ff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity tha

To be a thought leader in any arena, we need to be free and original thinkers, capable of focusing on how we are thinking as well as what we are thinking. The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo said, “In order to see, you have to stop being in the middle of the picture.” This means we have to step outside of ourselves, put some distance between ourselves and our thoughts so we can assess their heritage and test them for authenticity. Because the consciousness of a leader has a tremendous impact on the consciousness of the organization, every leader must do the deep and personal work of clarifying his or her own thoughts, so that when we speak, every word has a ring of clarity, every statement has a purpose and air of authenticity.

This requires a looking inward that both grounds and balances our outward actions. When we look within, mine our own experience for feelings that not only mesh with our message, but are actually the source of the message, then the delivery itself carries an integrity of authorship that is convincing, compassionate, and compelling. When we manage to rid ourselves of inherited voices and speak from the heart, our very speaking is a force that can change minds, lives, and the direction of any community to which we belong.

I was in India during the monsoon season, living for awhile in a community founded by a man who’d lived many years with Mohandas Gandhi. One morning I woke up to discover this was the day we were going to begin the construction of a barn. Women, men and children were forming a line from the creekbed to the site of the building, about a quarter of a mile away. Teenage girls were assembling at the site where there was a pile of huge rocks. As I took my place in the line, I asked Nayan Bala, the woman next to me, what in the world was going on. “We’re transporting the mortar materials from the creek,” she said, as the first tin bowl came my way. “Here, pass this on.” The bowl contained a little water, some gravel and small pebbles. I passed it to the woman next to me, and as soon as I turned around, there was another bowl coming at me. I handed that one over and another one came. And another, and another.

It was 98 degrees and the humidity was hovering at about 90 percent. After passing bowls for an hour, I thought I might like to change places with the girls up at the site. “What are they doing with the rocks?” I asked. “They carry them on their head and deliver them to the men once the mortar is in place,” said Nayan Bala, passing me another bowl. I decided to stay in line. But the heat was unbearable, and I was getting ornery. There has to be another way, I thought, as I scanned the horizon looking for some way out of this predicament.

I saw several oxen lazing around further down the creek, a tractor off in the distance, and a flat bed trailer up near the rock pile. “This is ridiculous!” I said to Nayan Bala, whose face was as drenched with sweat as mine. “Why don’t we hook up those oxen to some carts, and get that tractor hitched to the flat bed. There’s no reason why all these people have to be killing themselves passing these little bowls. Let’s mechanize this thing. Don’t you know time is money?” As much as I’d prided myself on not being an “ugly American,” there it was, right out in the open. Even as those last few words tumbled out of my sorry mouth, I knew I had crossed some boundary, created some new cultural divide with the power of my own words. I wanted to shrink into non-existence. But Nayan Bala was a mountain of kindness. She put the bowl down that was coming my way, wiped her hands on her sari, and placed them on my shoulders. “Maybe you haven’t been in India long enough to understand something important about us. Every person is in line here because they want to be. In ten years, or twenty years, when this barn is built, they will bring their children here, their grandchildren here, and they will tell them the story of how they helped build this barn. They are proud to be doing this, and they will be proud every time they tell the story. Do you think we should deny them this?”

That was the moment for me when, as Dee Hock says, I was forced to let go of my present belief. Time wasn’t money for these people. Nor for me, actually. That concept was an illusion I had carried with me like an extra bag on my journey. It was an illusion that led to stress and anger. It didn’t serve me. It wasn’t mine, really. It was an inherited thought, not an original one. I was simply thinking something I was taught to think. It was the American way, but not the right way. Not for this time and place.

Nayan Bala’s graciousness allowed me to look at my thoughts, and to see that they weren’t mine at all. But it took an upset like that to set me apart from my own thinking. According to philosopher and integral theorist Ken Wilber, when we’re looking at our thoughts, we’re not using them to look at the world, so there’s a moment of freedom there, a moment to be open to a new awareness. Is this thought really mine? Am I the author of it? Has it passed the test of my own experience? The poet Kabir writes, “If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true.” We can only speak powerfully from our own experience.

