Values

In Each Other We Trust

Dec 2, 2013

When I was in business school at Duke University we didn’t talk much about the idea of trust. We emphasized teamwork a ton, and actually the “Team Fuqua” culture was a huge part of my decision to attend school at Duke and I loved every minute. One could say that the idea of a team culture implies a trusting culture. After all, can teammates work effectively if they do not trust one another? Lack of trust between teammates can make it a harder road but it won’t necessarily doom the team to failure. The reality is many teams in academia or in traditional workplace environments are hoisted upon us. We don’t make the choice to team up, so the team whether dysfunctional or not must find a way to produce “something” even if that output is not the potentially best result. My point is that even in a leading institution like Duke, with a strong culture of teamwork doesn’t directly address the concept of trust. This is not unusual as a discussion of values, whether trust, sharing, collaboration, love are not usually front and center in the “alpha-type” construct of business and its training ground, business school.

It is outside of a traditional corporate environment that trust must be one of the most important working facets of any relationship. In fact, it is likely #1. Relationships are ultimately about how we choose to transact with one another. The classic language of “give and take” is a simplistic rendering of a relationship. Beginning a relationship with a foundation of trust has the power to place into motion meaningful actions that will drive the success of that transaction. Too often we think about our transactional future in terms of devices, speed of transfer of data, or the language of contracts. Our transactional future turns most significantly on how we choose to interact with one another. That begins with whether or not we value trust as a key component in our interactions.

Trust is both the easiest and scariest thing one person can do. Trust requires you to be open. If you are open, you must be vulnerable. Our fear of being vulnerable comes from a fear of being hurt, or taken advantage of, or duped. If we confront this fear we will find we have the capacity to be comfortable within our vulnerability and draw strength from it. Trusting becomes an active choice in the faith of other human beings to not harm us. Our transactions can now come from a place of bravery rather than fear providing a much stronger foundation. The old model of transactions is fear based. We enter relationships, thinking about what we have to lose, how can we get hurt, how do we protect against the “down-side”? Trust makes us work to keep the fear at bay. Bad things can and always will happen but it shouldn’t color the way in which we treat one another. In an increasingly fragmented creative world, it should be a core operating strength that smaller organizations work together. Big organizations have the advantage of resources and scale. Smaller organizations should build coalitions of trust in order to create better work and establish better working economies for themselves. Instead smaller organizations often act like serfs toiling on the land of the corporate landowner. At a time in history when our goals have never been more aligned many are resistant to scrapping the old “fear based” ways of working and creating. If we can embrace trust as a starting point to forge a different transactional future we can go a long way toward creating a new normal that is braver than the old.

Feminine Values & Gender

philmckenzie /

Oct 25, 2013

Each day I feel there are new conversations and opinion pieces that tackle the idea of feminism and what it means to have an inclusive society. I have good friends that do great work in this arena advocating for the inclusion of women and their perspectives in a myriad of fields that currently do not include much diversity. I applaud and support those efforts but I do believe we need to shift the conversation in a different direction. Instead of seeking out representation based on gender we need to focus on representation based on values. The idea of promoting feminine values, among them empathy, collaboration, and sharing, in order to create better institutions is critical to move the world forward to a more inclusive and just future.

When I was a kid my mother had an old saying “Your color isn’t always your kind”. What this simply means is that just because someone looks like you doesn’t mean they are like you. These flimsy shells of different colored skin and boy or girl parts that we obsess about only tell part of the story. They are easy identifiers that we all use to assign group identify and superficial behavioral traits. We must go deeper and establish a link to our values. The beliefs that we hold dear and align ourselves with carry more weight than almost anything else we encounter. It is increasingly important to find, connect and share with those who embody the same values. In the case of feminine values, the challenge is if we triumph only gender we assume that biological similarity will equate to shared perspective. This is not always the case.

The recent work by author/consultant John Gerzema “The Athena Doctrine” researches these values from a global perspective. He interviews men and women who subscribe to feminine values to build coalition and drive change. The work of Leonard Schlain examines our philosophical and cultural history and relationship with femininity in his seminal work The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. Both authors frame their work from a values based construct rather than a gender based construct.

During our upcoming Influencer Conference NYC, we will be discussing feminine values in a conversation titled Embrace the X: How Feminine Values Will Save The World. We invite you to join us in this discussion by registering for Influencer Conference NYC this coming Nov 6^th – Nov 8^th.

Why Mindfulness

admin /

Oct 18, 2013

Over the years of producing Influencer Conference we have settled on a core group of values that inspire and guide us as a company. Our premise is simple. We believe that values, the things we care about and drive our passions are more important that our vocation, the things we do. These values shape the agenda, speakers and audience of each conference.

Explaining mindfulness and why we include it among our core values is pretty easy. During 2012’s conference I remember looking out at the crowd and seeing a sea of blue glowing screens. Laptops, tablets, smartphones all lit up signifying people were firmly plugged in, communicating with someone or something but not actually “in the room”. I was struck by this, because we take great pains to curate an event that would be interesting, thought provoking and beneficial. The audience confirmed their interest by purchasing a ticket, so clearly they agreed. Yet, here we were in a room together and apart. I thought to myself, are people paying attention? Are they listening to the discussion or merely waiting for the next soundbyte to be shared via social media? These questions remained with me post conference and it was shortly thereafter I made a decision to encourage our platform to move to one that emphasized mindfulness. I have practiced yoga and Vedic meditation for a few years and both practices have become increasingly important in how I harness my creative energy and manage stress. Now, that doesn’t mean in order to be mindful everyone has to do either of those two things (though we encourage it!). What we mean by mindfulness, is removing distractions in order to be fully engaged in the present circumstance. As a result, we are now asking that guests refrain from plugging in while talks are in sessions. The value lies within the room, being present, not outside in the technosphere.

The commitment to mindfulness is a challenge as sponsors and partners partially determine the value of their participation by social media metrics. We respect that. We just don’t agree it is the standard by which we should measure the success of our event. We’ll continue to ask that our guests pour their attention, creativity and uniqueness into the room rather than outside of it.

This year we tackle this topic more in depth with the panel discussion: Present Tense: How Being Mindful Drives Creativity.

You can register here for that talk or any of our other panels via our website here.

And if you want to check out a cool introduction video to Vedic Meditation and it’s benefits take a look at this clip shot by Vedic & Yoga Instructor Light: