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

"Bestselling author of Who Do We Want to Be gives visionary leaders the tools to create organizations that foster generosity, creativity, and kindness in a chaotic world. We are living in chaotic and contentious times. Tensions between people are reaching dangerously hateful proportions. Margaret Wheatley calls on leaders to resist, to forge communities that protect people from the destructive dynamics so prevalent today and rediscover and reawaken our common humanity. To become what she calls Warriors for the Human Spirit. Pushing back against the prevailing culture of chaos requires leaders to work on themselves and their organizations-to do inner and outer work. Wheatley offers practices to help leaders: Calm the mind and avoid impulsive reactions; Communicate honestly and fearlessly; Become aware of the stories they tell themselves that shape their view of the world; Develop their organization's capacity for self-organizing; Conduct after-action reviews that replace blaming with learning; Leverage diversity to provide more perspectives on the critical problems of today. Sane leadership is the unshakable confidence that people can be generous, creative, and kind. The leader's work, Wheatley insists, is to create the conditions for those capacities to manifest in meaningful work, to establish islands of sanity in these seas of delusion"--
What Would It Be Like to Restore Sanity? What would it be like to work together again in creative and generous ways? What would it be like to be curious about who you’re with rather than judging or fearing them? What would it be like to engage together in exploring possibilities rather than withdrawing in conflict or disagreement? What would it be like to be working well together?From 50 years working with leaders globally, I state with full confidence that leadership has never been more difficult. And it’s not our fault. We’ve been good and caring leaders, we’ve led people in empowering, engaging ways to create meaningful, productive work. But now we face external conditions far beyond our control to change, dynamics intensifying at shocking speed. The perfect storm is here, created by the coalescence of climate and human-created catastrophes. As leaders dedicated to serving the causes and people we treasure, confronted by this unrelenting tsunami, what are we to do? I state my answer to this also with full confidence: We need to restore sanity by awakening the human spirit. We can achieve this only if we undertake the most challenging and meaningful work of our leader lives: Creating Islands of Sanity. An Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people’s commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people’s innate generosity, creativity, and kindness. It sets itself apart as an island to protect itself from the life-destroying dynamics, policies, and behaviors that oppress and deny the human spirit. No matter what is happening around us, we can discover practices that enliven our human spirits and produce meaningful contributions for this time.