It was with great pleasure that today I received an early Christmas present. They were the copies of my new book from Routledge, “Beauty in Leadership and Coaching and its role in transforming human consciousness.” Hot from the press with ink almost still wet!
So, what does Beauty, Leadership and Coaching have in common?
Can you point to where Beauty resides? You might point to some object or person you find beautiful, but where is that beauty? Others might say beauty is in the eye of the beholder – in which case why does that eye not see everything as beautiful?
In the book we (the readers and myself in relationship) explore how Beauty is an emergent energy, that arises when an organism such as a human or other living entity are awakened to something beyond themselves, to which they are attracted. Beauty is an emergent phenomenon that both arises between two aspects of life and creates a new emotional rhythmic connection between them.
Beauty has the power to bypass our resistance, to awaken love, desire, joy and awe within us, before our conceptual mind of the left-brain neo-cortex can step in. We talk about falling in love, but it is our limited rationality that falls or melts away, allowing our deeper animate intelligence, our heart mind (the Daoist concept of Xin), to take over and take us beyond our limited small ‘I’, to new connectedness within and without.
Can you point to where leadership resides? When I ask people in my talks this question, they point to themselves of others in the room, or they say: ‘in everyone’, or ‘everywhere’. In the book I show how leadership is also an emergent phenomenon. It does not reside in leaders, for a leader without followers, is ‘a voice crying in the desert’. Some notable writers argue that leadership is distributed or is co-created between leaders and followers, but a leader with followers, does not by itself create followers, but idolisation of a celebrity, or celebrity stalking! I may have thousands of followers on LinkedIn, but that does not create leadership. Leadership, like Beauty is an emergent connecting energy, which requires, not only leaders and followers, but a collective purpose that requires collaboration.
Coaching is also an emergent phenomenon, that co-arises when three elements come together and are connected – a coach, a coachee and challenges, that have arisen in the life and work of the coachee. For coaching to emerge within this triangle, both the coach and the coachee must not be on either of their individual agendas. The coaching also should not be addressing the challenges that the coachee or coach already have the answer to. Coaching emerges when both individuals are shoulder to shoulder at the learning edge, both recognising the important challenge that life if providing, but which neither can answer by themselves – a challenge that requires collaborative inquiry and generative dialogue.
Coaching is not done by the coach, nor the coachee or even their working partnership. It is sparked into being by the generous challenges that life gives us, some of which we welcome and other we resist with all our energy. The spiritual teacher Ram Dass, spoke about how we all sign up for the school of life, but most of us spend our lives complaining about the curriculum.
Leadership and Coaching need Beauty, to open our doors of perception, to release us from the small dark prison of atomistic thinking to a much greater world of interconnection. Beauty in nature, music, art and poetry, creates new neural pathways in your brain; new alignment of conceptual mind, heart mind and body mind; new interconnections with and between our intuitive and animate knowing, and through our senses, feelings and emotions.
The metacrisis of our times require a transformation in human consciousness, and we all, as leaders and coaches, have a big role in this crucial work. Beauty can be one of our most important guides and partner in doing this work.
The book provides many simple but profound practices we can do, both as leaders and coaches, guided and supported by emergent Beauty.
