LPL Card Deck User Guide
How Can I Use Life’s Principles Leadership Cards?
This versatile deck can be applied in a variety of ways to support your leadership journey. Here are a few ideas for integrating them into your work.
For Individuals
If you’re using the Life’s Principles Leadership Cards to cultivate your personal leadership, select one of the practices below and try it for several weeks. Then, step back to reflect on the impact on yourself and those around you. Over time, experiment with each of these ideas or create your own!
At the beginning of the week, draw a card and make that Leadership Principle your focus for the week. As you go about your days, seek out examples of that principle in nature in your local environment. Based on what you notice, identify 3 ways to translate the principle into leadership practices. Then, apply those practices and share them with others.
Draw a card every day and make its lesson your focus as a leader for that day. Maybe you’ll create effective feedback loops, prioritize diversity, or nurture collaborative relationships. Notice where you already embody these principles intuitively and where there’s room to grow into them.
Identify a situation or question where you could really use advice from an experienced mentor. Once you have something in mind, pick three cards from the deck. Study them for a few minutes, then journal about how the lessons from nature apply to your current situation and what guidance they offer.
For Teams
Life’s Principles Leadership Cards are a great tool for strengthening team effectiveness, deepening relationships, and bringing fresh energy to the group! Here are some ways to begin applying nature’s genius as a team.
At the start of a new project: Invite each team member to draw a card. Give everyone a moment to review and reflect on the content. Then go around the group, asking each person to share the principle, what its lesson inspires for them, and a suggestion for how it can be applied to the project. Debrief the experience and decide if there are one or two ideas that you want to incorporate into your team norms.
When a new member joins your team: Invite them to draw a card from the deck. Discuss the principle they chose and how it applies to the team’s work. Ask them to serve as the team’s ongoing advocate for that principle by suggesting ways to integrate the card’s lesson into all of your team’s work.
At corporate offsites or team building events: As a group, work together to create “challenge cards” - a set of cards that identify your own specific organizational challenges. Break into small groups and distribute the challenge cards among the small groups. Invite each group to select one or two challenge cards and explore which of the Life Principle(s) could be most relevant to address the challenge. Ask each group to report out to the full team. Close by debriefing your insights and establishing clear next steps.
For Biomimicry Practitioners
As a practitioner, you are already deeply steeped in nature’s genius. You see the endless possibilities for leaders and teams to apply Life’s Principles to create sustainable and thriving ecosystems that are conducive to life. Here are some ways you can deepen your own practice and inspire others to do the same.
Partner with individuals and companies who are interested in learning about biomimicry. Help them use the cards to understand nature’s wisdom and translate that wisdom into ways of working. Use the cards to structure learning and reflection sessions. Bring your partners into nature and show them examples of Life’s Principles, then have them break into small groups to explore how they might adapt their leadership based on what they’ve observed.
Explore how Life’s Principles are transpiring in your own local ecological context. Draw a card each week and go into nature to observe where you see organisms and ecosystems embodying the principles, and where you may find disruptions or imbalances. The cards can also offer guidance about how these disturbances might be resolved.
Combine with a Life’s Principles Leadership Assessment. Draw on the cards as teaching tools in biomimicry workshops or coaching sessions, along with a Life’s Principles Leadership assessment or a similar organizational analysis. Ask your clients which Life’s Principles they already embody, and which could help them resolve some of the gaps illuminated through the assessment. For the principles which have been identified as growth areas, use the Life’s Principles cards to bolster and reinforce your coaching and teaching. To receive BSI's Life’s Principles Leadership Assessment tool, reach out to our team!