IAM started as a vision of Karen Tax, first as a path for her personal and professional development, second as foundation for synergizing her work with others, and third as a map for guiding individual, group and organizational transformation.

Karen’s vision for IAM is this: the explosion of vital and inspired people worldwide – where individual desire for passionate and effective engagement fuels the transformation and growth of organizations AND where healthy and collaborative work environments inspire individuals to be their best.

A weekend gathering of folks interested in IAM in May 2008 prompted this telling of the ongoing story of IAM. The IAM Summit, as we called it, was intended as a time to explore what was possible for those of us who were collaborating and leading transformation using IAM. We ended up having what one person described as ‘the most dysfunctional experience ever.’ While not everyone participating would describe the weekend this way, most would agree we weren’t ‘glowing and flowing’ which is how we sometimes describe the process of IAM.

With IAM, our goal is to maximize being at our best which we describe as our natural Essence – both individually and collectively. We focus first and foremost on what is already working well – using our strengths, values and passions, and how these effectively play out with others (or not!), as our guiding light.

We also notice the Drama that disconnects us from being at our best such as fear and struggle of any sort. Drama is useful in seeing where we get in our own way, where we deny our brilliance. Drama is both a challenge and opportunity to feel and heal the individual and collective wounds that block our birthright freedom and passionate engagement in life and work. Drama is never about one person. It is always a perfect reflection of where we hold ourselves back.

Essence and Drama both make up the wholeness of who we are, individually and collectively. Both must be given our attention if we are to develop into the fullness of our capabilities. With IAM, our goal is to maximize being at our best, to use Drama to learn and heal, and to decline invitations to unnecessary Drama (if you can see the Drama, it’s appropriate to decline; if you’re in it you need it!)

The IAM Summit was humbling and inspiring because Drama overcame our glowing and flowing, and in the process illuminated several blocks to us being at our best. The results have been exciting for me because I’m seeing people involved have more clarity, confidence and courage to move forward with their work in ways that best suit who they are now, and who they want to become.

With IAM we start with the personal, knowing that:

• within ourselves is the gift and source of our positive power,
• our perspective is the only one we can truly know and own,
• our outer experience is a reflection of our inner energies, and
• our personal journey of healing and growth, of daily shifts from Drama to Essence, is the purpose of every experience we put ourselves into.

So I’m sharing my personal perspectiveknowing that the perspective of others will be different. Coming from the personal is a way for me to orient myself in the best of who I know myself to be while at the same time taking personal responsibility for the role I’m playing in creating the Drama I find myself in. The goal is to shift from victim blame to claiming leadership and ownership of my positive creative powers. This is an ongoing process; there is always more leadership to claim!

My personal story of both the Essence and the Drama of the IAM summit begins well before the event. Upon reflection, I see that I was participating in a scarcity dynamic, where we were behaving as if we needed to be a group or a team to collaborate with me on IAM. Before the Summit, I heard comments such as: associates need to build relationships with each other, people need to commit to the group, I’m over-giving compared to others and so forth. Another way to look at these comments is: the group needs to behave in a certain way for me to get what I want – scarcity in the works. What became clear during the Summit was that people didn’t want relationships with everyone in the group and the group was not what people wanted to commit to (transformative work was).

From my perspective, the way we focused on the group detracted from a focus on personal responsibility and abundant creation which would have resulted in clear and direct statements about individual wants and exploratory conversations about how that would shape the group. With personal responsibility, each person would tend to his or her own healing and growth, using the current group dynamics as a learning environment, not as an end but as a means, using dialogue to creatively shape how the group evolves based on individual creative passion and desire, respecting the wants of all and synergizing with the collective energy in the process.

While I provided strong leadership in many areas, my participation in the dynamic of scarcity caused me to hold back my strengths in an attempt to make space for others. I created an experience with nuances of ‘I can’t be in the fullness of me,’ of ‘I have to dial-myself-down,’ of ‘either you have your tender feelings or I get to be the strongest of who I can be’. I created a situation where, if I am fully me, if I am asking for what I want, if I am asking for the affirming I need right now… then I will be asking for too much, I will dominate the group, and I will be perceived as needy. The result of my personal holding back was that I was not met how I wanted to be met by others in the group: with direct, clear, powerful, creative and vulnerable engagement.

My intention with the KT&A group has been from the beginning to share leadership with a group of passionate, self-motivated, self-leading, personally responsible, self-creating individuals – IAM style. I have never been interested in leading people I’m associated with to this glowing and flowing in a lock-step fashion; I’m interested in journeying with others to greater glowing and flowing, using our everyday experiences as fodder for our personal journeys and for the greater good. This way, personal responsibility is clear: I get to show up exactly how I want, I’m taking on leadership for myself and the parts of IAM I want to lead, and no more. And so does everyone else. In fact, everyone must take personal responsibility to the extent that they can for a group to form based on personal passions and collective synergies.

It was not until the Drama of the Summit that I clearly saw my own dance with scarcity and the disconnection between my hopes for the KT&A group and the reality of how we were functioning. Much stronger leadership was needed on my part for people to show up how I wanted them to: walking the IAM talk. Holding myself back as a leader made it difficult for my associates to see how they fit (or not) within my circle of collaborators and how to effectively step into leading IAM themselves. My desire for associates to step-up in a different way necessitated my stepping up in a clearer way.

