Why Zen leadership and why this blog? Zen and leadership belong together. Zen brings leadership to its enlightened best, without the fears and smallness of ego getting in the way. Conversely, leadership brings Zen into the world where it can do the most good.  Zen Leadership is not some model “out there” for you to emulate.  Rather it is your own boundless, creative nature expressed in a way that adds value and inspires others to a better place. The Zen leader in you emerges through what I call “flips” in consciousness that transform your sense of self from separate to connected and, ultimately, one-with-everything.  Along the way, these flips radically reframe leadership, for example from coping to transforming, from driving results to attracting the future, from the confusion of delusion to whole and awakened leadership.

This is a most worthy journey that has not only guided my own life, but also my work with countless leaders, all of which inspires my book, The Zen Leader (Career Press, April, 2012), and will inspire the launch of an Institute for Zen Leadership in the fall. This blog is a way to engage in dialogue around why Zen leadership matters, how it shows up, how to make the flips that propel development, and apply them to leading.  As a biophysicist by training, I’ll also invite and bring into this dialogue research into the science of consciousness and the emerging field of neuroleadership. This blog is a way to bring this whole “flipping” journey to life – to your life – and engage around the real examples, questions, frustrations and triumphs of your own experience and leadership. 

You’ll be hearing my voice in this blog perhaps once a week, but also other voices including, perhaps, your own.  Have a question about one of the flips?  Ask it here, for surely others will have the same question and our dialogue may help both you and them.  Find an interesting bit of research on the effects of weekly reflection on the brain?  Share it here, and we’ll all benefit.  Hit a stumbling block in your own practice? Let’s talk about it, and if nothing else, you’ll get some free coaching on how you might flip out of it. I don’t have all the answers, and even more important than my answers, will be the answers they trigger in your own mind.  Having been on this journey of Zen and leadership for more than 30 years, I probably have fallen into most of the potholes ahead of you, and would welcome the chance to make your journey even more successful.  The world needs the Zen Leader in you!