Matthew’s Blog

I had a fantastic opportunity this weekend to share with people the work I have been noodling for about 10 years now about what is going on in the world and what is emerging. Its comes from a place of what I do best - integrating complex ideas and weave the common thread amongst them.

It is a speech about hope for business and all of us. I am looking for continued opportunities to present this material to a wider audience. Click on the title to go to the speech’s website.
Making the World Round Again
Speech/Presentation by Matthew Egan Rochte
While pessimism rules and hope appears scarce, a recent convergence of business, science, and spirituality is creating conscious capitalism and restoring hope to the future.

Presented at the Northland Bioneers Conference on Oct 21st 2006
Resource Sheet handed out at the Northland Bioneers Conference (pdf)
http://www.makingtheworldroundagain.com

Book Review – The Anatomy of Peace

What if conflicts in the world, personal, and work life all source from the same root cause? What if we systematically blind ourselves to that cause? And what if, as a result, we are unwittingly perpetuating the very problems that we believe we are trying to solve?

These are the questions that the Arbinger Institute answers in The Anatomy of Peace

I have been a raving fan of the Arbinger Institute’s work going on three three years now since I was shaken to the core by the work as I experienced my family, my brother in particular in a whole new light. A light I could no longer ignor. My work with the Arbinger material has been transformational for me, my clients, and their companies. So much so that Leadership & Self Deception (L&SD) became required reading for all of my clients.

This has created a slight dilemma since not all of my clients are business people. While those that are don’t always want to read “another” business book. Heck, even I put off reading the thing for nearly a year because I was a “leadership” coach, what did I need to learn about “leadership”? The short answer – EVERYTHING, anew.

So I was overjoyed when I learned that they released a new book last month. The Anatomy of Peace is a book that I can recommend to anyone. The language is different, the intended audience is different, but the heart of the matter is still solid as ever. This is a book for everyone & business people too. It takes the work much deeper than L&SD and applies it to life circumstances from family relationships to international conflicts. It is all based on true events and a real executive and the experiences at the Anasazi Foundation Arbinger’s partner in intervention.

The Anatomy of Peace is a prequel to Leadership & Self Deception. It is the story of Lou Herbert, the founder of Zagrum (the company in L&SD) and his journey to Camp Moriah (Anasazi) where he & his wife have taken their troubled son for an outdoors survival program to straighten him out and attend a two day seminar for the parents. We get to find out about what Lou’s transformation process was that began the journey of L&SD. The camp is lead by two unlikely leaders: Yusuf-al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each of whom lost their fathers at the hands of the other’s ethnic cousins. The Anatomy of Peace is about how they came together and now work at bringing peace to children and parents who are at war with each other.

This is a powerful book. In many respects it is like being a fly on the wall during part of an Arbinger program. Fans of L&SD will not be disappointed as there is a great deal of new material here. All the juicy stuff they’ve been learning since L&SD was released has been added to the mix. I love the new terminology of the heart at peace & the heart at war. This really puts a firm grip on the issue and takes it out of the logical mind. We can all relate to it. “In the box” and “out of the box” never really worked for me, it seems sterile. This wording touches my soul. The box analogy hasn’t been jettisoned though. It still has a place, especially when mapping out collusion and diagramming the process. They introduce a startling and powerful concept of boxes that we carry with us and how we all in one degree or another carry one or more of these: the I am better than box, the I must to be seen as box, the I am worse than box, and the I deserve box. I think I have visited all four of these in the past four years. How about you? This work applies to all of us. Who are you in relationship with your client? The world? Your spouse?

Matthew Rochte – Seasoned Coaches Coach, Executive Coach, & Coaching Pundit.
Matthew is about helping people be GREAT! To help is coach clients be great
they dive deep to explore the human functioning model, perceptions, business
practices, Arbinger work, SQ Spiritual Intelligence, & Coaching From Within.
He helps his business clients be great by applying the above and working
with their Spiritual Capital & relationships so they can be great.
Matthew is a 15year coaching veteran, serves on the ICF Ethics &
Standards Committee & is MCA’s 2005 Past President
http://www.coachingintentionally.com http://www.workingintentionally.com

© Copyright 2006 Matthew Rochte, used with permission

I want to thank my new BNI chapter “All About Business” for getting me to change my license plates on my car. I’d been honing my message and my sixty second commercial during our chapter leadership training and then one day I hit on the core of my business message.
I inspire the GREATNESS in people

I help YOU be GREAT!

So My new plates describe what I DO professionally.
4U2BGR8 (For You To Be Great) with a coach sticker next to it.

What would your license plate be to describe what you do?

So the theme of the week seems to be Strengths. Everywhere I have been since the first of the month people have been talking in this sort of code. No, not the DaVinci Code. They were all talking excitedly about what were their 5 top strengths as identified by StrengthFinder, a tool that the book Now, Discover Your Strengths: the revolutionary program that shows you how to develop your unique talents and strengths and those of the people you manage. http://snipurl.com/strengthsfinder

The idea is that instead of focusing on what is wrong with people and making them mediocre at best in those areas and diminishing what they do great. Focus instead on what people are great at and encourage those traits, thereby allowing for the weaker to either be outsourced or trained leveraging the use of your core strengths.

My core strengths:

• Ideation
• Maximizer
• Relator
• Individualization
• Connectedness

It means that I am well suited to be a coach, teacher, leader, entrepreneur, spiritual advisor, motivational speaker, inspirational speaker, community leader, sales person, etc.

Its a good thing that I have found work that I love. I have the best job in the world. I help people be GREAT! Through inspiration, observation, connection, engagement, and maximizing their latent talents.

This book is now becoming one of my core books to use with clients. This and Leadership & Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute

What are you GREAT at?

Lets get you working those and get out of the trenches of your weaknesses.
Currently Priced at $18.90 on Amazon.com You need to purchase a NEW copy if you wish to do your strengthsfinder because each book is individually coded.

My friend Claudette (hesdeadjim blog) posted a link to this site on her blog.

Johari Windows are fascinating. They help us understand what we know and don’t know about ourselves. Perhaps the first form of a 360 assessment. The Johari Window is a four quadrant diagram describing aspects of person known and unknown. On one axis is whether it is known or unknown and on the other access is who knows or doesn’t (self or others). So you end up with the following pairings: known by both self(you) and others; known by self(you) but not others; known by others by not by self (you); and not known by either self (you) or by others.

Doing a Johari Window can be quite revealing to oneself and to others who participate.

If you would like to contribute to my Johari Window click here after you are done you can follow a link to see how the window is shaping up and/or create your own window to invite feedback. http://kevan.org/johari?name=MatthewRochte

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

How courageous are you? 
How expansive is your world?

In my own pursuit toward sustainable business, leadership, and life - I am surrounded these days by people and organizations who are transforming the world (Minnesota Coaches Association & Thought Leader Gathering being the two formost on my mind).  I ran across an excellent blog and and website yesterday while doing research on Biomimicry.   They are pulling together all these disparate parties together to share what is going on.  WorldChanging.com 

WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.