibilities and the later helps them with their home responsibilities. 

When people are overwhelmed and struggling, they often start by trying to fix something or find the right solution. I understand this desire to solve a problem, but part of the problem is that work responsibilities and problems plus home responsibilities and problems are all intertwined. For example, an individual can not solve a work problem without solving a home problem, or vice versa.  Thus, they are dealing with a tangled network.

Those who offer quiet compassion understand this difficult situation and recognize that the starting place is not to ask the question, “What is the problem or the solution?” Instead, quiet compassion begins by asking a better question, namely, “Who do you know who knows a person who can help you create a way out of your current situation?” 

This method of inquiry and reflection recognizes that Who questions need to precede the What questions. It is built on an understanding that realistic solutions emerge from relational resources and connections. It is a “relationship-centric approach” to dealing with hard times. According to Lederach, the overall goal is “to look at relationships through the lenses of social crossroads, connections, and interdependence.” It is ‘know-who’ more than “know-how.”

The final step to offering quiet compassion is to focus on being kind, rather than just doing kindness. The former focuses on the qualities of being friendly, generous, and considerate. It starts with inner courage and strength plus the willingness to be present to another person in the midst of their difficulties. The later focuses on action and problem solving. 

When one chooses quiet compassion, they are willing to witness and acknowledge the suffering that is taking place. They are willing to be present in the midst of this time of pain, and to be a presence in their relationship network. The choice of being a presence recognizes that “stillness is not inactivity,” explains Lederarch. As he notes, “It is the presence of disciplined activity without movement…. Stillness requires a commitment of patience and watchfulness. Its guideposts are these: Slow down. Stop. Watch what moves around you. Feel what moves in you.” When we come from the place that unites stillness with quiet compassion, we understand that the mystery of life’s journey is that not everything goes according to our plans or our expectations. In fact, many times, our expectations are unrealistic, because they are based on control over faith, and certainty over clarity. 

Furthermore, when we are suffering, we feel scattered and lost. And the one thing we have lost is our wholeness. We just feel like our parts are disconnected and scattered. We do not feel our lives are in alignment with our beliefs, hopes, and dreams. 

Yet, when we are in the presence of someone who comes with an open heart and an open mind, we feel supported and hopeful about discovering a path forward. These quietly compassionate people recognize our shared humanity and our shared journey. They welcome us for who we are, not who we should be. They validate our dignity, worth, and wholeness even when we feel overwhelmed and broken. They comprehend that while life includes suffering, it is not solely defined by our suffering. 

As M. Scott Peck wrote in his book, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (Simon & Schuster, 1978): “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” 

With people who can offer quiet compassionate as part of our home and work networks, we can discover this great truth, understand it, and then accept it. Then, we can begin the journey of transcending it and moving forward in a more wholistic and healthy manner. And that will generate profoundly important new beginnings in our life journey. 

© Geery Howe 2023

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates

Life Is Difficult - part #2

Now, during the first year of the global pandemic, the common response to all of this suffering and struggles was to “give that person some grace.” It was repeated often by many different people. Yet, as we enter our third year of living with COVID, and we begin to feel like this could be the new normal, I wonder if we truly understand what this phrase actually means and whether or not it is still the right phrase for where we are right now. 

Traditionally, the giving of grace to another person was to forgive them, unconditionally. It was to allow them the ability to make mistakes without punishment and then to respond with forgiveness. However during the pandemic, this often translated into a common perspective of giving someone a pass on their poor behavior or outbursts related to their struggling. It did not often come with the element of support or understanding which is a critical component of forgiveness. 

Building on this recognition, I believe one problem with the common usage of “give them some grace” is that the struggles people are experiencing now are not based on someone making a mistake that needs forgiveness. Instead, it is based on them feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed by life and work. 

Brene’ Brown, Brene in her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House, 2021) explains that there is a difference between being stressed and being overwhelmed. As she explains, “We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demands as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded…. Stressful situations cause both physiological (body) and psychological (mind and emotion) reactions.” On the other hand, “Overwhelmed means an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, the American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center of Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, describes overwhelmed as the all-too-common feeling “that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.”

So, how do we move forward together when life is hard and difficult? What can we do to support people who are quietly suffering and quietly quitting? I think the answer can be best summarized by the phrase, quiet compassion.

The word compassion literally means “to suffer together.” It is the feeling that arises when one is confronted with another’s suffering and feels motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is greater than just empathy. While empathy is the feeling of another’s pain, compassion is taking action to relieve the suffering of others. I believe that quiet compassion is the sum of multiple choices and actions. And each choice and the resulting action builds upon the other until the cumulative effect is quiet compassion.   

