When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.
Very great change starts from very small conversations, held among people who care.
There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.
I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences.
It’s not differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do.
All of us need better skills in listening, conversing, respecting one another’s uniqueness, because these are essential for strong relationships.
There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process – we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.
Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges.
Disorder can play a critical role in giving birth to new, higher forms of order.
A leader these days needs to be a host – one who convenes diversity; who convenes all viewpoints in creative processes where our mutual intelligence can come forth.
We are, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities.
Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering.
We each create our world by what we choose to notice, creating a world of distinction that makes sense to us. We then ‘see’ the world through the self we have created.
Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.
Leadership is a series of behaviors rather than a role for heroes.
I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers.
Hopelessness has surprised me with patience.
Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don’t have to do anything else. We don’t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.