- Tamar Gaffin-Cahn
- Jul 30, 2024
- 3 min read
In this monthly blog, I'll share a few things circulating in my mind over the previous weeks. These emails will be short and sweet, providing thought-provoking insights and lessons about creativity, youth, career, leadership development, and more. Thanks for following along in this weird journey of life.
What I'm Reading
This month, I finished reading Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead by Karen and Henry Kimsey-House. This book provides a new theory on leadership, debunking the idea that a leader is always at the front of the room. Within this model, there are five types of leadership summarized below. Before you read ahead, I want you to get into the mindset that everyone is a leader in their own way. Everyone has a role to play on a team (whether in an Olympic setting or at an office), in a group of friends, in a family, and within a country. Roles can switch, and individual strengths are utilized.
With this in mind, read about the types of leaders below. When have you played each role? What type of role do you enjoy the most? What do you seek to avoid? How can you enhance your "Leader Within" to make better decisions?
Leader Within: Co-Active Leader Within accepts themselves fully and claim authority for their life by making the powerful choice to live from the inside out. It is infused with self-acceptance and self-authority.
Leader Front: Co-Active Leader Front generates an experience of connection and engagement with the people who are following them and articulates a clear sense of direction and purpose. They engage others in a way that is exciting and inspiring.
Leader Behind: Co-Active Leader Behind assumes positive intent for all parties and seeks to evoke leadership in others by listening, championing, acknowledging, and fostering wholeness through impeccability and integrity. They know they are responsible for their world and don’t need a title to tell them.
Leader Beside: Co-Active Leader Beside takes responsibility for their world by organizing around a shared intention and supporting each other’s strength to generate a powerful synergy in which the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Rather than creating with each other, they create from each other and hold each other accountable. It’s another form of “yes, and” the famous improv golden rule.
Leader in the Field: Co-Active Leader in the Field expands our sensory awareness so that we can access our instinct, intuition, and imagination and find the courage and commitment to act on what we sense in a way that is innovative and fresh. These leaders focus on awareness of the impact, refining a leader’s ability to sense the moment in a much more nuanced way and helping surface actions that would have the best outcome for all concerned.
What I'm Listening To
Hidden Brain’s "Making the World Sparkle Again" discusses the tendency to get used to things, both good and bad, and how this can prevent or support joy or harm. In what ways are you used to joy and maybe take it for granted? In what ways are you used to the bad and accept the suffering?
What I'm Doing
For my birthday in May, I brought 16 family and friends to a Museum of Science fundraiser event, Sparks After Dark, hosted by The Innovators, the Museum’s young professionals group. Because of my ability to bring a large group to the event (Leader in Front), I was gifted the opportunity to become part of The Innovators community! I’m very excited to be welcomed into the science young professionals community and foster the next generation of STEM champions, community builders, and museum enthusiasts! My first meeting is in a few weeks - stay tuned!
What's Moved Me
Kanter’s Law: Everything looks like a failure in the middle.
What I'm Wiggling To
With under 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, I originally found LYVIA, this emerging artist on TikTok while she sang this beautiful song, Trippin, while in the middle of the street holding a cup of tea.
Stay Playful,
Tamar
