Leading with Soul
Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal
Jossey-Bass San Francisco 2001
Page 6
Matthew Fox writes:
“Life and livelihood ought not to be separated but to flow from the same source, which is Spirit, for both life and livelihood are about Spirit. Spirit means life, and both life and livelihood are about living in depth, living with meaning, purpose, joy, and a sense of contribution to the greater community. A spirituality of work is about bringing life and livelihood back together again. And spirit with them.
Pg. 13
Sail forth – steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee,
and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet
dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the
seas of God? Walt Whitman
Pg. 23
The heart of leadership is in the hearts of leaders. You have to lead from something deep in your heart.
Pg. 40
He is suffering what Albert Schweitzer referred to as a “sleeping sickness of the soul.”
Pg. 41
Robert Lane marshals evidence of a long-term decline in happiness in prosperous democratic societies. He argues that more and more of us are misled by a materialist culture to put money and possessions at the center of our lives. We swallow the bait, ignoring the growing evidence that people who focus their lives on money are demonstrably less happy that people who strive for other, deeper purposes.
Pg. 43
One of the principle findings of Mitroff and Denton’s landmark study of spirituality in the workplace was that “people do not want to compartmentalize or fragment their lives. The search for meaning, purpose, wholeness, and integration is a constant, never-ending task. To confine this search to one day a week or after hours violates people’s basic sense of integrity, of being whole persons. In short, soul is not something one leaves at home.”
Pg. 45
Beowulf is one of the oldest surviving works in English literature. It is the story of a prince, Beowulf, who establishes his leadership by courageously going forth to confront and destroy a murderous beast, Grendel. Beowulf soon learns the price of victory: he must face Grendel’s vicious and vengeful mother in her den at the bottom of an icy pond. The English poet David Whyte has explored the spiritual message in the story. In going to the depths to confront Grendel’s mother, Whyte tells us, Beowulf is in quest of his own soul. Symbolically, Grendel’s mother represents the beast within himself that Beowulf must face and conquer if he is to know himself and to grow.
Pg. 64
He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise. William Blake
Pg. 67
Ernest Becker, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death, observes that “man is the God who shits.”
Pg. 105
Find the real world, give it endlessly away
Grow rich, fling gold to all who ask
Live at the empty heart of Paradox
I’ll dance there with you, cheek to cheek Rumi
Pg. 108
When Debashis Chatterjee asked Mother Teresa the secret of her leadership, her answer was simple but profound: “Small work with great love.”
When Robert Galvin (then CEO of Motorola), was asked by his son, Chris (now CEO of Motorola), for his philosophy of business he replied: “Five words” to love and to achieve. And the second will never happen until you do the first.”
Pg. 110
Despite efforts across corporate America to increase participation and enhance the quality of work, tens of thousands of people still see their work as just a job – they put in time, go through the motions, and collect a check. In so doing, they are deprived of the virtues Matthew Fox ascribes to work as distinct from a job: “Work comes from the inside out; work is an expression of our soul, our inner being. It is unique to the individual; it is creative. Work is an expression of the Spirit at work through us.”
Pg. 171
It seems to me that in the last analysis there are only two choices: Macbeth’s contention that life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, and Pierre Teilhard’s “something is afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.” Andrew Greely