Rebels or Troublemakers?

People often fear rebels and r'evolutionaries. They fear change and rebels are agents of change. However its important to differentiate between a rebel and a trouble maker.

Trouble makers are people who have their own agenda and impose that agenda onto others regardless of other peoples needs and wants. They are essentially selfish.

Rebels have agendas too but they are based on the need for change to improve a situation that we find ourselves in, to move things on and to continue the evolutionary process of perfecting.

Learning is not an option

I've just come back and catching up on my work since being at the Professional Speakers Association conference in the UK recently where I presented my keynote 'Rebel in a Business Suit - Secrets of the R'evolutionaries'.

I totally recommend that, even in these more challenging times, one commits oneself to continuing the journey of continual professional development. For any professional to stop learning simply because things are getting a little tougher in the market place is tantamount to professional and competitive suicide. Learning is not an option it is a requirement.

Preparing yourself, readying your competitive edge and going out into the economic battlefield requires education, knowledge and not a little wisdom. Such things come from a committment to on-going learning and conferences or seminars are ideal locations for this. Connecting with colleagues and competitors, feeling the pulse of the market, being in a place that educates or inspires reflective and creative thought - it can be amazing what can come from this.

For me one piece of insight which occurred on my way home was remarkable. People often ask me to sum up the idea of being a 'Rebel in a Business Suit'.

For me, it's about transformation through balance.

The Rebel in the Suit is the Yin in the Yang, the Light in the Dark, the Active in the Reflective - for me the insight that came was that being a 'Rebel in a Business Suit' is all about is that being the 'rebel' is about having the courage to decide to take r'evolutionary or transformational actions and ideas and what being the 'suit' is about is being able to create or find the system, the process or the method that provides the means for making those actions work. Spirit into Matter - Dreams into Reality

Transformation is about balance - the rebel that decides and the suit that provides.

Soft Power

We live in a new time - a time when 'soft power' will supercede 'hard power'. 'Hard Power' 'or do it because I'm the boss and I tell you to do it' is antiquated. It's 'suit thinking'.

'Soft Power' the ability to connect with someone at a deep level and have them willingly involve and engage with helping us accomplish our goals is the new power. This is 'rebel thinking'.

The ability to influence, persuade, connect, leverage, develop a credible brand, be tech-savvy and know how to project oneself in a world that has an increasing number of voices and opinions - will determine one's future success.

Where does this 'soft power' come from? From within. When we have a clear sense of ourselves and what we want out of our careers and our lives, then we can begin to learn how to project that'soft power' to get others to help us make those dreams come through. 'Soft Power' cannot be created until we make time to reflect on our environment or our context.

Ideally, that time should be during a period of 'enforced reflection' where we periodically sit with a coach who can bring an external perspective, a synergy and accountability to our quest to define, refine and deadline our dreams.

The constitutents of soft power - provocation (provided by your coach) passion (provided by you) and purpose (refined by you both) - inexorably lead to persuasion and collaboration.

The willing engagement of people to help you create a future that is greater than anything that could ever have been accomplished on your own. This is the power of the rebel in a business suit - this is 'soft power'.

Rebel in a Business Suit

I spoke in Scotland recently at a conference entitled The Re-Birth of Leadership which examined some of the changes required of today's leaders to engage more effectively with the new world of work.

One of the great advantages of such conferences is the chance to engage with one's own peers in the speaking field and get some insights into other professionals' views of your message. Some of those insights have caused me to look yet again at the unfolding message in the ideas of Rebel in a Business Suit and R'evolution.

I guess the idea of the r'evolution that I'm talking about is the capacity to come to understand oneself - both the light and the dark side of oneself. To learn to be courageous in discovering who we truly are so that in doing so we bring a very authentic self into the new world of work - and when one is authentic one is powerful. When this happens the Rebel in the Business Suit becomes an idea of self-integration - the passion being the rebel and the purpose being the suit.

You might say it becomes the idea of the entrpreneur in the heart of the accountant or the artist at the heart of the engineer - the Ying and the Yang and the Heart and Head. An integration of opposites that creates a powerful being. Imagine that unique person as an asset as a leader or rainmaker.