The first step to offering quiet compassion is to engage in active listening, rather than active fixing. Now, traditionally, active listening is defined as a way of listening and responding that improves mutual understanding. This includes paraphrasing to show understanding, non-verbal clues, and verbal affirmations. 

However, in real life, most people who engage in active listening move rapidly into active advice giving and active problem solving. Instead of following the old Stephen Covey adage, i.e. “seek first to understand, second to be understood,” most people translate his insight into seek first to define the problem, and second to fix the problem. While this may be advantageous and feel good for the listener, it is not always the best course of action for the person who is struggling with difficult challenges.

I think the better course of action begins with listening to connect and validate. With quiet compassion as the goal, we must seek to be 100% present to another person and “to suffer together” with them, referencing the original definition of compassion. As part of this process, we must center ourselves as listeners by breathing mindfully, being present to what is before us, and to being more aware of what is happening within us as we listen to someone who is dealing with dynamic complexity. 

Furthermore, the goal of this kind of listening, notes Parker Palmer, American author, educator and activist, is to choose not to give advice or to “fix” people from the outside in, but rather to support people in removing the obstacles that prevent them from discovering their own, inner wisdom. By helping them to discover their own inner truth and resources, a person can determine what is the best path forward to solve their own problems. In short, people rediscover agency, namely the feeling that they can control their own actions and the resulting consequences in a healthy and safe manner. 

FYI: To be continued on Thursday.  Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Life Is Difficult - part #1

Some days, life can be hard and difficult. And because of this, many people are suffering at home and at work. They are feeling overwhelmed, drained, and lost in complexity. Each day seems to be an endless series of unpredictable, and uncontrollable events. And as a result, they struggle, and they suffer. 

Recently, I have been thinking about the term that went viral in mid 2022 called “quiet quitting.” When people engage in “quiet quitting,” it is a choice not to abruptly leave a job, but instead to do exactly what the job requires, no more no less. These individuals are choosing to limit their work to their contract hours. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report in June 2022 said that job dissatisfaction was at an all-time high with 60% reporting emotional detachment from work. I doubt this has changed much since then. 

Given the last couple of years, it is no surprise to me that worker burnout is happening. Employees are not connecting with their work, or their managers. Some workers say “quiet quitting” is simply the best term for setting boundaries at work and seeking a healthier work-life balance.

First, I think quiet quitting is the last stage in a long line of choices, actions, and reactions. From my vantage point, I think we need to ask some important questions: What was happening in a person’s life before they engaged in quiet quitting? Why was quiet quitting the best choice given all the other choices before them? 

I have come to believe that quiet quitting is the result of all that has taken place since the arrival of COVID-19 and a global pandemic. Remembering that many people went into the pandemic in March of 2020 feeling drained and overwhelmed from the roller coaster ride of 2018 and 2019, the subsequent years of 2020, 2021, and 2022 did not get any better.  

Since March of 2020, we have mostly focused on making life functional. We have Zoomed and FaceTimed more than ever before. We have isolated, worked from home, and ordered on-line for nearly everything. We have baked bread, planted gardens, streamed endless shows and movies, all with the hope of being able to survive and adapt. The outcome of all of these choices is that we have loss vital connections with others and our communities. We have cocooned and lived, but we also have been stressed and overwhelmed by the journey to 2023. In short, we have functioned, but not thrived. 

In the meantime, life has continued to move forward at an alarmingly complex pace. People are doing their best, but some days, this means they are just doing the basics, namely, food, shelter, family, and job. Each day, they get up, make breakfast for themselves and their families, drop off the kids at daycare or school, and finally end up at work. Hopefully, this all happens in such a manner that everyone makes it there on time. Then, work is filled with countless meetings, deadlines, and endless amounts of emails. At the end of the day, it is the whole thing all over again, but in reverse. 

For these people and their families, work life balance is a myth. Most are barely coping on a day to day basis. They have lost the feeling and the experience of balance, wholeness, and connection. Instead, life is just a never ending experience of exhaustion and difficulties. In short, it is an on-going experience of  quiet suffering.

Second, I think many people are defining their relationship with others as an “all or nothing relationship.” In simple terms, an all or nothing relationship is based on the tendency to define another person or persons as either completely positive or completely negative. There is no in-between.

To understand this concept, we need to understand relationships through the lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Starting at the bottom of the Hierarchy and moving upwards, the needs are physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging (friendship), self-esteem, and ultimately self-actualization. Physiological needs are the most essential things a person needs to survive. They include the need for shelter, water, food, warmth, rest, and health. A person’s motivation at this level derives from their instinct to survive. On the other hand, self-actualization, which is at the top of the pyramid, focuses on achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities. It centers on self-fulfillment needs. 

