NOWLeadership Carnival celebrates its first anniversary in September 2011. It’s time to share the Story of NOW and our goals for the future. It’s also the time to open the present. What’s in this exciting red box? You are going to get involved! But first, before you do, on this occasion of NOW’s anniversary, we step into the past before we look forward into the present and the future.
- Who are we and how did we meet? A tweet brought us together. In the beginning, the summer of 2009, we were two, Marion Chapsal and Anne Perschel aka @bizshrink. I was directed to a commentary by Anne published in Harvard Business Review, regarding the role of feminine archetypes, myths, stories and role models for women. We immediately “clicked” each feeling as if she had found her “soul sister”. We learned to know each other 140 characters at a time, and quickly extended our relationship to emails, then to skype conversations.
- Why did we meet? At the beginning of 2010, I wrote about Women’s Leadership and Communication styles across Cultures: Only One Woman CEO out of The 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World! The first post featured Meg Whitman, and I announced that I would write twelve more leadership posts, one for each style, each picturing a different woman leader. My goal was to illustrate the diversity in leadership styles among women and across cultures. Anne immediately expressed her interest, excitement and a desire to collaborate in some way. We met because we are both drawn, like magnets, to creating a more inclusive and better way of leading.
- How did we work together? We talked – as women often do – in ways that are anything but linear. We wove a fabric from conversations that included what our project would become with stories about who we were in our work, stories that held sweet memories, difficult memories, families of origin, and families each of us had created. Many thoughts and emotions passed between us and across the ocean between Boston and France.
- We shared a vision of leadership that would incorporate women’s strengths and integrate them with men’s strengths. We created a model of this leadership then asked what we could do to make it a reality. We decided to begin with a monthly news magazine called a blog carnival, made up of posts contributed by authors who shared this vision – or took issue with some part of it. That is how NOWLeadership was born! We told no-one what the acronym meant and to this day, we still have not done so. Like a work of art, we hope that people bring their own meaning to NOW.
- What are our shared values? Creativity, curiosity, exploration, learning, uplifting others, having the difficult (read personal) conversations and thereby deepening ourselves, our relationship and our work. We share the same passion for helping women find their power and their voice. We also enjoy playing in a warm and lighthearted way with words, symbols, visuals, and myths!
- What are our greatest hopes for NOW and what it will achieve? Attracting men and women from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, and from all generations to express their ideas, share their visions, their hopes, their wisdom to create the Now of Leadership, the third way.
This is what I wrote, back in 2010: “Eventually, my most precious hope is to create an organic body and platform of resources, role models and illustrations with interviews and podcasts of NowLeaders and NowInitiatives.”
Amazingly, it has happened exactly this way. Over the year we have shared this project with an inspired circle of trusted leadership and diversity experts. Many have contributed their thoughts, by way of posts, to our collective monthly NOWLeadership Carnival.
The Spark that Changed Things
Then something different happened. It started a fire. The fire spread. Here is the spark that started the fire.
Esme Holland showed up. To this day, despite our best detective work, we don’t actually know who Esme is. The closest we’ve come is a dog on Face Book named is Esme Holland.
Esme, where-ever you are, who-ever you are, this anniversary edition is dedicated to you, the one who lit a spark that began the transformation of NOWLeadership.
Esme commented on yet another non-diverse list of leadership experts, The Best Leadership Bloggers List. Esme named Anne and me, Gwyn Teatro (an active member of the evolving NOW family), Susan Mazza, Jane Perdue, and Dorothy Dalton as women-leadership experts who should be on the Best Leadership Bloggers list.That spark lit a fire that resulted in spreading NOWLeadership to a larger group who are evolving NOWLeadership.
If You Don’t Like Something, Change It
So we are doing exactly that. We want to see lists, non-lists actually, a portfolio of leaders and leadership experts who represent the beauty the perspectives and the wisdom that only diversity can bring. We want to see old leaders, young leaders, women leaders, men leaders, leaders of all colors and nationalities, and on and on.
Over the past months Gwyn Teatro, Dale Lawrence, and Anne Perschel, with Tanya Odom, Eric Peterson, Joe Gerstandt and me, as their advisory council, have worked out how we will build a portfolio of NOWLeaders. This month’s anniversary edition features our first selected NOWLeader, and she, Sharon Vosmek, is extraordinary. We are honored to be in her company and trust you will be too as you read about her.
Anne Perschel and I birthed an idea, gave it wings, and made it fly. This concept NOWLeadership has been adopted by a larger group who are spreading its wings to fly it higher and across more territory. We welcome them with generosity and still with vision and direction.
Now is also the time to get you involved in this collaborative platform. Here is the gift of NOW. Unwrap it and see what you can do, what you can create.
How?
Click here to find out how you can nominate one or more NOWLeaders. The selected NOWLeader will be interviewed and featured in that month’s NOWLeadership carnival.
Please accept the gift of NOW and then pay it forward.
Byline: The above was a synopsis of the historical birth of the ideal of NOWLeadership written by Marion Chapsel, Marion coaches and trains International leaders and business owners in Leadership and Presentation skills. She boosts International Women to connect with their vision and achieve their goals. It was about the conversations between her and Anne Perschel, a leadership psychologist who is developing psychologically savvy leaders. She is also an unstoppable force advancing women leaders.
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