Date:   May 21, 2007

To:      Ted Santos

From:  Stuart Scott

Re:      Testimonial about skills and tools I acquired with you

 

Ted Santos has been my mentor and guide for over a year. Our work together transformed my business – and my life. Ted taught me to distinguish my deepest hopes and wishes; to stand for them, so the world can know where I stand; and to honor them by living with commitment to create the future I want for myself and others.

From Ted I have acquired this powerful set of leadership tools:

Distinctions

Ted taught me to distinguish many of the distinctions I use for making sense of the world. When I say distinction I mean an idea or concept. Each of us creates our own universe of distinctions through which we interpret the world.

I’ve learned that distinctions make mastery possible. Mastery of anything involves the ability to distinguish what the beginner does not see. Leadership involves mastery of one’s self as an instrument of leadership. Distinguishing the sources of my commitments, actions, and feelings has opened up my capacity to lead and contribute.

Responsibility

Ted taught me to distinguish reponsibility as “identifying and owning all my contributions.” We all contribute to others, and to ourselves, in more ways than we know. To be fully responsible is to own everything you do. And everything includes all the things you choose not to do. In other words, when I am being responsible, I am owning all my choices and their consequences. I am even owning the choices ones that I make so unconsciously that I’m not aware of them as choices. I own these choices because I’m the one who created the subconscious rules or practices that caused them.

In working with Ted, I came to distinguish how I related to responsibility in the past. For me, responsibility sometimes showed up as burden, as the possibility of failure, as loss of freedom, as “all work and no play.” In my conversations with Ted, I created a new relationship to responsibility, such that responsibility shows up as the freedom and power to accomplish what matters most to me.

Commitment

Ted taught me to distinguish commitment as being “an opening for something to show up.” I find a lot of freedom and power in this distinction, in contrast to the idea of commitment as “a promise I better fulfill, or else.” For example, if I am committed to being appreciative, I am at all times the possibility of appreciation being felt or expressed. I make appreciation available to myself and others.

I distinguish commitment from resoluteness. When I am resolute, I am determined to cause a specific outcome in a specific way by a specific time. I am pretending I can force the world to work my way.

When I am committed, I am available for seeing opportunities, and creating opportunities, and acting on opportunities, to cause desired outcomes.

When I learned Ted’s distinction of commitment, I could then distinguish how I have related in the past to being committed. I saw that I had avoided being fully committed, fully available, to anything. I was committed to not being fully committed. I feared that full commitment would lead to failure, and that failure would cascade into catastrophe.

I now see myself as the sum of my commitments. My commitments, whether I’m conscious of them or not, create the lens through which I can see and interact with the universe.

I have learned to acknowledge myself as the source of my commitments. In this way, I am my own creator. I can create commitments, and declare them, and they create new openings for life to show up in new ways for me.

Noticing undeclared commitments

I’ve learned to notice the existence of commitments I did not know I had made. For example, I did not know I had created a commitment to shy away from fully committing myself. And yet I could see from my actions that I was not fully honoring my commitments. I was holding back.

I’ve developed a practice of looking for undeclared commitments whenever I find myself acting in ways that don’t align with my declared, conscious commitments. In other words, I’ve learned to detect – and let go of – the ways that I undermine myself.

 

The Power of Declarations

I’ve learned from Ted that every statement I make is a declaration, a statement of what I say exists. I shape the world with each declaration I make, every label I apply to the world around me.

For each person, the world exists for us in our language. We experience the world through the language and distinctions we have created for the things in the world. How we label a thing deeply influences how we see the thing. We use many labels that do not contribute to accomplishment. For examples, the distinctions good, bad, easy, hard, and should do not help us achieve. When we declare that a job is hard, we are making our experience of it hard, without gaining any freedom or power from the declaration.

Developing Leadership Practices

A practice is a behavior done over and over for the purpose of improving or mastering it. I’ve learned from Ted to create practices that help me exercise and develop the skills of leadership.

For example, each day I practice creating and declaring my commitments. Each day I practice envisioning and declaring the future. Each day I practice creating at least one powerful conversation. Each day I practice creating a breakdown, and moving beyond it. Each day I practice appreciation.

By adopting conscious practices, I take responsibility for creating my leadership capabilities.

 

Breakdowns

A breakdown occurs when I do not fulfill a promise or act with integrity to my commitments. I have learned, in my work with Ted, to welcome breakdowns. When a breakdown occurs, I have found my growing edge. I have found edge of my known world, and will have to step forward into the unknown to proceed. A breakdown thus becomes the portal to a breakthrough, to the accomplishing of something I did not know I could accomplish.

 

Listening

Finally, I have learned to listen to the listening of others. Each person listens to the world through the filter of their own distinctions, based on what they’ve perceived and learned in life. I have learned that how I listen to others can alter and expand their way of listening. I have also learned to honor the listening of others, as the portal through which we can make a connection.