Furthermore, self-actualized people have peak experiences, and a continuous sense of appreciation. They are realistic, problem-centered, and independent. These regular peak experiences display three core characteristics: significance, fulfillment, and spirituality. This state of self-actualization is obtainable only after one’s fundamental needs for survival, safety, love, and self-esteem are met. 

The challenge with all or nothing relationships is that an individual wants to find a high degree of self-actualization in their relationships with others. They want more than love, belonging, or self-esteem. They want to have a series of continual peak experiences and they want continuous appreciation. 

For example, before entering into a long term relationship or a marriage, most people had multiple friends and thus multiple sources of support to manage the stress of daily living. However, upon entering into marriage or a long term and stable relationship, many people loose their entire friendship network and expect one, singular individual to provide for them every thing and more than what previously required a whole network of people to achieve. 

Now, add into this mix a three year global pandemic where many relationships were degraded or were abandoned because of numerous factors beyond one’s control, namely achieving the goal of not dying from COVID plus surviving at the food, shelter and safety level, i.e. the bottom half of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The long term result of these choices is disastrous, because long term burnout due to unrealistic expectations is inevitable.

Finally, I believe there is a third element in play here when it comes to the term, quiet quitting. I believe that many older, senior leaders have forgotten that parenting, especially with younger children, is very difficult and exhausting given current events. I believe that they have lost touch with the demands on young families and the lack of infrastructure to support young families.

For example, a large majority of households are now made up of two working adults whose combined income, given the current rate of inflation, is barely meeting basic household needs, i.e. think physiological needs. Furthermore, their entire ability to work is based on schools and daycare being functional and dependable systems of support. And this has not always been the case during the last three years.

Furthermore, given it has been hard to recruit and retain people to work within the business world during a global pandemic, this also is happening within the current educational system. And, from what I am told, even more so in the low-paying world of daycare services. The overall result is the lack of a dependable infrastructure of support which families can count on and build upon given life’s current complexities. 

In addition, we need to recognize that some families are experiencing the dual challenge of needing to care for their children and, at the exact same time, their aging parents, i.e. what is often called “the sandwich generation.” This combination is a recipe for extreme difficulties and hardship. 

FYI: To be continued on Wednesday. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates

Love The Questions

A path with heart is an adaptive journey. Your fundamental beliefs and assumptions will be called into question. You will be required to do more learning, unlearning, and relearning than you thought possible. You may need to change your priorities, habits, and patterns of engaging with others. You will definitely keep learning new ways of thinking and living.

But at the heart of this adaptive journey is the capacity to live with questions. You will have many and be presented with many more. This understanding is best captured by Rainer Maria Rilke. As he wrote:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…. Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

The questions will change over time, and there will always be more questions. When we embrace the questions as if they are long lost friends, welcoming them into our life journey, and when we love them unconditionally, then over time we discover and live into the answers. The questions are the gateway to new clarity, greater perspective, and more confidence to keep moving forward along the path.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates

My Father’s Hands

Some times when I am coaching, I look down at my hands to gather my thoughts before speaking. Recently, when I have done this, I have encountered a unique experience, namely that I see my father’s hands in mine. In particular, it is the way the skin lays across the back of my hand and how it forms around my fingers and knuckles. It is exactly the way it looked on my father’s hands as he got older. In one way, this should not surprise me as I am my father’s son. But still, it puts life’s journey into perspective when I realize I am part of a lineage of people who came before me. In particular, my life, and my body are connected to the DNA and well being of those who came before me. 

My late father died in the first wave of COVID back in April of 2020. At 98 years old and living on the east coast, neither my brother nor I could get there in time to be with him at his passing. And if we could have gotten there, the hospital would not have let us in. So, our good-byes and final words to him happened by the grace and gift of a hospice nurse, who used her own, personal cell phone to FaceTime with us so we could have that brief moment of connection. 

My last vision of my father before he turned his head away from the camera on her phone was him tapping his right hand on top of his left hand. It was not an act of dismissal as much as a realization of the road ahead, an act of love from a father to a son and a daughter-in-law. It was something I had seem him do so many times over the course of his life, an acknowledgement of what was being said and felt. 

My father was a complex man who shared often about his professional life and interests, but rarely spoke about his internal, personal life and journey. Still, in his own quiet way, I knew he loved me and he loved our family. And he knew that I loved him, too. 

In the Disney movie, The Lion King, there is a wonderful song called “He Lives In You.” The person singing this song understands their interconnection with others. I know that the best of my father lives in me. He constantly role modeled his values and role modeled what was important to him in his teaching and sharing. Over time, his actions became part of the framework of who I became and what I choose to live and role model with others. 

