EMPOWER WELL-BEING THROUGH MINDFUL TRANSFORMATION
Thursday, June 11, 2020, 4:30 PM ET 25-min ZOOM presentation
Retired Futurist Jonathan Peck will explore the context that shapes what we mean by 'leading' as each of us has different experiences which help determine our views of this meaning. We will do a brief guided imagery exercise to share the different meanings. Peck will offer meanings from his experiences and readings about leading people in different times of history, emphasizing servant leadership. He will focus on leading with emotion, especially the positive emotions that support human cooperation and evolution.
Emotion can be approached through both personal experience and research. The positive emotions of love, joy, hope, faith and awe have been shown in one study to be the basis for a better life as well as for human cooperation. Another line of research argues that we use our emotions to predict responses, which may mean we have more control over the emotions we construct than many realize. Jonathan will offer ideas for how we can create social health in turbulent times by leading with emotion.
Leading With Emotion
Jonathan Peck (jonathancpeck@gmail.com)
June 11, 2020
I. Introduction—Two talks and leadership dialogue based on guided imagery exercise
A. Talk about leading: personal experience and key readings
i. Learning from failures, colleagues and clients
B. Book reviews: James O’Toole Leading Change—The Argument for Values Based Leadership; Roger Fritz Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Prove; C. Otto Scharmer Theory U and (with Karin Kaufer) Leading from the Emerging Future; Plutarch Lives I Lycurgus “The Lawgiver”
II. Guided Imagery Dialogue—Use Chat to describe the leader seen in your image
III. Understanding Emotion—Talk about different understandings from history, psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience
A. Martin Luther King takes leadership of Montgomery Bus Boycott: “Justice is love in calculation and justice is love correcting that which rebels against love”. King’s friend and supporter Rabbi Abraham Heschel: “Awe is more than an emotion. It is a way of understanding, an intuition into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder and the beginning of wisdom is awe.”
B. Psychiatrist George Vaillant provides learning from the Harvard Adult Development Study in Spiritual Evolution. Human evolution is now a cultural rather than biological phenomenon and it relies on the positive emotions that bases cooperation on the ability to share love, joy, faith, hope and awe.
C. Psychologist Daniel Goleman authored multiple books on emotional intelligence (EQ), including Destructive Emotions which describes the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Paul Ekman.
D. Lisa Feldman Barrett offers a counterpoint to Ekman and mainstream neuroscience in How Emotions Are Made—The Secret Life of the Brain describes how we can deconstruct and recategorize emotions to predict internal and external responses. We can increase EQ with a larger vocabulary of emotion via the “Affective Circumplex.”
IV. Conclusion—Mindfulness can foster spiritual, social and physical health supported by servant leaders, i.e., all of us. Dr. King told us: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” We are that light.
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Jonathan Peck worked for thirty eight years as a futurist before he retired in 2019. The work centered on health and used forecasts, scenarios and visions to help leaders from all sectors see new possibilities. Were all these organizational leaders—CEOs and executives from corporations, senior government officials, presidents of foundations and associations—truly leaders?
Peck’s experience was that many titular leaders used their organization to serve self interests; they were egocentric leaders. However, some embraced the servant leader ethic and sought to serve those who worked with them to achieve larger purposes. Wherever he could, Peck sought such leaders out to help them develop inspired visions and strategies based on new possibilities along with enduring “tried and true” approaches. He had some successes and many failures to learn from.