As a child, I recall my mother yelling at me in Yiddish, Hak mir nit keyn tshaynik!, whenever she felt pressed. To me, it simply meant "back off or you’ll get what’s coming to you". Years later, I learned its literal meaning, which like so much of the Yiddish language is expressive of the feeling state: “Don’t bang a tea kettle at me!” It’s a tactile reminder that we all have thresholds that trigger reactive modes, our fight-flight systems go on red alert and feeling states

Since 2016, David Sibbet, Gisela Wendling, Ph.D., Holger Scholz and I have been collaborating on the topics of leadership and the sacred. A wonderful series of retreats and online learning journeys have emerged from our work called LEADING AS SACRED PRACTICE (LASP). In this time of pandemics and increasing concern for social justice, ethics, and wise action, we have released our first eBook about a different way of leading and knowing. Join the LASP email list & download th

What we need more than shouting our answers out loud is a quiet confidence in not knowing. We need better questions and most critically a practiced tolerance for allowing the new to arise from the old. From the perspective of neuro-science, not knowing is an intentional choice to inhibit the part of the brain wired for certainty, predictability and control. Not knowing doesn’t mean we ignore what we know. It means we hold what we know lightly so something new can emerge. We

Third annual conference September 3–7, 2018 Beuerhof Farm, Vulkan Eifel, Germany We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives, but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live. ~ Maya Angelou With colleagues Gisela Wendling, David Sibbet, and Holger Scholz, we are excited to announce the third annual gathering of our Leading as Sacred Practice conference. We

From a systems perspective, emergence is a phenomenon in which something new arises from interactions among smaller or simpler components. The economist Jeffrey Goldstein describes emergence as " the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems ." My colleague, David Bradford, tells the story of the birth of National Training Labs, a pioneering center for the study of group behavior that began sh

What is the role of the sacred in your life?  Have the sacred dimensions become marginalized, dismissed, or ignored in the organizational world?  Is the sacred purely a personal matter relevant only to the individual or is it part of our group and collective evolution toward social cohesion and resilience? Please join me during the week of September 5th for an extraordinary five days of learning, reflection, and collective discovery.  The first days of the conference will be

There are consequences to avoiding our fate, especially at the collective level and especially when we have been given stark warning.  In this case, the warning came from Franklin D. Roosevelt and it is as much about the interior domain of the collective as well how it manifests at the highest corporate and government levels.  Clothed by interest groups shaped by fear and greed, the ensuing garment hides self-interest while emphasizing the fine fit of those who have prospered

hdr photography by Alan Briskin March 27: In the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle there is a front page story of how the Golden Gate National Recreation Area has been awarded three Stewardship Awards from the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a national organization. They are being recognized for a partnership among public agencies and various stakeholders in creating "cultural landscapes" that are dynamic in nature and harbor beauty and historical meaning - "lay

Alan Briskin will be a keynote speaker on June 10th at Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Public Conference on Transformational Leadership .   Pacifica Graduate Institute Presents: Re imagining, Re newing, Re inventing Leadership – A Public Conference June 8-10, 2012 with keynotes by Mathew Fox, Betty Sue Flowers, Carol Pearson, and Alan Briskin Join us and learn how to tap into your deeper wisdom and authentic ways of being and relating; cultivate your capacity for curiosity and

<p>The following exercise was developed by Marty Kaplan:</p> <p><strong>Collective Wisdom:</strong><br /><strong>Activities for Attunement, Discernment and Calibration </strong><br /><br /><strong>Name:</strong> Hula Hoop Activity<br /><strong>Number of People</strong>: 6-10<br /><strong>Materials Required:</strong> Hula Hoop<br /><strong>Space Requirements:</strong> Sufficient space for 6-10 people to stand in a circle<br /><strong>Time Requirements:</strong>&#0160; 25 - 35

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A poem based on phrases and fragments of a speech* given by Deepak Chopra: My grandchildren are here today the most important part for me. Here is my question: What if consciousness was not a byproduct of our brain? What if instead it is the ground of Being, the basement of the Universe in geometric space-time where all co-exists as possibilities. The great Rishi wisdom teachings tell us consciousness cannot be imagined but makes the imagination possible. Can you imagine?

If you have to ask what a picture is worth, then you probably can't afford this column. In The Power of Collective Wisdom we wrote "seeking collective wisdom is a conscious attempt to elevate group life from its history of fighting tooth and claw to reach the top of the hierarchy or achieve dominance over others."  And we referred to the human capacity for empathy, compassion, and the role of mirror neurons in allowing for the permeability of emotional life. So check out thes

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The magazine Leadership Excellence dedicated its recent issue to wisdom and wise judgment. Review the entire magazine, including my article, Collective Wisdom: Where has all the wisdom gone in organizations? From my article: Peter Senge writes in the foreword of our book, The Power of Collective Wisdom: “Few words have a longer historical association with leadership than wisdom and few words have less credibility in that association today.” What has happened to account for

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