Leadership & Personal Mastery

Gregg’s Reflection

Personal mastery is a practice of constantly clarifying what matters most to you in the form of a personal vision, and then seeking a clear understanding of your current reality vis-à-vis your vision. Once you establish a clear vision, and clearly understand reality, you will create a tension in your life that is only resolved by moving towards your vision. This practice will help you organize your actions for the purpose of achieving your vision. It looks like this:

My first vision came when I was 28. When I went to work with my father, Genie and I agreed to revisit the decision after five years. By then, both our kids had been born and I realized we would have an empty next by the time I was 45. We set a vision to achieve financial independence and walk away from the business at age 45, to pursue what we were passionate about for the rest of our lives. The business was my father’s vision, it never was mine. Financial independence would give me the freedom I deeply desired.

My first exposure to Personal Mastery came when my brother and I read Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline in the early 1990’s. It is one of the disciplines of the learning organization, and the one that propelled our business success. You will see Senge quoted in the Modern Writings section. We brought his partner, Charlotte Roberts, into our company to lead a Leadership and Personal Mastery workshop. Charlotte later returned to take us through a visioning exercise in 1996. She has been a mentor to me ever since.

When Charlotte came in to do our vision and strategy in 1996, she sensed the yearning in me. She told the group in an early session:

Y’all need to figure how to do this without Gregg. He’s got something inside him that wants to come out. If he doesn’t let it out, it’s going to come popping out of his chest like in that Alien movie.

In the crazy days of growing the business and rearing teenagers, my deadline had slipped. My vision of what came next was quite fuzzy, but Charlotte gave me the impetus to move on it. I used to tell people, “When I’m around Charlotte, pretty soon it feels like I have a boot up my butt. It’s the most elegant ass-kicking I’ve ever had.”

I had met some very successful consultants. I decided I wanted to be a consultant for my second career. But, with my Southern accent, people immediately whack your IQ by about 10 points. So, I decided I needed a credential. I had quit college and married Genie when the draft ended my chance of going to Viet Nam.

So, I conned the good people at Georgia State into accepting me into their class of 50 for their Executive MBA. I was so driven to prove myself, that I obsessed until I finished the program with a 4.0. I bet I’m the only person you know who had a masters’ degree but no undergraduate.

After a decade building a learning organization and growing the business, a roll up started in the industry. My exit plan came together.We sold the business and I walked away in 2000. I was 48, and our vision from two decades earlier came to pass. Charlotte introduced me to the writing of Robert Fritz. Senge credited Fritz with the developing the discipline of Personal Mastery. I studied with Fritz for three years, getting certified to do Organizational Structural Consulting.

Once we bought our land and began building our off grid cabin, I was out standing on the land and had a vision of my calling: I was holding a pipe in the image and discerned the call to bring everything I had learned about leadership in the secular world to equipping next generation leaders for the Kingdom. This ChatGPT image is better than the stick figure in my vision of my calling.

This step on the faint path turned me from a structural consultant to a spiritual life coach. I only took on clients interested in balancing career, family and a spiritual journey. It has been the most fulfilling work of my career.

I recently started working with ChatGPT. After sharing much of my blog and my 2011 book, God’s Faint Path, I asked it what it had learned about me. It produced this visual timeline of my life:

Join me for an exploration of how Personal Mastery can change your life. Blessings.

Journaling Prompts

Think of something you truly desire, a desired future. Now, take a clear-eyed look at reality, what is present and what is absent in favor of your vision. Close your eyes and hold both the vision and your current reality and feel the tension. Now, create action steps with a completion date for what is missing in reality. Ask yourself, if I do these steps, will I reach my vision? If not, there is an action step missing. Write it all down. Each step towards the vision will begin to relax the tension, and it will fully resolve with the creation of the vision.

Scripture

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Proverbs 29:18. Or, as Rick Warren used to say, Where there is no vision, the people find another parish.

Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

Habakkuk 2:2 A divine invitation to articulate and act on God-given vision.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:32. Personal mastery depends on seeing what is—not just what we want.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2 Timothy 4:7. A scriptural portrait of someone who lived aligned with a deep calling.

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.

2 Corinthians 13:5. Rigorous self-reflection and reality checking.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Philippians 3:12. Paul speaks to structural tension—grasping a calling and being drawn toward it.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1. The gap between what is and what is to come is the birthplace of structural tension.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10. Our challenge is to discern that which is ours to do.

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:2. Discipleship is about multiplication.

Ancient Writing

Become what you are.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 40 (On Holy Baptism), The most powerful act of becoming is to live into your true self.

No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.

St. Cyprian. On the Unity of the Catholic Church, Chapter 6. Leadership is never solitary. It’s about service in community.

God is more a longing to be found than a presence already possessed.

Gregory of Nyssa. Homilies on the Song of Songs, Homily 12. Desire and tension are divine instruments of transformation.

The glory of God is the human being fully alive.

St. Irenaeus. Against Heresies, Book 4, Chapter 20, Section 7 . The pursuit of personal mastery is a movement toward aliveness and divine purpose.

I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you what is yours.

St. Francis of Assisi, The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Fioretti), Chapter 6. St Francis’ last words to his followers on living a life of calling.

This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road.

Martin Luther, Defense and Explanation of All the Articles. Luther describes the dynamic process of sanctification.

Modern Writing

Personal mastery is the discipline of employment and engagement of self to create desired results in a consistent fashion.  What do we mean by employment?  Employment means I literally take action.  However, I can employ myself in my work and not be engaged.  Engagement means I bring my passion, my energy, and my full self to the work.

I can be attracted to an idea with passion and never take any action. Just can’t get started. I can take action because it’s part of my job and have no emotional engagement. Going through the motions. Personal Mastery requires deeply knowing and managing self. 

Charlotte Roberts, PhD, my mentor for the last 30 years, quote provided for this post

When people commit to what they truly care about, and acknowledge the current reality, structural tension generates the energy to create.

Charlotte Roberts, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, p. 136.

Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it, no organizational learning occurs.

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 139

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. The essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and maintain structural tension in our lives. The discipline of personal mastery starts by clarifying the things that really matter to us, and by living in a way that is in line with our deepest values.

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 141.

Personal mastery goes beyond competence and skills. It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint. People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never ‘arrive.’

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 142.

Mastery is seen as a special kind of proficiency. People with personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas, and they are deeply self-confident.

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, p. 143.

The principle of structural tension is simple: you create tension by conceiving of the desired state in relationship to the current reality. The tension seeks resolution, and the structure moves toward the desired state.

Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance, p. 26

You do not need to pump yourself up to create. You do not need to be positive. You simply need to establish a clear vision and an accurate picture of current reality, and the natural forces of structural tension will begin to operate.

Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance, p. 28.

Structural tension gives you a way to hold both the vision and the current reality without having to pretend things are better or worse than they are. The creative process is based on the natural movement toward the resolution of structural tension.

Robert Fritz, Creating, p. 47.

Structural tension is not based on emotions, hopes, or positive thinking. It is based on the difference between what you want and what you currently have.

Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art, p. 45

The tension between your vision and your current reality generates energy. It creates a dynamic in which the structure itself—not your willpower—drives the process toward resolution.

Robert Fritz, Your Life as Art, p. 46.

When you focus on what you want to create rather than what you want to avoid, a powerful tension is formed—a creative tension that pulls you toward your vision.

David Emerald, The Power of TED, p. 64

Holding the space between what is and what could be is not a passive stance; it’s the birthplace of transformation.

Otto Scharmer, Theory U, p. 376.

The ability to look deeply is the root of creativity. To see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible.

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, p. 7

Art is a bridge between the seen and the unseen. Tension between the two is what gives it power.

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, p. 182.

Our job is to do what’s ours to do and let go of the results. What comes next is not up to us.

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act, p. 320. Echoing St Francis, ’what is mine to do’