LEADER AS HEALER - a new paradigm for 21st century leadership

DOING and BEING - Leader as Healer newsletter, second edition

Welcome to the second edition of this newsletter! Thank you to all who have subscribed and for your comments after the first one.

I previously laid out the foundational context for the work of?Leader as Healer, namely the way we have normalised cultures in which our thinking dominates at the expense of feeling, sensing and intuiting, thus creating internal and external disconnection and fragmentation, and a drastically limited way of perceiving and navigating our world.

In the next editions I want to focus on specific aspects and symptoms of the imbalance and propose models and practices that serve to bring correction and the restoration of a much greater holistic intelligence.

Today I address the following: throughout history, all cultures have noted two core and fundamentally different parts of who we are. One of the oldest expressions of this is the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, dating back 3,500 years. Other examples include: mythos and logos in ancient Greece; the two pillars of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (which some scholars believe were reflected in the pillars of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre); solar and lunar mythology throughout the ages; the Masculine and the Feminine in archetypal psychology, and so on, to name but a few.?

And recently we have begun to understand how the two hemispheres of our brain literally reflect the core duality. For the purpose of grounding these concepts in everyday functioning, I use the words ‘Doing’ and ‘Being’. These two distinct modes have their own unique capacities and competencies yet are deeply complementary.

In virtually all the leaders and organizations with whom I have worked, Doing dominates, even to the point of excluding and denigrating Being. Despite our best efforts, we frequently get caught in cycles of action and execution, ignoring or diminishing the importance of ‘beingness.’ Collectively, we are so focused on solving problems?—?ticking tasks off our to-do lists and moving on to the next thing?—?that our strategic minds have taken over, thereby limiting by at least half the intelligence and internal resources we bring to our work.?

The left brain has effectively subjugated the right. As Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying, with remarkable prescience:?“The rational mind is a faithful servant, the intuitive mind is a sacred gist, and we have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift”.

To look further at a couple of the two modes:

1)????Proactive/receptive.?Being able to act effectively and efficiently in a proactive way is a crucial operational capacity, while the ability to sit back, absorb and reflect without seeking quick solutions provides an essential balance. The American poet Wallace Stevens reminded us that “sometimes, the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.” If proactivity is our overriding drive, we easily miss the subtler insights and solutions that arise from a deeper form of listening and reflection.

2)????Form/space. The Jewish mystical tradition teaches that when we open the page of a book, there are black letters?and?a white page. In the ‘doing’ modality, we fixate solely on the black letters. With higher integration, we learn to perceive both the letters and the page, which greatly upgrades our operating system?—?we play on a much bigger game board. The white page is the ground of creativity, the inner field in which ideas ‘come to us.’ When we lose access to the white page, we condemn ourselves to a partial and incomplete perspective.

Leader as Healer?repairs the disconnection between Being and Doing, dissolving fragmentation and the struggle of polarisation by reuniting and integrating the two modalities. This occurs first within us, and then in and with the people we lead. Through this process we achieve deeper unity and coherence, both internally and externally. We access far more advanced responses to problems, challenges and opportunities. And we become able to access and operate from a much larger field of possibility.

A participant in a leadership programme once asked, “So, how much time should I spend being, and how much time should I spend doing?” We laughed together as it became immediately clear where the question was coming from!

Integration actually looks like this:

Optimum performance:?All Doing arises from the inner grounding in Being.

Integration: a ‘bowl’ of Being, out of which arises all our Doing?—?slow or fast, simple or complex?depending on the requirements of the situation we face, to which we are accurately attuned.

The strangled dichotomy of cognition versus emotion, or rationality versus intuition, disappears and the complimentary modalities come to operate in tandem and at the highest level.

The brain hemispheres

This all correlates with the landmark brain research that Oxford University All Souls Professor Iain McGilchrist has documented in his books?“The Master and his Emissary”?and his latest two-volume opus?“The Matter with Things”.

He writes in the former:?“The relationship between the two hemispheres does not appear to be symmetrical in that the left hemisphere is ultimately dependent on, one might almost say parasitic on, the right, though it seems to have no awareness of this fact.”

Synthesizing many years of research, McGilchrist concludes that because the right hemisphere has a direct relationship with the physical body and the external world around us, it is a mediator for all we do. The right brain senses the wider world and passes information to the left brain for analysis. The left brain then returns its analysis so that, with wider, more holistic perception, we can determine how best to respond.?

The disconnection, in which the left brain usurps its role and fails to share its feedback with the right, is a central pillar of the culture of disconnection and fragmentation in which we find ourselves. McGilchrist goes on to say:?“Indeed it is filled with an alarming self-confidence. My hope is that awareness of the situation may enable us to change course before it is too late.”

The ‘too late’ refers to his subsequent conclusion that the current imbalance between the two hemispheres is, in his view, no less than the single biggest threat to our survival.

Memo from a CEO client:

"I always considered myself very good at reading the room?—?figuring out where people are coming from. Now, I recognize how my approach was a strictly mental or cognitive process, and therefore incomplete.?

When you’re processing everything from the neck up, you’re working to ‘figure it all out,’ as if everything’s a puzzle piece or a move in a game of chess. You have to make it work, so you keep an eye on all the variables, but you actually miss so much. There is all of this profound intelligence in your body and in your spirit that you can learn to access. A key part of my role today is simply staying open to all signals and messages?—?including those of a subtler variety?—?that can help me connect with the needs of all members of my team and with the broader society we are working to serve."

