Altruism? No way! Or Yes way.
Kamela Laird
Team San Francisco – T2Q4 (T2Q3 when interviewed)
Interviewed on Oct 2, 2013 by Connie Chow from Team San Francisco – T1Q1
Written on Feb 9, 2014 by Connie Chow from Team San Francisco – T1Q2
My very first weekend on TEAM in San Francisco started out fairly frustrating when we were constantly restoring integrity about EVERYTHING; I was just fed up. I hated restoring integrity because I only heard make wrong of the individual, make wrong of others, and make wrong of TEAM. I was getting ancy in my seat, sighing, and getting annoyed (while withholding!). People (who I now know as Team 2’s) kept interrupting the Team Leader from sharing her agenda…..rrRRrrr…..I couldn’t sit through this much longer. Then, Kamela gets the attention of the room by saying “one conversation over here”. She explains that she understands this process may seem frustrating and time consuming and explained that the Team, Management, and Leadership Program is one program that doesn’t have a manual because it’s entrepreneurial. There is no structure in a sense so we get to create what we want in TEAM. And sometimes it’s grueling and necessary to go through the process of restoring integrity.
My jaw literally dropped; JUST LIKE THAT Kamela restored my listening and participation in the weekend. She was able to ‘get’ the listening of those of us who were withholding (like me!). I thought “how did she do that?!” If this is what I’m going to get out of TEAM, then I am in the RIGHT place!
Kamela has consistently articulated her generous listening of TEAM and it is with awe and respect that I write this article. I hope you find this interview inspiring for you and your Game In The World.
INTERVIEW
What is the possibility of your Game In The World?
My possibility is being limitless generosity. I ask myself this question all the time to keep myself on track; it’s like a personal compass. Am I being limitless generosity right now? If I’m not, then I catch myself and redirect my listening to be more intentional and more generous.
What is your Game In The World?
Team 2’s play a different game than Team 1’s. One of the components of our game is being of service to others. So I started looking at what it means to be of service to others. In Landmark, we have being of service distinguished as being of service for no reason other than to just do it, not doing it to get something out of it, not doing it to make someone else feel good, not doing it to repay a favor… just to be of service and for no other reason. This led me to discover that my game was to empower others to fulfill on their dreams. My game is called Dreams Fulfilled – to be of service to others and to empower them to take actions to fulfill on their dreams. And in empowering, there’s a component of acknowledgement that occurs in every conversation.
How did you select your people to coach and how’s the experience been for you?
Dreams Fulfilled is mostly family – my mom, my dad, and my sister. I made a difference in having their dreams fulfilled. It’s amazing to have my sister listen to me in a way that she can have her measures fulfilled on. They all respect me highly as a coach and that didn’t exist before. All three of them took the Landmark Forum as a result of their new listening of me. The Landmark Forum came into my family through my stand in Team 2. Love occurs at a whole new level now. There are less barriers to hide behind and more honest communication.
What structure did you have in place for your Game Leaders and what were their dreams?
I set up weekly calls to coach six Game Leaders spread over five different games. The structure of our calls involved discussing breakdowns and breakthroughs with regards to their weekly measurable promises and results. In the beginning, we set up what they want to accomplish in the next three months. We create a possibility, an outcome, and measureable results for each game. Team 2 games are set up like Team 1’s GITWs. Every week I touch base with my Game Leaders and discuss whether they won or lost their measures for that week. It’s really about service and what’s really important to my coachees. I empower them to fulfill on their promises. It’s about coaching people to take actions to fulfill on what’s most important to them in their life.
My first Game Leaders are a couple who are business partners. They met in a prestigious design school in Atlanta and they left their prestigious jobs to pursue their business in branding and packaging design work. They are creating a nest egg for their marriage and to have babies. They created a game on gaining clients in the adult beverage and beauty industries. They generated clients, built a new website, and created financial milestones that allowed them to be in Turkey for a long vacation.
My next Game Leader is my father. He created a project around fundraising for a spiritual university where he’s a faculty member. Historically he hates fundraising. It was put on him because he’s a go-getter and an effective worker. So he agreed to take it on. He assessed how much the university needed, which was about $170K. He was overwhelmed by the amount needed. However, since he’s done the Forum, he said let’s be unreasonable and aimed for $250K instead. I saw what was ahead for me; I needed to be able to coach him around something that didn’t sound fun and sounded rather daunting. Using the technology of creating a possibility and creating outcomes, I was able to coach him to go for it! He embraced Landmark technology and kicked ass raising a total of $333K. He raised above and beyond his unreasonable goal! Each week I coached him, there were a lot of breakthroughs, including securing one generous donor who doubled other donations.
