Resonate (Page 4)

The Most Essential Leadership Skills And How Zen Reframes A Way To Master Them by Ginny Whitelaw. Originally published on Forbes.com An in-person leadership team…

As an adult I don’t get that automatic sense of new beginnings in a work context every year. January 1st for me is about personal change but I don’t have a career equivalent and there’s no reason why not. In fact, I think it’s crucial and why would we limit this refresh to once per year?

More leaders are waking up to the awareness that business cannot continue as usual. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have moved from being a UN wish list to being investor requirements for many companies. Sustainable practices have shifted from being “greenwashing” to core strategy. From burning out employees, to drying up resources, to driving away the next generation of customers, companies are realizing that they themselves are unsustainable using extractive practices.

In the rebranding exercise, the title of ‘The Slow Coach’ seems to fit the times, as my coaching practice appears to be taken up with clients all trying to go too fast.

I write on the cusp of the biggest presidential election of my lifetime – and I’ve lived a long time. 

Embodiment is trending. At a time of deep divisions and discontent, the dissociations of head from heart, of talk from walk, of action from a felt sense of its consequences, are wholly inadequate for dealing with the wicked issues we face. So it’s not surprising that an antidote is resonating in the Zeitgeist, what many herald as an emerging stage of human development in which the clever head re-integrates with the deep wisdom of the body. Embodied leadership is showing the way.

From a global pandemic, to rising racism, division, tempers and temperatures, it’s easy to get triggered in this time by a sense of urgency or helplessness, anxiety or depression. Yet there is a way to lead into this time, making the difference that is ours to make. That way, grounded in the 1500-year tradition of physical Zen training moves us beyond a struggling self, where we can be in a mess without being a mess.

Without so much of the ‘usual’ noise to distract us, many blindspots have been obliterated. What can we now see clearly? What truths about ourselves and our world have we met eyeball to eyeball? And what do we do now?

It’s one of the most asked questions of these Covid-upset, wildly divisive and turbulent times: How are you? Often we give and receive fairly superficial answers to this question. Recently, I’ve noticed a lot more people struggling with how they are or feeling conflicted in how they answer.