An administrative assistant with no experience booking professional speakers was asked by her manager to call me about my availability and fee to deliver an opening keynote for their upcoming staff conference. When I gave her my fee, she replied, “For one hour….Wow! What a job! And you don’t even have to have sex!” I didn’t touch that one.
In fact, her company paid for 30 years of study, experience, and practice summarized into one concentrated hour tailored to their needs. After the engagement, the admin assistant had a much better appreciation for the value I delivered to the audience in shifting perspectives on the roles everyone needs to play in leading at the speed of change. I certainly do feel very privileged to be well paid for my speaking, writing, consulting, facilitating, and training work.
The Cloud of Unknowing is a spiritual guidebook believed to have been written in the 14th century by an English monk. Here’s a thought that makes you go hmmm from that work, “it is on your own self-knowledge and experience that the knowledge of everything else depends.” We see the world through the lens of our personal philosophies, explanatory style, and habitual practices.
I spent a fair bit of time this summer reviewing my experiences over the past few years working with Clients to design and deliver keynotes, workshops, and retreats to meet their needs. I more clearly see now how personal growth, leadership, and culture development topics are shifting in our fast changing world. And the need for customizing sessions to ever changing and diverse team and organization situations it greater than ever.
Tomorrow we publish my September blogs in the October issue of The Leader Letter. The issue features those summer reflections and revisions to our keynotes, workshops, and retreats. I hope you find them a useful time to pause and reflect on how your own, your team, or your organizational development needs are changing.
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