As a result, I’m documenting three different components of the IAM transformative process here: the IAM collaborative creed, IAM touchstones and the IAM customer commitment. My ultimate goal is still shared leadership of the IAM transformative journey. First, I will be the holder of the integrity and quality of IAM until such time as I see healthy demonstration of passion and desire from others who can share in leading IAM transformation, in their own lives first, and then out into the world. Shared leadership will emerge when we collectively understand the Essential components of the IAM transformative process and are demonstrating healthy glowing and flowing in our collaborative efforts and with clients.

IAM collaborative creed:

People guiding others in IAM learning are working toward …

• stating what they want, continuing to discern what they want, and using everyday events to have fun playing with their creative wants and passions
• seeing the value of diverse synergies with both clients and other collaborators for their own personal and professional growth and in service to others
• enjoying the amplified learning that comes from working with diverse, challenging and even uncomfortable individuals and/or group experiences
• using the experiences in groups to see where “I’m still not ok and there is still no space for me” discovering instead the abundant belonging that is our birthright
• valuing both sparking (joyful/Essence) and triggering (fearful/Drama) interactions, loving the healing and growth value of both
• developing consciousness about sparking and triggering that happens between people and the ‘in the moment’ skills to see what is going on
• collaborating in a fluid fashion (no rigid partnership and ownership), inspired by creative synergies and open sharing of what we produce
• enjoying others delightfully meeting us where we want to be met – in playful, courageous, risk-taking, honest, transformative learning
• working with powerful and compassionate individuals who see the value of showing up collectively on the same page, for themselves and for clients
• remembering that the point is to fall deeper and deeper in love with ourselves, and each other, and when we do, all the rest is easy – conflict is no more.

There are several touchstones that I have come back to in navigating my way through Drama of any kind. I believe these touchstones can be useful guidelines for the IAM path of transformation; I invite those I am collaborating with and clients to use these as well, and to help evolve them to be even more useful.

IAM touchstones:

• You can’t be bad. This applies to oneself and to others. I would much rather risk harm and SEE what’s playing out, than hold back and wait for everything to be perfectly delivered and cleaned up. Let’s get messy together knowing we can’t be bad. The result: a celebration of our foibles, healing, and connection.
• It’s impossible to fail. Every ‘mistake’ I make is a way to see more clearly the places I remain disconnected from my Essence. Let’s fail. A lot. I’m loving what I discover in the process, realizing that nothing is ever wasted and nothing is ever failure when I’m healing and growing.
• Practice everyday. The Drama patterns I was born into are playing out to greater or lesser degrees, my whole life. Drama perfectly serves my healing and growth. Let’s quit creating Drama about our Drama and instead enjoy learning, being both divine and human, and the process of our becoming.
• We’re always working for each other. As long as I am in relationship with others, we are sparking or triggering each other. It’s constant. It’s perfect. It’s precious. All of it. Everyone. Trying to avoid the triggers is like trying to avoid breathing. Let’s look at it the dynamics between us! Let’s play with them!
• Personal first. When I take care of my healing and growth first, when I tend to my creative desires first, and respect others in the process, everything else flows easily. Let’s get really, really good at turning every situation into healing and growth: honest and vulnerable sharing, playful and powerful truth telling.
• Be present here and now. When I find myself in a situation where I am not fully paying attention to what I’m doing (multi-tasking, for example) I am not bringing the best of who I am to the task at hand. Let’s give our best to whatever we are doing - either creating, contributing or learning … or move on to where we can.
• Be 100% responsible. When I look to sources outside of myself as the cause of my experience, then I am a victim, I am blaming and I’m not learning. Let’s be honest about what is going on, minimizing blame and judgment to the extent we can and USE what’s happening to clarify our deepest creative desires for ourselves individually, for those we care deeply about, and for the greater good.
• Notice scarcity; Claim abundance. Scarcity is ubiquitous and the ultimate source of every conflict, whether the largest war or the smallest miscommunication. Conflict happens when we are not clear about what we want. Conflict is inevitable when we don’t believe we deserve what we want. Let’s work together to end all conflict forevermore, by claiming the abundant space for our birthright gifts and by taking a stand for others to do the same.

My hope is that these touchstones will help me and those I collaborate with, and our clients, to easily and joyfully navigate from Drama to Essence, ongoing. They will be developed more fully as part of the IAM learning material.

My biggest frustration with the IAM Summit was seeing how our individual and collective Drama was getting in the way of us being and doing our very best in service to our clients. This desire to be in joyful service to others has motivated me to make the following commitment to customers.

IAM Customer Commitment:

• We will be guides. We love the journey of transformation and we are joyfully and relentlessly developing the competence and skill to guide others along the way. This process includes focusing on and appreciating the Essential best of who we are, while at the same time noticing and healing Drama that emerges.
• We will walk with you. We know that we are all equals in the journey of life, where our healing and growth is connected to yours. We venture into every territory of the transformative journey, facing the fires of our own fears along the way, so that we can confidently walk with you, learning with you as we go while also bringing with us the competence our own journey’s provide.
• We will be present with you. We bring the best of who we are and what we have to offer to our work with you. Our Drama will not get in the way of us giving our best to you; we proactively, easily and skillfully work through our own individual and collective Drama as we go.

These are my thoughts and perspectives on our IAM Summit experience – for now. The truth is continually revealed, especially when we are able to see the perspectives of others.

I’m looking forward to the next chapter in the story of IAM, and the explosion of vital and inspired people worldwide.