However, I think we get so busy and consumed by life that we forget we live in each other, not just beside each other. The people I meet routinely change me, and I suspect I have changed them. My choice is to be open to being changed by these interactions and to recognize our interdependencies as we move through life’s journey. My father’s hands are now my hands and maybe one day in the future one of our sons or grandsons will see my hands in their hands. We live in each other, and now is the time to remember this as we move forward together through this new year. 

© Geery Howe 2023

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates

Discover A Community of Fellow Travelers

I have learned that when you commit to a path with heart you will create your own network of friends and “family.” You will discover a community of fellow travelers. All of these individuals will be of different ages and experiences. You will recognize them by what they say and don’t say. You will recognize them by their ability to be present. You will recognize them by their willingness to be non-judgmental. You will recognize them by their compassion and humility.

Our youngest son used to say the following phrase about his best friend in high school, “he is my brother from another mother.” We will find our brothers and sisters on the path. We will find our allies and confidants, and they will give us wings and roots. They will be the source of blessings upon blessings. They become “family.”

Again, a path with heart is not an easy path, but it is a worthwhile path. It requires patience, faith, and commitment. It is a step by step journey. And today, 36 years later, here we are at the Fall ’22 Roundtable, a gathering of fellow travelers seeking new insights and perspective. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates

Making a Commitment To A Path With Heart

Note: During the next three months on Monday morning, I will share with you my presentation called “Making A Commitment To A Path With Heart” which I gave at the Fall 2022 From Vision To Action Executive Roundtable on September 22, 2022. Here is the introduction to it.

It was a warm day in August of 2021, and my wife, Jane, and I were discussing my retirement from public speaking when I shared the following quote by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall from their book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019): 

“ ‘Something you are good at’ is not a strength; it is an ability…. A strength, on the other hand, is an ‘activity that makes you feel strong.’…. It is this combination of three distinct feelings - positive anticipation beforehand, flow during, and fulfillment afterward - that makes a certain activity a strength.”

Jane paused for a moment, and then said, “When an activity makes us feel strong, it is a path with heart.”

The minute she shared this with me, I remembered the following quote by Carlos Castaneda in his book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1968):

“This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”

In a moment of deep reflection, my eyes filled up with tears because this pathway has been a path with heart. This morning I want to share with you the lessons I have learned while walking along a path with heart for 36 years.

Follow The Path

A long time ago when visiting northwest Iowa for the first time, I learned an important truth about life, family, and farming. The essence of this learning revolved around the following phrase: “What you feed, grows.” Most people focus on the word “grow” because it is an action oriented verb and a desired outcome. But over the course of many decades, I have come to value the word “feed.”

When one commits to a path with heart, one must trust the path. If it is a path with faith as the foundation, and a commitment to a faith-based mindset, namely “you lead and I will follow,” then I must feed my faith. I must keep learning about my faith in order to trust that the way will open.

Often now, people ask me about how I started the business and how to grow their business. In the beginning, I really wasn’t trying to start a business. I was just taking life one step at a time and it became a “business”. In simple terms, I was naive, patient, and faithful. I was willing to follow the path.

For example, many years ago I was sent to southwest Minnesota to assist a bank president with a struggling branch office. On the morning I arrived at the bank, I really questioned why I was there, and what I was supposed to do. I knew I did not have a complete picture of what was going on, and I did not know anyone in the bank other than the name given to me by the EVP who asked that I work with the bank president.

So on the morning I arrived, I walked in, introduced myself, and was guided to the president’s office. Once inside his office, I looked at the man and realized he was in horrible shape. He looked like “a deer in the headlights.”

“Are you okay? Do we need to call for medical assistance?”, I asked.

“No. No.”, he responded. “My wife just served me divorce papers about 30 minutes ago. When I got them, I raced home and she was gone. I didn’t even know we were having marriage problems. Where do I go from here?”

He was in complete shock, physically, emotionally, and mentally. So, we started exploring the question: “how do I get through this day?” It was a slow and painful process of reflection and re-evaluation. We had to figure out a short term plan and a long term plan. He had to do this work at the personal level and the professional level. He also had to build a team at his branch’s location that was clear, aligned and focused on the right things for the right reasons. As I walked out to my car at the end of the day and began my long drive for home, I realized that on this day there was a reason why I was in this spot at this time. 

The challenge of walking a path with heart is to fully embrace a “you lead and I will follow” commitment. To be faithful to my faith is not an easy choice, but over time and multiple such experiences I know that it is always the right choice.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates