ACTivity/ A Positive Change

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Ubud, 18 September 2024 — What positive change will you influence in your workplace?

Story

It happened this week. When asked what surprised her in learning about leadership, she shared that her colleagues still saw leaders as the managers and executives who hold positions of authority. Indeed, that outdated view is still common and is holding companies and organizations back from performing at their best. It’s time to get with the times.

What we learn from modern research is that leading is not about holding a position. It is about influencing (or creating or driving) a positive change. In our experience, staff at all levels from Gen Z to Boomers can learn to lead. When they work on their leadership and grow more leaders around them, they create hope in their workplaces for solving their biggest challenges. 

Meanwhile, managing is about optimizing the use of our resources, especially people, finance, and technology. Leading and managing are both important, and time management is critical to everyone. Most companies and organizations are still focused on developing managers and lack a vision for developing leaders. In our world full of changes, the shortage of leaders is hurting us all.

Challenge

To develop your leadership and grow leaders around you, it is simply not enough to attend a training. As far back as 2,500 years ago, Laozi wrote that to cultivate ourselves, words are easily understood yet difficult to practice. That is why, at TransformationFirst.Asia, the focus is on practice. Our approach is to transform first by taking on leadership challenges.

This approach is different from what you will find elsewhere in training courses designed to let you acquire more knowledge. We offer a structured learning process of a different kind: a leadership challenge to practice in your workplace, with tasks to complete every week, and experiences to be shared ‘out loud’ in our community. That challenge starts when you prepare to apply.

The Workplace Challenge starts on September 30th and the time to prepare is now. We invite you to find three enthusiastic and open-minded colleagues in your workplace who you have a trusting relationship with, to form a Collab and to discuss together your felt need for a positive change in your workplace: something that is not working yet. Then you can apply together to take this six-week challenge.

Question

The question we often get is what you will be committing yourselves to in the challenge. That’s an important question because, as Laozi observed, many are interested and few are prepared to practice. During the challenge, the one thing that will make all the difference is showing up every weekday to stay on track with your weekly tasks, and sharing your learning experiences in the community. 

When you as a Collab commit yourselves to work on your challenge together every weekday—as an integral part of your work—each of you will experience a transformation in your leadership. That is truly something to experience for yourselves. Our coaching and mentoring will help you get there and achieve that positive change.

Before you apply, we look forward to getting to know you and your three Collabmates and answering your questions in a Meet-and-Greet Call. Stepping into the footsteps of Laozi and many coaches after him, the first step in your practice is now to invite three colleagues and set up the call. See you soon in Zoom!