Today's blog post is about the power of mentorship, and how visionary leadership is shaping our future together. In this story I am the receiver of the mentoring (mentee), the mentor is my friend J. Allen, the Founder and CEO of Masters Alliance. J. is one of the people in my life that I want to be when I grow up! As one of the earliest sponsors of the Good Leadership Breakfast, he came to me with a command in 2015. "We have to create a special breakfast for the purpose of encouraging young leaders."  I listened, and asked for his help.  Here's how that is shaping our future:

Leadership guru Brene Brown often repeats this quip: Clear is kind - unclear is unkind. Since the day we committed to researching and promoting the idea "goodness pays," I have been encouraging the speakers at the Good Leadership Breakfast to share their perspective on this idea. And, in the speaker follow-up interview, I've been asking this question: Will you please share with us a specific moment from your career, when you knew for sure goodness pays in your leadership?

At the conclusion of the 2019 Fall Good Leadership Breakfast Series, we will have completed 10 years of programming. So naturally, I was searching with eagerness to find just the right speaker for the 80th meeting, November 15. Today, there is no more mystery

Patience has never been one of my strengths. Last Friday, our speaker at the Good Leadership Breakfast said something that arrested my attention. He described himself as "profoundly impatient." In context, Phil McKoy of UnitedHealthcare, explained to more than 250 guests how being "profoundly impatient" works both for him, and against him in his leadership.

This Friday is the last meeting of the 2019 Spring Series of the Good Leadership Breakfast. With the help of our speaker Phil McKoy of UnitedHealthcare, our team will have completed our 76th meeting over 9 1/2 years. Our team can still see and feel positive momentum in our breakfast series. Here are signs the momentum is still growing:

One of the questions I use repeatedly in interviewing Good Leadership Breakfast speakers is, "Who were your role models for good leadership, and the idea that goodness pays?" Our speaker for next week - Phil McKoy, the CIO at UnitedHealthcare - didn't skip a beat in delivering an energetic and inspiring answer, "I have to say that I have two people that come to mind, and one is someone I've never met." 

On Easter Sunday two days ago, I heard a beautiful message about the importance of dreaming. Dreamers are people who see things others don't see. The skeptic says: "I will believe it when I see it."  The dreamer says: "I will see it when I believe it!"  Dreamers are people who transform organizations and industries. They also disrupt organizations and industries. For dreamers the disruption is fun and exciting. For the people who don't see the dream, or feel the excitement, they feel disrupted. And that's not much fun.

Last Friday, a full room of guests battled through an April wintry blast of snow and ice to attend the Good Leadership Breakfast. We learned about how goodness pays through the experiences of our guest speaker Monte Nuckols, an international IT executive with Adient. Monte recalled the compassion and encouragement of a specific leader when I asked him the most important question:

It's been 5 months since Paul Hillen and I launched the How Goodness Pays book. It wasn't easy in any way, shape, or form. It took two years to get the funding, and three years to research and write a credible book. And since the book launch he and I have been traveling east and west talking about the joys and tribulations of tackling the subject of "goodness" in "business."  Here's how my journey started, as written in Chapter 1:

Our coaches delight in working with technical leaders who learn to master the soft stuff. What's a technical leader? Lawyers, accountants, technologists - anyone who is highly-trained in the scientific method whose natural orientation is to identify problems. What does it mean to master the soft stuff?