The power of intention

"Intention is a powerful force.  Coming from a Latin word that means 'to stretch toward,' intention is the initial bending of your mind toward a target.  It is the force that permeates the journey and the goal.  A story from the medieval Christian tradition illustrates intention:  A traveler came to a worksite and saw two men carrying stones.  One man was working listlessly, with a sullen expression on his face, while the other man was cheerfully singing as he busily carried stone after stone.  'What are you doing?' asked the traveler of the sullen worker. 'Laying stone' was his reply.  'And what are you doing?' the industrious worker was asked.  'Building a cathedral' was his inspired reply.  This is intention at work.  Intention precedes and inspires vision.  Intention lives in the zone between potential and action, organizing the diffuse energy of potential and bringing it toward reality.  Intention is also the ability to hold a visionary context in which all of your specific visions are organized.  Inspired leadership is the ability to work relentlessly from the zone of intention, so that your very being brings forth visionary thinking in your colleagues." -- Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., from The Corporate Mystic

I will be supporting a group of 4 committed and talented people this afternoon in their visioning work to create an inspired new enterprise.  They have done the preliminaries, really getting to know each other deeply and gaining clarity on what they can expect from each other in moving forward.  And today is the day to focus on setting shared intentions from which their inspired vision can emerge.  As I was sorting through my own thoughts and preparing my intentions for supporting them, I happened to have a lunch on Monday with two of my favorite people from another local company, where one of them (who happened to be their CEO) handed me a copy of The Corporate Mystic and the accompanying set of audio cassettes, asking if I had read it.  It just so happens that I read it years ago in the formative stages of Revolution Consulting, and the book sits prominently within my range of "vision" on my bookshelf right here in my office as we speak.  So, I just pulled it off the shelf and opened it randomly to p. 61, and there it was, "What is intention?"  That's how today's quote (above) came to be chosen. 

And now for my intention for this afternoon's work:  "I am committed to holding up a compassionate, loving, and supportive mirror to these four individuals as they merge their personal ambitions and dreams into an inspired shared vision together, in which they each see themselves celebrated, fully leveraged, and profoundly valued for their contribution to the success of SLANT and all of its customers and participants."  Thank you, D.P., for this just-in-time trigger to look in this book for inspiration.  Thank you, SLANT co-founders, for entrusting me with this role, and thank you, all of you out there, for simply being here reading this and infusing your interest, good wishes, and support into the birth of a new enterprise.