CHAPTER 1My Journey to Abundance Leadership

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

—BUDDHA

One day I was in a conversation with a colleague about our families and work. As I described most of my immediate family's jobs and professions, I realized that all of us worked for ourselves. I hadn't thought much about that conversation until I started writing this book and thinking about leadership and how hard leading is. Because of these discussions with my family and the reasons for their self-employment, I became aware of how hard it is to lead in a way that makes work fulfilling for others, and why the Abundance Leadership model emerged from my work experience and my educational journey.

To help myself better understand how I came to think about why an Abundance mental model could be a driving force in good leaders, I reflected on my own work journey to my role today, as a partner at Organizational Performance Group (OPG). Similar to many of you readers, I started work early, at the age of 12, with babysitting and small tasks for neighbors and friends of my parents.

In my mid-teens I had two jobs that have always stayed with me. The first was flipping burgers in a small burger shack at the beach where I grew up, Muir Beach (see Figure 1.1). The burger shack was in a converted trailer. There was often only one of us working at a time. Whoever was there would not only make the burgers but also take the cash, make the milkshakes, ...

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