Learning in Dignity

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Dignity (etymologically,  ‘a state of being worthy’) is essential to the process and purpose of education. Yet, our societal narrative has lost the plot in terms of what boxes need to be ticked and how many ‘followers’ need to be clicked- in order to be worthy. It is not only the prerequisites to dignity that are pathologically constructed, but also the timelines. This is most evident in schools, where teachers report to having ‘no time to teach’ as they are so busy jumping through administrative hoops and stuffing a vast curriculum of facts into the heads of young learners for them to pass the next test, and for their school to maintain an ‘outstanding’ rating . […]

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Leading with Grace

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I have recently been reflecting on the concept of Leading with Grace. It has struck me that in today’s fast paced world, where businesses and leaders are ever more under pressure to deliver, Grace speaks to a way of slowing things down, a calmness and consideration of others, acceptance and an awareness of the things that matter to others, almost old-fashioned courtesy. A recent post by my colleague Gina Hayden – in which she spoke of her recent experience meeting with a conscious leader –  prompted me to recall two leaders who I had the privilege of working with a number of years ago. Both reflected the qualities of Grace in different ways. The first […]

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conscious leadership

The Quality of Leadership Attention

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This week I sat with a CEO of a global company, an extraordinary man who has only recently merged his spiritual self with his business self. For many years, these two sides of himself have been living separate lives, but owing to some deep developmental work he has done over the past year – and his own readiness – he has brought these two sides into one whole. This has had an extraordinary result on his leadership, and what he is setting in motion within his company. It is too early to share details of exactly what he is doing on the purpose journey which he has initiated, but I can speak about the experience […]

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Engage in the Possibility of Passion, Purpose AND Profit

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It is possible, and if you think it is not- you are simply not aware of the cases where this is a reality in business around the world. There are organisations out there, operating in a whole new playing field- those who have abandoned their disillusionment and loyalty for the old system for a better way of being (a better way of seeing each quarter through). Raj Sisodia has long been interested in and researching these organisations- “Firms of Endearment”. Through his various publications, based on work with Universities in the United States, and consulting for global organisations, he has been able to shed some light on the process behind such win-win scenario’s in today’s […]

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Tom Chi Everything is Connected GCFCL

Tom Chi on the Interconnectedness of Everything

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Tom Chi is my personal hero. Listening to him or talking with him is like having a supernova explosion going off in your head. You cannot help but have your existing worldview blown to smithereens, replaced by a new, more expansive frame. Tom has this to say about interconnectedness: “Whenever I hear people mention this phrase that we are all connected, they do so in a way as if it’s something they wish they believe was true. It’s something that’s abstract, it’s esoteric, it’s a thing that’s unprovable, but they really just wish that the universe was like that.” This talk is about how things really are connected, and not in an abstract way but […]

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Buddhism and Conscious Leadership Nithya Shanti

Nithya Shanti – Combining Buddhism and Conscious Leadership

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How do Buddhism and Conscious Leadership overlap? A few years ago, at a Conscious Capitalism conference in Boston, I met a disarming and charming man. Because the conference had run severely overtime on its schedule, he was given only 5 minutes on stage for the after-lunch slot (traditionally known as ‘the graveyard shift’), but in those 5 minutes Nithya Shanti brought joy to the whole room and lit us all up. Joy emanates from him and he seems to be illuminated from the inside with a 50,000 watt bulb. I sidled over to meet him afterwards, standing in a corridor, and found myself smiling and feeling inexplicably happy. This feeling lasted long after we said goodbye after only […]

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