Image courtesy of Mary Jo Asmus.

Today’s piece is a guest post by Mary Jo Asmus.  Mary Jo is a former Fortune 500 executive-turned-president of an executive coaching firm, Aspire Collaborative Services.  Her company works with high potential leaders and senior executives in Fortune 100, government, and non-profit organizations around the world.  You can read more of her insights on leadership and personal development on her blog, Leadership Solutions at Aspire-CS.com.

A few years ago, I took a class to learn to make theatre masks at our local art institute. For some unknown reason, the idea of making a mask was compelling. To capture a “face” – in clay, plaster and neoprene held some fascination for me. Little did I know the impact and learning from this class would apply to the way I approached leadership.

We began the complicated process by using clay as a “negative” for a plaster mold into which neoprene would be poured to make the final product; a mask that could be used on stage by actors.

I love working with clay. It’s cool touch and ability to morph into anything I want has always held some fascination for me. I couldn’t wait to start, and scooped up the clay with gusto, making a mess and enjoying the process. At some point, perfectionism took hold of me; it took an inordinate number of class and non-class hours to create (what I thought) was the final clay mask.

I was happy with what I’d created – a flawless, realistic representation of a face. It looked exactly as I wanted it to. Surely, it was a work of art! Proud of my accomplishment, I showed it to the instructor. He praised my efforts. And then he told me to destroy it and start over.

He explained that although the mask was well-done, it was necessary for me to learn two things. The lessons I learned through this experience have surprising application to leadership: Click here to continue reading »”Don’t Get Too Attached”

Bret L. Simmons posted a thought-provoking piece on his blog this week where he talked about human “capacity”.  Simmons defines capacity as “the potential each of us has to do more and be more than we are now”.  Although this lead to some debate over whether human capacity could be viewed as being without limits, as I pointed out in my comment on this piece, the real issue is how do we go about defining or quantifying the limits of our capabilities.

As children, we learned early on about the limits of our abilities, of what activities we excelled at and which ones we struggled with.  Thanks to the varied curricula of the education system, we were able to test our competencies in understanding scientific principles, of creating inspired works of art, and whether we could score a goal in a hockey net.  Even if we couldn’t do some of these well, we were still expected to try, to push ourselves to do the best we could.  Although we took on these challenges in order to Click here to continue reading »”Defining the Limits of Our Abilities”