Stake for the Holidays

Last night, my wife, children, and I cooked up the following leadership stake (not steak) for the holidays: "Celebrating with peace, happiness, joy, and gratitude."  We intend to spend Christmas and New Years with friends and family tethered to that stake.

You may ask: "what in tarnation is he talking about?"  Good question.

A leadership "stake" is a strong, visceral way of being about an event, project, team, or activity.  It helps inform action.  It's different than a mission, stronger than an intention, and not as overarching as a purpose.  A stake is most often developed when an individual or group of individuals wants to keep themselves on course over a period of time.  

Some additional examples may be helpful here.

Recently, in light of the approaching leadership transition of the Corporate and Foundation Relations function at Princeton, the team designed a stake that goes like this: "Work together to boldly preserve the good, and co-create the future."

In another example, I recently co-led a conference call discussing a couple of chapters of the book, Positive Intelligence.  In that situation, since we were to reviewing ways in which we sabotage ourselves from time-to-time (especially by being overly judgmental), my co-leader and I developed a stake which we called, "compassion".  Compassion for self, compassion for others on the call, and compassion for any circumstances that arose during the book discussion.

Since we are on the eve of Christmas, I ask you to consider developing your own stake for the holidays.  And, if you are having trouble designing a stake around health and nutrition, you can always stay tethered to the four basic food groups.