Last week we held our December Thought Leadership webinar Mindful Associations: Fuel 2015 Success with Vision and Gratitude, with Holly Duckworth, CAE, CMP, recognized speaker and CEO of Leadership Solutions International.
Holly joined us to share some very interesting principles and techniques she’s developed and included in her first book to be released in January 2015, titled Ctrl+ Alt+ Believe: Reboot Your Organization For Success.
By definition, mindfulness is the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment – or experiencing moment to moment awareness of present events. One way to train to be mindful is by practicing meditation. The practice of mindfulness has been growing in popularity in the business community as many leaders look for ways to combat the high levels of stress and the resulting health issues they face in their daily lives. In fact, Anderson Cooper did a story last week on 60 Minutes about this very subject.
In the webinar, Holly brought forth ideas and concepts to inject mindfulness into every association, utilizing visioning to help transform an organization into one able to focus on creating more meaningful connections with its members and prospective members.
One of the interesting ideas she shared was for an association to dust off its mission/vision statement and condense it down to 6 – 10 words, making it easy to understand and connect with, and most important, easy to execute. When we asked the webinar attendees, more than 75 percent agreed with that concept. The trick is to put it into practice.
Holly joined me following the webinar for Ask the Thought Leader – Episode 10 to answer a few of the great questions submitted that we were not able to address. Many were intrigued by the content and wanted to understand how they could put the concepts presented into daily practice.
As you might imagine, a number of folks were challenged on how to present concepts that might be considered too “touchy-feely” to their leadership. Holly had some solid ideas on how to break the ice on this topic with leaders who want to remain old school in their approach to member management.
We also held a drawing for a free copy of Holly’s book and one hour of consulting time from people submitting questions during the webinar. Congratulations go out to Gayle Denny, Executive Director for ELCA Schools and Learning Centers.
This marks the end of YM’s 2014 Monthly CAE Thought Leadership Webinars. We will kickoff our 2015 CAE Webinar Series on January 22 with Shelly Alcorn, CAE. Her presentation is titled Fads, Trends and Signals: Three Keys to Successful Innovation for Associations. Shelly will share some great tips and ideas on how to get your 2015 off to a great start. Have a great holiday season and we’ll see you next year!
