When I first wrote Water the Bamboo, the original title was actually Bring Your Spirit to Work. While the final title shifted, I've always believed that bringing your spirit to work is at the heart of personal and professional growth. It's a mindset that can transform your career and the lives of those you interact with daily.
When you’re watering your bamboo in your career and life, it’s a good idea to simplify, otherwise you’ll have no energy left for watering your Bamboo. Think of it as weeding the Bamboo Garden. You don’t want weeds because they will take all the nutrients your bamboo needs to grow. If you feel overworked and overcommitted, you won’t have the energy and desire to accomplish your goals, so you must simplify.
Something most people do is pursue happiness. For many of us, being happy is the ultimate goal of life, and we want to find this in our careers, family, and friends.
But I believe that pursuing happiness is precisely the problem with being happy. We treat happiness like some distant destination we have to reach. So in this post, I’m going to share six tools for you to be happy right now.
Despite the challenges happening in the world, I genuinely hope you had an enjoyable July 4th holiday. Over the holiday, I took a few moments to reread the Declaration of Independence. One of the most famous lines of the document is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” However, Americans aren’t very happy.
Frankly, I get tired of people bashing management because it is almost impossible to function without good management. “Management” is the only group in an organization that people openly bash. I have read countless organizational consultants and strategists praising leadership skills over management skills as superior and more important.
In Water The Bamboo, my book on leadership and teamwork, I encourage Bamboo Farmers to create a Bamboo Circle. A Bamboo Circle is made up of interconnected relationships that help a Bamboo Farmer reach their goals.
In the French language, courage translates to "heart and spirit." If you brought your heart and spirit to your work, what would you be able to accomplish? One of the biggest obstacles holding people back from achieving their dreams is fear. The antidote to fear is courage—attack your fears with your "heart and spirit."
In my work as a professional speaker and leadership trainer, I've learned a great deal about how strong organizational cultures are created and maintained. One of the biggest roadblocks to an effective organizational culture I see again and again is the mission and values of the organization are misaligned with how decisions are made. Whether it comes in the form of miscommunication or power imbalances, misaligned purpose begets a sub-par organizational culture.
How many bricks does it take to complete a patio? The same amount it takes to start building a patio. Answer: ONE! This is the approach I took when I wrote my book Water The Bamboo — "one page at a time" — besides, you can only water one bucket at a time. You must focus on one brick at a time to finish. However, if you are like most people, you start more patios than you finish. I think it's okay to not finish from time to time but one should address this if it becomes a pattern.
Being a leader requires emotional energy. There are lots of demands on your time and energy. I was recently leading a seminar with a group of upcoming leaders and I was asked, "How can I stay positive in such a demanding world as a leader with the complexity of all my roles?" I responded that it’s up to you to fill your punch bowl. Every day I think about what activities I will engage in that will fill my punch bowl.
My youngest daughter and I have been playing a lot of chess. In my youth I was my third grade class chess champion but of course only a few kids knew how the chess pieces moved. As I coach my daughter on some of the key principles of chess I realized that many of these principles could be applied to leadership.
