Restoring Sanity: Practices to Awaken Generosity, Creativity, and Kindness in Ourselves and Our Organizations

Bestselling author of Who Do We Choose to Be gives brave leaders the tools to create work conditions that foster generosity, creativity, and kindness in a world of tumultuous and irreversible changes. nFrom fifty years of working with leaders on all continents and at all levels, Margaret Wheatley feels confident to say that leadership has never been more difficult. No matter our past success as caring and empowering leaders, we now face dynamics beyond our control intensifying at exponential speed. The perfect storm is here, the coalescence of climate and human-created catastrophes, greed, and fear. People retreat in self-protection and communities have fractured. As leaders dedicated to serving the causes and people we treasure, what are we to do? Wheatley's answer is that we need to restore sanity by awakening the human spirit. To achieve this, we must undertake the most challenging and meaningful work of our leader lives: Creating Islands of Sanity, places of possibility and sanctuary. n nSane leadership is the unshakable confidence that people can be generous, creative, and kind. The leader's role is to create the conditions for these innate capacities to manifest in meaningful work. This role requires both inner and outer work. Wheatley provides detailed practices for developing personal and group capacities to respond wisely and well to the challenges of this tumultuous time. Practices are organized around five major questions: n nn n- How do we create and sustain an Island of Sanity? n- How do we shift from reactivity to responsiveness? n- What are the practices to awaken people's generosity, creativity, and kindness? n- What do we do when something goes wrong? n- What do we do when the road gets hard? nYes, leadership is increasingly difficult. And it can be noble work if we choose to be Warriors for the Human Spirit, using our power and influence to create places of possibility and sanctuary. There is no more rewarding and joyful work than awakening people's generosity, creativity, and kindness.