P to the Power of Infinity™

4th Installment of our Self-Coaching Process

Blueprint for real transformation and success for individual employees/executives, teams and organizations

Principle II: PRACTICAL WAY FORWARD
 
Following on from last week, when we talked about the foundational principle of Putting People First and how it brings profits. This leads us to the second principle, which is beautifully summed up by author Alan Briskin in The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace: “To explore the human soul is not to abandon the importance of organizations in favour of the subjective and idiosyncratic tastes of individuals.”

Indeed, while the strategy of putting people first has to be totally genuine and more than a mere tactic, it is at the same time a very pragmatic one.  Organizations are made of human beings, who need to be led to move forward in a synchronistic manner and engaged in a way whereby not only their brains are being utilized, but you are getting the full benefit of engaging their entire beings, their minds, hearts and souls as well.  

This then is our Whole Mind Approach™.  The point is our left brain is not our whole mind.  Neither is our whole brain.  Even when we engage both the left and right hemispheres of our brain, which is more than what most of us are consistently and consciously doing, do we know how to engage our entire being let alone that of our whole team or organization? 

Do we also know how to align our own entire being so that we can demonstrate unconflicted behaviour in a myriad of powerful ways, before we even begin to attempt aligning that of our team and our organization?  “Alignment” is another word that is so often bandied around, without much consciousness and depth of both understanding and implementation. 

To what are we aligned?  I will need to write an entire chapter on this subject, which in fact, I am doing in the book I’m currently authoring.  For this blog, let it suffice to say that, all parts of us need to come into alignment, within ourselves so that a tremendous power spontaneously emerges.  With it comes great clarity, decisiveness, courage, presence, authority, compassion, vision and all other desirable attributes of leadership.  With it also comes an ability to communicate, to garner widespread support, to be in sync with others, be in tune with the environment around us, from the more immediate physicality that surrounds us to a larger more Universal one.

I find it amazing that for centuries, there has been such a focus and reliance on logical analyses, favouring it to intuitive information which is considered less valuable to our culture (among humans, across most nations).  It’s as if we have deliberately created a huge handicap for ourselves, to see how well we’d do with our lives and our world, blindfolded and gagged, with our arms tied behind our back and hobbling on one leg, when we have been given a whole and healthy body.

We find ourselves mainly concerned with measuring events and analyzing their meaning, rather than creating and directing their flow.   As we learn to ignore our “gut feelings” three-quarters of the time or more, we lose touch with our intuitive mind and our insights become increasingly rare.  Instead of being able to tap into an inner wisdom and innate power at will, we become increasingly fearful and depend on the security of “safety with numbers”.  It’s therefore understandable that we, more often than not, exercise a “herd mentality” and do what everybody else does.  And what everybody else does gets decided by leaders who are not necessarily the most evolved ones, with the highest good of all concerned in mind.

Is it not time for us to change how we lead ourselves, our communities, our world?

We need to use intuition as an equal partner with logic, and to combine our cognitive understanding of the world around us with a powerful personal vision.  We would gain a holistic and more precise view of reality as we also perceive mood, change and possibility – the mood of the times, the change as society evolves and the possible future we might create, more so than we are accurately doing at present as a species. 

It is the view of the artist, the philosopher, the visionary – a view that has always carried with it the power to influence the world.  From Martin Luther King’s dream of equality comes several years later the possibility and reality of immense success for Oprah, Obama and many other African Americans.  And the great Albert Einstein who was not only a “pre-eminent scientist in a century dominated by science” but a philosopher and a visionary as well.  His humane and democratic instincts  were said to be “an ideal political model for the 21st century, embodying the very best of this century as well as our highest hopes for the next.” 

Einstein himself spoke about imagination being far more important than knowledge; about how the greatest thing he could do would be to understand the mind of God rather than the study of science itself; and other quotable bits of wisdom borne out of intuition and a higher intelligence.

Our Whole Mind Approach plugs people into this higher intelligence.  It is not about pandering to the whims and fancies of individual employees and letting their egos get in the way of the growth and success of organizations.  On the contrary, by addressing the whole person in each member of the team and the whole organization, and powerfully moving them forward together, it will be impossible for the organization not to be successful.  Passion, creativity and innovation will be unleashed.  Productivity and profit will inevitably increase. 

We are talking about harnessing, thus far, largely untapped human potential, beyond what has largely been done to date in organizations.  We are talking about unleashing tremendous energy in a consistent, systematic and collective way.  Can you even begin to imagine the endless possibilities that can be created?  Or is your mind still stuck in academia and textbooks written by unenlightened, unaware thought-leaders of yesteryear?

We need to have enough courage and to fully utilize this higher Intelligence in a concerted and innovative way in order to powerfully shift ourselves, our corporate world, our world in general and our entire human race.  We must do this to the point that it becomes the norm. 

Let’s narrow it down to ourselves and our corporate world for the time being.  By working on ourselves and the teams or organizations we lead, we will automatically impact the rest of humanity and our world at large.

But you will need to know how to do this – both for yourself as well as others involved.  How can you take anyone to a place you haven’t been to before?  As we know, great leaders must lead by example.

Next week, we’ll start taking you through the Process.  In the meantime, take time out for yourself.  Be still, be silent, contemplate, meditate.  Listen to your inner wisdom and what it has to say to you!