To be a thought leader, an original thinker, we have to move and think and speak from our own personal knowing. Our power comes from our ability to transform what we have felt into what we know. It’s an alchemy, of sorts, where we acquire the skill of transforming the lead of our experience into the gold of our wisdom. Each of us knows what no one else knows because no one else has lived our lives, seen what we’ve seen, felt what we’ve felt. The great Persian poet Rumi writes, “The throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking.” And this is a great clue. Who are the speakers who have really inspired you? Who are the ones who have changed your thinking, altered the course of your own life? Are they not the ones who speak and write from the heart? Who stand before you, not with notes and memorized speeches, but with the courage to be simply who they are, to share their visions, their struggles, their fears? This is the stuff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity tha

ine from the creekbed to the site of the building, about a quarter of a mile away. Teenage girls were assembling at the site where there was a pile of huge rocks. As I took my place in the line, I asked Nayan Bala, the woman next to me, what in the world was going on. “We’re transporting the mortar materials from the creek,” she said, as the first tin bowl came my way. “Here, pass this on.” The bowl contained a little water, some gravel and small pebbles. I passed it to the woman next to me, and as soon as I turned around, there was another bowl coming at me. I handed that one over and another one came. And another, and another.

It was 98 degrees and the humidity was hovering at about 90 percent. After passing bowls for an hour, I thought I might like to change places with the girls up at the site. “What are they doing with the rocks?” I asked. “They carry them on their head and deliver them to the men once the mortar is in place,” said Nayan Bala, passing me another bowl. I decided to stay in line. But the heat was unbearable, and I was getting ornery. There has to be another way, I thought, as I scanned the horizon looking for some way out of this predicament.

I saw several oxen lazing around further down the creek, a tractor off in the distance, and a flat bed trailer up near the rock pile. “This is ridiculous!” I said to Nayan Bala, whose face was as drenched with sweat as mine. “Why don’t we hook up those oxen to some carts, and get that tractor hitched to the flat bed. There’s no reason why all these people have to be killing themselves passing these little bowls. Let’s mechanize this thing. Don’t you know time is money?” As much as I’d prided myself on not being an “ugly American,” there it was, right out in the open. Even as those last few words tumbled out of my sorry mouth, I knew I had crossed some boundary, created some new cultural divide with the power of my own words. I wanted to shrink into non-existence. But Nayan Bala was a mountain of kindness. She put the bowl down that was coming my way, wiped her hands on her sari, and placed them on my shoulders. “Maybe you haven’t been in India long enough to understand something important about us. Every person is in line here because they want to be. In ten years, or twenty years, when this barn is built, they will bring their children here, their grandchildren here, and they will tell them the story of how they helped build this barn. They are proud to be doing this, and they will be proud every time they tell the story. Do you think we should deny them this?”

That was the moment for me when, as Dee Hock says, I was forced to let go of my present belief. Time wasn’t money for these people. Nor for me, actually. That concept was an illusion I had carried with me like an extra bag on my journey. It was an illusion that led to stress and anger. It didn’t serve me. It wasn’t mine, really. It was an inherited thought, not an original one. I was simply thinking something I was taught to think. It was the American way, but not the right way. Not for this time and place.

Nayan Bala’s graciousness allowed me to look at my thoughts, and to see that they weren’t mine at all. But it took an upset like that to set me apart from my own thinking. According to philosopher and integral theorist Ken Wilber, when we’re looking at our thoughts, we’re not using them to look at the world, so there’s a moment of freedom there, a moment to be open to a new awareness. Is this thought really mine? Am I the author of it? Has it passed the test of my own experience? The poet Kabir writes, “If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true.” We can only speak powerfully from our own experience.

To be a thought leader, an original thinker, we have to move and think and speak from our own personal knowing. Our power comes from our ability to transform what we have felt into what we know. It’s an alchemy, of sorts, where we acquire the skill of transforming the lead of our experience into the gold of our wisdom. Each of us knows what no one else knows because no one else has lived our lives, seen what we’ve seen, felt what we’ve felt. The great Persian poet Rumi writes, “The throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking.” And this is a great clue. Who are the speakers who have really inspired you? Who are the ones who have changed your thinking, altered the course of your own life? Are they not the ones who speak and write from the heart? Who stand before you, not with notes and memorized speeches, but with the courage to be simply who they are, to share their visions, their struggles, their fears? This is the stuff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity tha

to be killing themselves passing these little bowls. Let’s mechanize this thing. Don’t you know time is money?” As much as I’d prided myself on not being an “ugly American,” there it was, right out in the open. Even as those last few words tumbled out of my sorry mouth, I knew I had crossed some boundary, created some new cultural divide with the power of my own words. I wanted to shrink into non-existence. But Nayan Bala was a mountain of kindness. She put the bowl down that was coming my way, wiped her hands on her sari, and placed them on my shoulders. “Maybe you haven’t been in India long enough to understand something important about us. Every person is in line here because they want to be. In ten years, or twenty years, when this barn is built, they will bring their children here, their grandchildren here, and they will tell them the story of how they helped build this barn. They are proud to be doing this, and they will be proud every time they tell the story. Do you think we should deny them this?”

