New Leadership Development Tools

I confess to a love of beauty, of simplicity and of elegance too. I also confess to a love of questions. And here is another love I confess to: continuous learning and growth and development, both personal and professional varieties.
One of the things that excited me in my early days of leadership and executive development work, and that still does frankly, is that these two realms of development (personal and professional) increasingly become inseparable as one dives deeper into ‘the play.’
I use the word play here by choice, having once changed it to ‘the work,’ then deciding ‘play’ really is the more accurate choice. Play, you see, reflects and connotes access to deeper levels of learning than does the word ‘work.’ Adults work. Children play.
And which would you choose to emulate should you need to acquire deeper levels of learning?
So it is I naturally desire to celebrate and share the release of two new leadership development tools that playfully invite self-exploration and discovery. And through questions!
Two dear friends and colleagues, Esther Hutchison and Morgan McCall, of Myths at Work are the collaborators. I met them each through my work with Dr. Richard Kimball and Action Learning Associates, and subsequent work (play!) in leadership and executive development.
The two tools are each, at their simplest level, decks of aesthetically designed cards with leadership related questions on them; i.e. the questions are elegant in their depth and promote inquiry and reflection into and the development of deeper self-awareness and knowledge.
Remember that old quote in the forecourt at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, “Know thyself?” Well, an easy case is made that such knowledge is core to healthy resiliency, and certainly to wild resiliency. The subsequent case is easily made that for the lack of such awareness and knowledge… we are now in the challenging economic, environmental and security circumstances of our global lives.
It may also well be that, as valuable as technical advances in energy development… are, it will be our growing self-awareness and knowledge of who we most truly are, that will carry us through these turbulent times. Without this self-intimacy we may delay our self-demise, but come it surely will.
In support of this self-intimacy and its requisite attendant self-care, and your own or another’s leadership development, I encourage you to check out:
“…a deck of 88 cards with questions, or oracles, related to individual leadership development.”
This deck “brings a sense of play to the practice of leadership development. It offers a lighthearted approach to a crucial organizational concern-the development of leadership talent.
The oracle questions are based on Lessons from Key Events in Executives’ Lives by Hutchinson, Homes, and McCall (Center for Creative Leadership 1987).

“is a deck of 68 leadership development cards for high potential leaders (and those who hope to be). The cards raise questions that stimulate leadership reflection and conversation and promote continual learning, growth, and change.
Hedge Your Bets™ is designed to “hedge the bets” for manager and executives with the desire and potential to be selected—for key positions and challenging assignments in their organizations.”
Note:
Esther Hutchison,
PhD, Mythological Studies
“Esther is a mythologist with years of experience in the business world. She has worked with leaders and leadership for twenty-five years. Her background in mythological studies gives her a non-traditional lens on leadership and its concerns, and her work reflects this perspective. Her most recent writings” include Myths at Work and Once Upon a Corporate Time.
Morgan McCall
PhD, Industrial and Organizational Psychology
“Morgan teaches at the University of Southern California. He has studied leadership and worked with leaders for thirty five years. His major books include High flyers, Developing Global Executives, The Lessons of Experience, and Whatever It Takes. It is from Morgan’s work with executives that both leadership card decks (Hedge Your Bets™ and Leadership Oracles™) derive.”