Pirate Pearls continue

What does it take to be a great pirate, besides a wild outfit and good rum?

Well, Curiosity helps. Wondering what is around the next bend, wondering if there are ways to sail better or build a better boat, or wondering "what if?" are all powerful questions.

Charisma helps. This is more about the audience then about you. Do your crew believe in you? Do they trust you? will they follow you? Then you have charisma.

And...be a great problem solver. Meaning be innovative. Invite suggestions. Be adaptive AND have a plan.

A pirate's ability to lead comes from a crew's willingness to follow.
Be the leader they believe you can be.

Manage by Pirating around

While being a Pirate can be quite enjoyable, all the freedom and adventure also comes with a bit of responsibility. A good pirate captain is only as good as her ship and crew. That means that a pirate is always responsible for growing and maintaining a motivated, committed and innovative crew.

What are the best ways to motivate a crew, any crew? With mentoring, praise, a share of the treasure, and alignment of values.

It is a Pirate captain’s main job to mentor the crew. How can someone handle the rigging or sheets without training? How can someone learn to read the wind and follow the currents without a mentor? Pirates know that it is unfair to grade someone on a task without first training them, and then training them again, and then letting them make a few mistakes, and then trusting and mentoring them.

A trusted crew will rise to the challenge of sailing the ship. A wise captain will notice and praise success. This is not about giving out T-shirts and ribbons for 15th place, or celebrating coming in last even though we tried. This is not handing out random "good job" awards. This is praise that states clearly what was done well so the crew knows what to be proud of and what to do more of. A wise pirate can say: I appreciate the way you handled the sheets in the wind; You did a great job navigating that shallow reef. Specific praise while looking the person in the eyes.

Anyone who helps find the treasure by sailing in rough seas deserves an equal cut of the treasure. Sharing is something that we should all of learned in kindergarten, and something that we need to remember to keep doing.

Share the rum and the gold.

Finally, why would someone sail on my ship if I did not value their efforts and their spirit? How could they be a good crew member if I did not acknowledge the ways that their values were also the values of the ship? Wild seas and capricious winds demand that a crew and captain can work together. A wise pirate makes sure that values are aligned and valued before the ship leaves port.

Black Pearl of Wisdom: Develop a Pirate Mind

See the world as it is.
Live in the world as it should be.
Invite others into the sea of possibility.

This is my one of favorite Pirate sayings. It describes the pirate mind, a way of living in the world. Too often we humans get stuck thinking from the old reptilian part of our brain. That is the part that responds to change by killing it, eating it, running from it, or maybe have sex with it. None of which really lead to a world of possibilities.

Well, sex has potential.

But the reptilian brain is just reacting from fear. Ask yourself, do you really want the part of you that is afraid to make your decisions, to steer your ship and choose your course? Do you want fear to dictate the treasure you seek?

A pirate mind is one that is open to changing winds, seeing the capriciousness of the world as a source of marvelous opportunities. Pirates are cognitively courageous. When faced with choosing between the lesser of two, or several, evils, a pirate will ask: “what might I invent that will give me other choices?”

So, my fine shipmate, the wind is at our backs, and the world opens before us. What can we invent in our lives that will open up a world of powerful and positive choices for us?

Why Pirates?

OK, OK, so many of you are asking "why Pirates?" as a metaphor. I know that Hollywood has made some pretty romantic images, from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp, but those are not real. I know. What is real is that most pirates started out with letters of marque from the queen or king, giving them legal rights to protect the sea and shores of their respective Queendom. Pirates took that right and pushed the edge. They learned that a lone ship at the edges can shift the course of a large armada. They created democratic systems of leadership on the ship, as well as the first disability payment system. They learned that freedom is always better than corner office, and that pirating has more to do with psychology and relationships than it does with canons and gun powder.

Oh, don’t forget the rum.

This blog is dedicated to that ideal; freedom, fortune and glory for the fun of it.
If you like the idea of swashbuckling your way through life, sailing great ships into unknown waters just for the adventure, watching the sun set and rise over an open horizon…while drinking rum… you just might be a pirate.

I will be posting Black Pearls of wisdom that can be used in any setting to help you pirate your way through life. I know that this is not the current wisdom. According to some authors, one should be able to just dream the perfect life without leaving the comfort of your reclining couch. Maybe that is true, but I have found that no matter how hard I dream and affirm and visualize, I still need a bit of piratical smarts and a dash of grog to make it all work. Or at least to have fun.

So, first black pearl of wisdom is a short one:
Audactiy is a pirate virtue.

Leading like a Shaman

There once was a village that was experiencing a horrible drought. In desperation the villagers sent for a holy woman in hopes that she could break the drought. When she arrived, she went into the small house that the villagers had provided and closed the door behind her. The holy woman sat in the house and began to meditate. The villagers paced back and forth outside the house impatiently waiting for her to come out and deal with the drought. After three days of this, the sky clouded up and a gentle but steady rain fell from the sky. When the holy woman emerged from the house the villagers asked how she had made this miracle happen. She looked at them and smiled. “When I arrived,” she said, “I realized that this place was out of harmony, and that I too was out of harmony. I went into the house and meditated for three days, until I was back in harmony. When I was in harmony, the place moved back into harmony. When the place was in harmony, the rains came.”

The holy woman understood the secret of alignment; we can align with the place and people around us, or pull the place into alignment with our own connection to Spirit. This is such a subtle process that most people do not realize that they are moving away from their sense of spirit and aligning with the surrounding emptiness until the inner sense of barrenness becomes overwhelming. Leaders who are driven by Spirit must face and embrace this challenge on a daily basis; how to remain connected to Spirit, and bring that connection to the out-of-harmony hallways that fill our academic and corporate worlds.

It is easier to make decisions from fear than it is to stay open to adventure. It is easier to create shields of hierarchy than to be visible and vulnerable. There is no true leadership or connection to Spirit, however, if we make our choices from deep within our own fears. It is more powerful to ask ourselves what we would do if we were like the holy woman, aware of our ability and need to stay in harmony and alignment with spirit.

This is the challenge then: to be a Shaman, aware of how the places and tasks, people and obligations, commitments and goals, time schedules and rules tug on us, drain us, and pull us out of our internal sense of spiritual harmony, and yet bring spirit with us as we walk through the empty hallways of our world. If we take the time and energy to realign ourselves with spirit, if we find the courage and elegance to walk and work in that state of harmony, we will find that our hallways are no longer empty, but are filled creative possibility and passion.

Inspiring a Renaissance of Spirit

What is a Renaissance of Spirit? It is awakening the inner sleeper, the dynamic creative force that longs for a true experience of life. It is heeding our desire to live with passion, to embrace and be engulfed by our bliss. A renaissance of spirit ocurrs when we embrace a personal relationship with the universe, measured only by the depth to which it resonates with our true self.

Why do we seek this? Because, as Joseph Campbell said, we are not looking for the mealing of life, but for a meaningful authentic life experience. It is this personal experience that opens our heart and allows us to embrace our own depth of emotion, that frees us from our mundane quotidian routine. We are lifted above our concerns and worries, all of which seem to become trivial, and placed into the midst's of our personal adventure.

How do we enter this personal renaissance? Not through our minds, but through our hearts. The most exciting and often frustrating thing about the journey is that there are no rules, no always or never, no one-right-way or guaranties, only crative chlices. The guides posts are our sense of connection and joy, and feelings of alignemne with the universe. As a wonderful pirate once taught, "Listen to the singing compass of your heart, and it will guide you to the wonderful horizon." Here is to the Pirate's way of navigating into our own true life.