This quarter he’s creating a non-profit healing clinic linked to the spiritual university where he works. My dad is a medical doctor and practices alternative medicine. He wants to bring prophetic healing to everyone in the world. The university already supports a student practicum healing clinic that has patients from around the world. They perform Skype healings with people in Africa. It’s happening in a global scale. His dream is to create this healing that spreads across the world to heal people from cancer and heart disease. Touching lives at a global level. [Fast forward to February 2014: Kamela’s dad is focusing on the opening of his new healing clinic, the Shafiyy Institute, which will see its first patient this month!]
My sister is my next Game Leader. She created a game to find ‘the one’ for marriage and kids. She’s 32 years young and through the course of this game, a family friend recommended a London lad for her. My sister started dating him via Skype and it’s been 6 months of online dating. Two weeks ago she flew to London and met him for the first time. She met his mom, dad, sister and his community. They both agreed to continue going forward with the relationship. And now he has a trip booked to visit California to meet us, her family. She definitely has her eyes on this man. [Fast forward to February 2014: Kamela’s sister got engaged a couple months ago and just left for England to move in with her fiancé. They are getting married next month in England!]
My next Game Leader is a friend from college who now lives in Chicago. She works at a Catholic high school as the Extracurricular Activities Director in charge of all the clubs at the school. She’s guiding each student leader to create their Dreams Fulfilled inside the club. She recently took the Landmark Forum as well. Using Landmark style integrity and communication, she is asking the student leaders and the faculty representatives to commit to their promises and to hold their clubs to account. She has been a teacher for years and her passion resides in empowering youth through school channels and integrating those channels with the surrounding community. She loves seeing teachers create a brighter future through empowering the students.
My final game is around expanding a Reiki healing practice. My friend is a Team graduate and a Reiki Master Healer, which is the top ranking for the Reiki Healing method. He is developing a healing clinic. Since my dad is also creating a healing clinic, I combined the coaching calls for these two Game Leaders so they get to have conversations with each other. I created team around this conversation in hopes of having them support each other. Each week as a group we discussed what’s working and what’s not working with their game plans. Then one week I witnessed a breakthrough in their communication – they set up an additional conversation offline. I was really present to causing “others to others” communication.
What has been your experience in being of service to others?
It’s not tangible! Or, it is tangible but hard to articulate. There’s a level of power I have in life that I didn’t have before. It’s humbling and I’m careful to not abuse that power because I can create with my words. I consider everything I create for myself and am careful to say what I want and careful to not sarcastically say what I don’t want because then that gets created. I gained the “power to create” by being on Team and I have the opportunity to continually see my impact around the world. I didn’t focus on this at all in my first year on Team. Team 2 is a completely different program. I see how the space changes when I walk into it. I’m conscious of what I leave behind and am creating a legacy with the number of lives I touch.
How do you use distinctions from The Communications Program in your coaching?
Recreation is present on all of my coaching calls. It’s important for my Game Leaders to have what they’re up to reflected back to them, whether it’s a breakdown or a breakthrough. To have their breakthrough reflected back to them, they can get how big they truly are. And for breakdowns, they can see for themselves how to resolve the breakdown. Recreating them allows them to expand and move into the next level.
Coming from everything nothing is another distinction so I am present with my Game Leaders. I get behind whatever they are creating for themselves. This is their world and I’m in service to them. I can’t come in with an agenda because then I’m coaching them towards what I want and not what they want. I’m always getting back to nothing to clear the space to support them and their world (and their word!).
What breakdowns did you have and how did you overcome them?
When coaching my mom in a previous quarter earlier this year, she wanted to get research for the student healing clinic. She needed a statistically sound survey, which meant collecting a large population of data. She started interviewing clients but didn’t reach her goal in terms of number of people to interview. I helped her see that before the game, there was NO movement. So even though she is not as far ahead as she wanted the survey and data collection is in motion. We don’t stop at the breakdowns because breakdowns happen every day. Going forward we look at how we can make promises that we can fulfill on. We acknowledge and complete the breakdowns then make new promises based on concrete feasible opportunities.
I am so present to the lives transformed through Landmark’s Communications Program distinctions and look forward to my remaining quarters on the Team, Management, and Leadership Program. It is heart-warming to have this structure in place that mirrors back to us how incredibly miraculous we really are and opens the space for us to manage breakdowns.
