Leading and Living from Heart
The most important part of this shift is the change of mind to focus on the heart- to focus on a feeling rather than a set of facts or figures. Rather than everything that has been tried before; we try new tools and delve into new capacities of human beings. The good news, as I said last week, is that these are capacities that everyone possesses and can utilize with focus and practice.
I mentioned a few of the qualities last week and this week I offer a few tools to build upon – I also want to announce some opportunities available in the new year for anyone who wants to join the commonwealth of compassionate leadership.
Sometime ago, a dear friend of color, was offered the chance to teach diversity principles at the University level. She is ideally suited – formerly a fortune 500 executive, dedicated to positive change and highly gifted in facilitating and leading. She said no. When I asked her why she said – everything we need to know about diversity has already been shared – what we need now is inclusivity. The type of inclusivity I am pointing to goes beyond including and moves towards radical kinship-a knowing that the duality of color, or rich and poor, or young and old, is misleading. Everyone needs to participate in moving us to a just and global society. Connection is the tool of this quality – starting at listening we begin to realize we are actually experiencing ourselves through others. In South Africa they call this Ubuntu-knowing yourself as and through another – through engagement, connection and openness.
Once we are connected, acceptance becomes organic…we laugh and cry over the same feelings and as we zero in on feeling rather than appearance, we begin to connect more deeply and come up with ideas that serve. We have all walked into buildings, sacred sites or meetings, where you can sense the vibration of tension or caring. From the chapel of St Francis in Assisi to San Quentin, you don’t have to think about it…you can feel it.
Once the feeling is identified, then we simply bring more compassion to the conversation. Compassion isn’t weak or diluted- it’s a strength that has power -once we relax and focus on this deep intelligence of wisdom and heart- compassion comes as easily as the sun after a storm. It isn’t hard, its just tuning the dial on the radio to the right station.
I am launching this focus in 2023- called HeartPaths- that will provide training to apply heart to all situations, it will include groups of all sorts that are working on this in their own unique ways so that community can be experienced. It is my passion at this point, to have everyone realize how easy this really is and how possible. It just requires creating an environment and applying the qualities. Details will unfold as the year closes.
I hope you will join me,