The Correction?– Theory and Practice

Creating stable integration between Being and Doing takes practice. It is a lifelong path towards mastery. Along the way we find, as have countless practitioners before, that we begin to navigate our days with much more efficiency and precision, as well as a much wider ‘bandwidth’ of perception; and on many days, achieve far more, in far less time and with greater ease.

The simplest, most powerful tool we have is our attention.

Learning to use our attention consciously and deliberately is the gateway through which we learn to relocate ourselves in Being. The very act of paying attention, without need to change or interpret, draws us naturally and effortlessly back to a deep centre in ourselves, reawakens the right brain, and begins to restore balance. It measurably changes our brain wave frequency from the ‘beta-wave’ range to the ‘alpha-wave’ range.

I want to offer here two concepts and two foundational practices?

1)????‘The Re-location of the Self’ – metaphorical and literal

As practice and refine our attentional capacity, we begin to shift our identity from the periphery of ourselves and operate from a deeper well, a deeper central axis. We shift and broaden the locus of our awareness so that it becomes much more inclusive. We relocate from the identity of ‘I as thinker’ to ‘I as Presence and Awareness', who thinks, feels, intuits and senses, while resting in an underlying sense of spaciousness.?

This is a game-changer.

From the ‘forward circle’ to ‘the backward circle’

We can think of two types of circles: when rational thinking governs, we tend to proceed along a forward trajectory. We move upward and out of ourselves?—?literally away from contact with our bodies?—?towards a more peripheral, disembodied location, largely at or near the level of the head. This is a ‘forward circle’.?

We mistakenly take this as the normal way of relating to the world, while in fact it is the basis of a narrow bandwidth. But, as we begin to bring Being to the fore, we sense ourselves moving back and ‘down,’ as if dropping back into our bodies, and everything changes. We feel more embodied, more rooted in the self. This is a ‘backward circle’

With this subtle yet crucial relocation, we think more clearly, while also being able to access more and more of our innate resources and meet the world much more alert and awake.

Exercise: from ‘forward circle’ to ‘backward circle’:

Start by deliberately engendering a forward circle?—?feel yourself moving up and away from the lower part of your body, then forward and out towards the world. Notice how your breathing becomes shallower, and you begin to lose your sense of sitting, of your legs and feet. Your bandwidth of perception becomes narrower.

Then, pause and take a few deep breaths. SLOW DOWN…..

Use the exhalation to begin to move back in and down. With each outbreath, feel the release of tension and settle in your chair. Feel your legs more, and your feet, and their contact with the ground. Allow your eyes to soften.

Now you are experiencing life from the ‘backward circle,’ from a base of being. Notice how you may begin to feel more available to the world around you, more ready to listen. As you continue practicing, you may also find that your mind becomes clearer and more receptive.

The more often you practice this each day, throughout the day;?but?especially before and during any meeting you attend, whether as participant or leader?—?the more you will feel its transformative effect.

The message is simple: when you notice yourself on the ‘forward circle,’ get off.

2)????The mastering of inner and outer attention

As the practice of the ‘backward circle’ lands in your everyday life, you can start to work consciously with one of the most transformational practices of all, one that has been described in in many traditions – attending to the inner and the outer at the same time.

Exercise: stabilising simultaneous inner and outer attention

Take several deeper breaths and pay attention to relaxing the outbreath. Without pushing it, simply let it be longer, even uttering little sighs of release.

SLOW DOWN

Locate your inner attention by maintaining awareness of your breathing, your pelvis and your legs and feet.

Notice how you can choose to do this….

Once you have established this inner attention, and you notice how physical sensations are constantly changing, and more and more subtle sensations appear in your awareness, start to deliberately notice sounds around you?at the same time as you maintain inner body awareness.

Keep your eyes in soft focus, closer to a gaze.?

Try practicing this throughout the day

To conclude

These practices are very simple, yet have profound effect. They are the gateway to a much deeper level of Presence. In my experience, this is a never-ending journey of rich discovery and a refining and deepening of how we participate in life.

·??????They are intended to be practiced?throughout?the day, until they become second nature

·??????Many traditions state that we reach a very significant developmental milestone when we are truly present for more than 50% of a day

·??????They do not take time out of your day, because you practice within whatever you are doing, and you will end up feeling you have much more time

·??????Whenever we feel the stress of “I don’t have time”, we are stuck in Doing with no access to Being.

To install new habits takes concerted effort and commitment and goes against many long-established patterns.

So I strongly recommend that you find your own way to remind yourself of the practices, in whichever way works for you. For instance, how might it be that every time your phone rings, you use it as a signal to take one deep, conscious breath and bring awareness to your breathing and feet before you answer. The results may surprise you.

Leader as Healer?actively cultivates the integration of Being and Doing, bringing together the whole brain, mind, body and heart into a single, coherent whole. Such leaders embody an inner operating system that is deeply rooted in Being, so that their Doing emerges as a highly attuned responsiveness to the needs of their environment, fit for the purpose of navigating the ever-increasing complexities and challenges of our time.

In the next newsletter I will address emotions, and the ways I believe we need to upgrade our mindsets and practices.

Meanwhile, do please share your experiences of working with these or other practices.