Category Archives: Consciousness

Don’t try to change your organization; change the underlying forces that make it what it is

In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Charles Lyell, a Scot­tish geol­o­gist, pro­fessed the rad­i­cal view that the same forces that shaped the Earth in the past were still oper­at­ing in the present moment. His the­o­ry chal­lenged the more palat­able the­o­ry at the time that geo­log­i­cal epochs end­ed in major, cat­a­stroph­ic events, such as species being wiped out […]

March 5, 2021 – 4:02 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Conflict, Consciousness, Power | Comments (1)

Building Self-Trust

High self-trust is a essen­tial to lead­er­ship. At a bare min­i­mum we need it because lead­er­ship often demands we han­dle tense or sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tions and poten­tial­ly must make unpop­u­lar deci­sions. Some­times we must influ­ence not only our­selves but a team or sev­er­al teams or a whole orga­ni­za­tion.  I use this word, self-trust, instead of self-confidence […]

December 18, 2020 – 4:24 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Consciousness, Openness, Self-Knowledge | Comments (2)

How to Meet a Strong Emotion

The prob­lem with strong emo­tions is that we over-iden­ti­­fy with them. It’s not that I feel sad. I am sad. It’s not that I feel envi­ous, or mad or guilty. Rather, all too eas­i­ly I become these emo­tions and act them out. Lat­er, I may say: “I was­n’t myself” (but, of course, I was.) If […]

December 13, 2020 – 2:35 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Consciousness, Self-Knowledge | Comments (1)

On Disbelieving Your Own Thoughts

A cen­tral chal­lenge of lead­ing is being able to see — see very clear­ly — what is hap­pen­ing. Many things can impede this need­ed aware­ness and insight — inad­e­quate data and wrong infor­ma­tion being two of the most com­mon prob­lems. A third may be our own bias­es, the unex­am­ined per­son­al beliefs that dri­ve poor judgment. […]

October 26, 2020 – 3:19 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Consciousness, Journey of Unlearning, Power, Reflective Leadership | Comments (1)