ACTivity/ Give It Wings

The Winged Cup by Gio Ponti in Denver Art Museum.

Santa Rosa, 21 September 2022 — How your best ideas can take flight.

Story

It happened last week. During my visit to the Denver Art Museum, I came face to face with the work of Gio Ponti (1891–1979), one of Italy’s most famous inventors, who influenced international architecture and design for more than 50 years. In the exhibition Designer of a Thousand Talents, we can enjoy a wide variety of Ponti’s prolific achievements, ranging from building interiors and furniture to glass and ceramic objects. Ponti also contributed to the design of the museum building in which the exhibition is housed.

In their introduction to Ponti’s work, the museum’s curators noted that while he was drawn to classical forms, he always looked toward the future with his creations. Like leaders in the workplace, I thought, designers are intentionally inventive. That, of course, is an essential mindset for them to influence changes. Back to the exhibition. Among all of Ponti’s splendid works on display, the item that inspired me most was a vessel without ears, called the Winged Cup.  

As you can see in the photo, the cup has no wings attached to it. Rather, it shows clouds and little airplanes soaring among those clouds, high in the air. When Ponti created the cup in 1927, only two decades had passed since the first airplane took to the sky. Flying, then, was still a dream that was coming true, and Ponti’s cup stimulated his admirers to dream and act on their dreams. In my experience coaching leaders, however, the acting is much more challenging than the dreaming. How can we change that?   

Challenge

If creating dreams with marvelous ideas is something we can easily do, why is it so difficult to turn our dreams into reality? What do we need to do to make our best ideas work. How can we give them wings to fly? From my coaching experience, I see three challenges: overcoming self-limiting beliefs, developing the necessary leadership skills, and committing to the process in order to achieve results.

Starting with the first of these three, we often see in the workplace, and more broadly in our lives, that people have a fixed mindset about what they cannot do, and about things that they consider impossible to change. Each of us has such beliefs about others, our organization, and about ourselves too. Challenging yourself to overcome those self-limiting beliefs is an essential first step to giving your best ideas wings to fly. The coaching process is designed to help you do that.

The next two challenges to work on are about developing and practicing effective leadership skills, and building your commitment for execution. Commitment is like the fuel to make your airplane take to the sky and keep flying until you reach your destination. For many leaders, it’s a long-distance journey that requires frequent touch-downs for refueling to boost their commitment before taking to the air again.

Question

My question for you this week is about challenging your self-limiting beliefs and giving yourself wings to take to the air and soar higher than you believed possible. What is the best idea for your leadership that you want to give wings to fly? What journey do you want to make, and what will you do to give wings to your ideas, leadership skills, and commitment? 

Ponti’s choice to depict wings on the cup was not because taking flight was easy. Rather the contrary, he put those wings on the cup because giving ideas their wings to fly is difficult. It’s the path less traveled. That is why inventors, designers, and leaders intentionally look for ways to make that happen, to ‘give it wings.’ 

If you want to make your biggest and best ideas fly by giving them wings, and you see the value of coaching to support you in this process, then go ahead and book a free strategy call. I would love to hear about the transition you want to start to let you, and your ideas, soar to the clouds.