This week I’m in Belgium for the Transformational Presence for Leaders and Coaches (TPLC) training and development program. I’m very excited to meet this new group on Wednesday and begin our five days together. This is our 12th TPLC cohort in The Netherlands and Belgium since 2010, and the last three have been sold out with 24 participants in each. So that is definitely something to celebrate! This week’s participants are coming from Belgium, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. Among our group are also several TPLC graduates who are returning to deepen their learning.
As I pondered what to write about today, I came across Grand Slam Poetry Champion Harry Baker’s delightfully quirky, brilliantly creative, and tenderly profound talk at the 2014 TEDxExeter event. In this talk, Harry shares his own unique Transformational Presence while, at the same time, inviting us to shine brightly in our own brilliant presence through humor and his clever yet heart-full view of life.
Harry’s poems are filled with nuance and subtlety, yet his message is poignant and clear. Each time I watch the video, I notice something new. Yet the lines that catch my attention every time come from the last poem he shares:
The meaning of resilience, she said, is that all the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of a single candle. So how the hell could they handle your light? Only you can choose to dim it and the sky is the limit, so silence the critics by burning.
You might first be impressed by his youthful and brilliant creative edge in his opening words and first poem, “Fifty-nine.” Clearly the live audience loved his dazzling plays on words. Yet if you keep listening all the way through this 14-minute video, your heart just might be touched by his deep and tender humanity. In his own slightly off-the-wall way, Harry Baker reminds us of the power of the human spirit.
P.S. Transformational Presence is a way of showing up to life that inspires the best from the people and circumstances around you. It begins with a set of skills and tools that help you stretch your capacities for awareness, understanding, perception, and action in service of something greater than yourself. The benefits include greater creativity and imagination, more effective communication and collaboration skills, and an increased ability to cut to the essence of whatever is happening, recognize the greater potential waiting to unfold, and partner with that potential to bring it to life. You can learn more in my latest book, Create A World That Works. The book is also available in digital format.
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