Category Archives: Consciousness

The Master Blows It Out

Lead­ing is more or less drenched in the assump­tions of indi­vid­u­al­ism.  At least in Unit­ed States cul­ture, the tra­di­tion­al belief is that lead­ing oth­ers depends on hav­ing a strong, clear sense of self, one that is more or less unas­sail­able by cir­cum­stances or the arbi­trary per­cep­tions of oth­ers. Even when there is an awareness — […]

November 9, 2021 – 1:05 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Consciousness, Organizational Culture, Self-Knowledge | Comments (2)

Pause Reflect Refocus Reignite

So many man­agers and lead­ers these days are deal­ing with whole­sale sea change, not just lit­tle shifts in the lev­el of the tide. Not minor waves of change, a process here and there, but over­whelm­ing, mul­ti­fac­eted shifts. Covid. Turnover. New lead­ers. Restruc­tur­ing. Pri­or­i­ties expand­ed. All of the above, overnight. The whole orga­ni­za­tion in ongo­ing redefinition, […]

August 31, 2021 – 3:09 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Consciousness, Reflective Leadership | Comments (8)

The Mutiny Against Our Conditioning

As adults we come up against facets of our­selves that we wish to change. Uncon­scious big­otry, for exam­ple, or cer­tain aspects of intro­ver­sion or exces­sive guilt, impa­tience or ego­cen­tric­i­ty — our weak­ness­es and the results of our “over-strengths.” Tak­ing on these chal­lenges sounds good and promis­es a desir­able trans­for­ma­tion but in real­i­ty also por­tends the […]

May 6, 2021 – 10:51 am | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Conflict, Consciousness, Power, Truth, Wounds | Comments (10)

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)