Allan Cox
BA, MA
Free
CEO Advisor and Poet-Blogger Expert
Allan Cox Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- CEO & Top Team Development, Discovering and Living Personal & Corporate Purpose, Advisor to Boards of Directors
- Best Sellers
- Confessions of a Corporate Headhunter, Inside Corporate America, The Making of the Achiever, Straight Talk for Monday Morning
- Career Focus
- Advisory services to CEO, Boards and Top Teams
- Affiliation
- President, Allan Cox & Associates, Inc.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Cox_%28author%29
Allan Cox, CEO Advisor and poet-blogger is founder of Allan Cox & Associates, Inc. In June and July this year he published two new book, respectively, WHOA! Are They Glad You're In Their Lives? and The CEO in You. Cox has authored eight previous books, including Your Inner CEO, Confessions of a Corporate Headhunter (the first book ever written about the executive search profession), Inside Corporate America, The Making of the Achiever, and Straight Talk for Monday Morning.
He has advised CEOs and top management teams of many corporations and not-for-profit organizations, including USG, Walgreens, Motorola, Consolidated Communications, Columbus McKinnon, Kraft, Pillsbury, the Minnesota Vikings, Child Welfare League of America, and The Christian Century magazine.
He served for five years as Chairman of the Board of Chicago’s Center for Ethics and Corporate Policy. He and his wife, Cher, live and maintain offices in Chicago and San Diego.
Free Audio & Video Samples
Allan Cox Books
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Allan Cox
OWNING YOUR SINGULARITY
You may know of my latest book, The CEO in You. I believe, it’s one my best. The book’s core lesson is finding and expressing your singularity—how you can be like no other person who has walked the planet. You can learn this life-enriching lesson by applying the psychology of Alfred Adler, the brilliant Vienna physician, who, along with Freud and Jung, make up the holy trinity of modern psychology.
Style-Of-Life: Dimly Aware
The centerpiece of Adler’s thought was Style-of-Life. We all have one, and by it he meant, “an organized set of convictions about life of which the individual, at best, is only dimly aware. This means, for example, that without knowing it you could be living daily with deeply held views of yourself or life, such as “I’m an analytical whiz,” or “Life only works when I’m tenacious.” Are such outlooks good? Without more information, you can’t know, but for now, just imagine you live by these convictions without knowing their hold on you.
So let’s assume you want to know more about yourself. That’s a good thing; after all, it was Socrates who pointed out that the unexamined life is not worth living. So start with this bottom line: If your S-O-L is healthy, think of it as your guardian presence. If it’s not, know that it’s a looming threat and that you’re, well, S-O-L! That is, until you change it in keeping with your true authenticity, in other words, your singularity. You are like a snowflake, you know.
Here’s how you discover your Style-of-Life. You complete three short sentences, using non-business language. The hard part is to boil these thoughts down by adding no more that 10 words between the three. Brevity is key. Less is more. Keep it simple.
Start Today
Get started today, but realize the kind of soul-searching and reflection you’ll need to get this right is going to take you several re-visits, hard-nosed rejection of early and convenient wording, and several weeks or even months to arrive at truthful completions. All the while you’re defining yourself, you’re actually peeling away layers of stuff and identifying your core self—your singularity.
Here are the three starters . . .
I am: (this is how you see yourself)
Life is: (this is how you see life)
My central goal: (this is the goal you’re not aware of that’s pulling you into the future, for better or worse)
Not until you excavate inside and craft the completions to these simple sentences will you have a grasp of your life’s actual trajectory; whether you’re heading true north or off on side paths to nowhere; whether your Style-of-Life is a looming threat or guardian presence.
Your Value Proposition to The World
Aeschylus, a 5th-Century BCE Greek playwright, composed this stunningly simple trilogy: I am like all other men, I am like some other men, I am like no other man. This is what really counts. Why? Because until you unearth your uniqueness, your authenticity, your essence—what I call your singularity—you’re not able to offer your value proposition to the world!
I’ve been terribly brief here, but if this idea resonates for you, get hold of my book, Your Inner CEO: Unleash the Executive Within. It will take you through the drill to discover your singularity and fire it up. If your Style-of-Life is a looming threat, you’ll learn how to change it out for your singularity the world is waiting for. Don’t wait. You gotta know this and do this.
Contacting Allan Cox
Allan Cox & Associates, Inc. Chicago Office: 45 East Bellevue Place | Chicago, IL 60611 | San Diego Office: 801 Cofair Court | Solana Beach, CA 92075 | www.AllanCox.com | www.YourInnerCEO.com 312-933-8973
How to get started
A "BAKER'S DOZEN" THOUGHT STARTERS: STATEMENTS I'VE MADE OVER THE YEARS THAT SEEM TO HOLD UP
-Permanence is proof of adaptability.
-We’re like fine old furniture that’s been painted over.
-Rearranging all the beer glasses on the shelf won’t produce champagne.
-Leadership, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
-Vision that matters most is seeing where we are and where we’re headed.
-Airlines are railroads in the sky.
-Those who succeed have mastered the art of applying the overly obvious.
-Ete al life is living the ete al truths today.
-Self is an empty suit.
-High-tech serves low-tech.
-Don’t visit the archives with a tea room outlook.
-Living as if it were true is living a lie.
-It’s not marching to the beat of a different drummer as much as it is drumming the beat to different marchers.
If you find these trigger thoughts intriguing, and would like to know more about how Allan's approach might be useful to you, pick up a copy of his latest book, The CEO in You, and dig in. You'll come face-to-face with leadership from the core.