your own personal governance board

There's been a lot in the media recently about governance, the role of a Board of a director, the value in having impartial but skilled people overseeing an organisation and helping to set direction as well as trouble shoot issues and potential problems.

It made me think...what if I did this in my personal life?  I mean, it's easy to ask friends and family for advice and they are usually very free and generous with it.  But I suspect that because although they have my best interests in mind, they are also invariably my cheerleaders, and focused primarily on the ''more ofs'' than the ''less ofs'' and ''differentlys''.

So how would one go about assembling such a group?  I guess it's possible to include a trusted friend or two, possibly an employer, maybe someone at my Bank (for the financials of course).  Engage a mentor for sure - in which ever area of life I feel needs attention or a little encouragement (or bullets!).   A counsellor.  A careers coach.  All these people can be part of the group that help you to define direction - not necessarily set -  They wouldn't necessarily have to meet on a regular basis like a Board does, but it could be helpful if there was some communication going on, especially if it was around a big issue.

I think it would be particularly helpful in the area of interpersonal relationships, and career.

Does this sound narcissistic?  Or does it actually make some sense?

Do you have trusted people around you to share ideas with? Do you do this for anyone else?

If you were given advice or a challenge that didn't sit well with you (but you knew might be in your best interests) what would you do?

finding role models

Once a week I meet with a group of women and we talk about the big stuff.  The group is partly bible study (although often we do not even get a bible out), and partly provoking and challenging discussing about life issues.

Today I posed the questions:  who do you feel accountable to?  And who are your role models?

The general feeling was that we felt mainly accountable to ourselves - that as usually wise, and mostly sensible, adults, we knew the difference between right and wrong, and in exercising good judgement had our own consciences as our guide - our accountability partner as it were.

Accountable has always sounded like a negative word to me - as in, you will be held accountable for your actions, which has a vaguely threatening tone in my opinion - but put this way it makes a whole lot more sense.  If we have a sense of self responsibility, then we make our own judgements (and therefore can be aware of the consequences) of and to our actions.

Similarly, if we hold ourselves accountable to ourselves, then it seems to me that the best role model we can find is also ourselves - the best version of ourselves that we can strive to be.

I'm thinking this might be a great angle to take with the children.  Instead of offering (or having them find) role models that they can either never live up to, or are unrealistic examples (like book characters), I think I'm going to talk more about self responsibility, and listening to the small voice of reason that we all have within us.

And if I can convince them that the best example they can follow is their best version of themselves, then maybe, they will be default become a great role model for each other as well.