That was the moment for me when, as Dee Hock says, I was forced to let go of my present belief. Time wasn’t money for these people. Nor for me, actually. That concept was an illusion I had carried with me like an extra bag on my journey. It was an illusion that led to stress and anger. It didn’t serve me. It wasn’t mine, really. It was an inherited thought, not an original one. I was simply thinking something I was taught to think. It was the American way, but not the right way. Not for this time and place.

Nayan Bala’s graciousness allowed me to look at my thoughts, and to see that they weren’t mine at all. But it took an upset like that to set me apart from my own thinking. According to philosopher and integral theorist Ken Wilber, when we’re looking at our thoughts, we’re not using them to look at the world, so there’s a moment of freedom there, a moment to be open to a new awareness. Is this thought really mine? Am I the author of it? Has it passed the test of my own experience? The poet Kabir writes, “If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true.” We can only speak powerfully from our own experience.

To be a thought leader, an original thinker, we have to move and think and speak from our own personal knowing. Our power comes from our ability to transform what we have felt into what we know. It’s an alchemy, of sorts, where we acquire the skill of transforming the lead of our experience into the gold of our wisdom. Each of us knows what no one else knows because no one else has lived our lives, seen what we’ve seen, felt what we’ve felt. The great Persian poet Rumi writes, “The throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking.” And this is a great clue. Who are the speakers who have really inspired you? Who are the ones who have changed your thinking, altered the course of your own life? Are they not the ones who speak and write from the heart? Who stand before you, not with notes and memorized speeches, but with the courage to be simply who they are, to share their visions, their struggles, their fears? This is the stuff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity tha

Bala’s graciousness allowed me to look at my thoughts, and to see that they weren’t mine at all. But it took an upset like that to set me apart from my own thinking. According to philosopher and integral theorist Ken Wilber, when we’re looking at our thoughts, we’re not using them to look at the world, so there’s a moment of freedom there, a moment to be open to a new awareness. Is this thought really mine? Am I the author of it? Has it passed the test of my own experience? The poet Kabir writes, “If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true.” We can only speak powerfully from our own experience.

To be a thought leader, an original thinker, we have to move and think and speak from our own personal knowing. Our power comes from our ability to transform what we have felt into what we know. It’s an alchemy, of sorts, where we acquire the skill of transforming the lead of our experience into the gold of our wisdom. Each of us knows what no one else knows because no one else has lived our lives, seen what we’ve seen, felt what we’ve felt. The great Persian poet Rumi writes, “The throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking.” And this is a great clue. Who are the speakers who have really inspired you? Who are the ones who have changed your thinking, altered the course of your own life? Are they not the ones who speak and write from the heart? Who stand before you, not with notes and memorized speeches, but with the courage to be simply who they are, to share their visions, their struggles, their fears? This is the stuff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity tha

ff of leadership—this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say it’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.

People these days are longing for that kind of openness. We really want depth. It’s the root of relationship from which stems all human possibilities. And yet our society perpetuates the illusion that this kind of intimacy is unsafe, unwise, unprofessional. So we skim across the surface of our workdays like water spiders, never revealing the most essential information about who we are, what we feel, what truths we hold to which is the greatest gift we could offer, for we all find ourselves and our meaning in each others’ stories.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, deep dialogue is a practice that can be learned and cultivated. It is essential to original thinking as it is a tool for helping us discover what we value and why. As soon as you speak of your values, your visions, your fears, my mind begins a search to discover its own beliefs in the matter. We are hardwired to compare and contrast, to mine for differences and similarities, to take in and synthesize and evolve ourselves forward. According to Dr. Richard Moss in The I That Is We, we define ourselves through problems, which are statements of contrast, not absolutes.

Original thinkers delight in this process. They are not frightened by opposing ideas; they welcome them as an opportunity to clarify and redefine their own meanings, which is the very activity that keeps them fully charged, awakened, illumined. This is the practice that allows one to dismantle the shackles of conditioned thinking. It’s why diversity works. Being in the presence of others whose experiences are vastly different from ours causes us to see ourselves and our beliefs in a new light.

Thought leaders inspire leadership. They ignite imaginations, explode old myths, and illumine paths to the future that others may follow. One of the oldest voices embedded in our cultural consciousness is the voice that says, “If s/he can, I can.” Our confidence is buoyed by the fact that someone else did it before us. No matter how dangerous or outrageous or innovative, if someone did it, we know it’s possible, and that endeavor becomes a challenge, then, for others to meet or surpass. By going first, thought leaders provide the basis for change. They abandon outmoded traditions with the same alacrity as one might dispense with a pair of old hiking boots or an outdated pair of spike heels.

We let go of the old to discover the new, as we let go of illusions to discover the real. The way to awareness is the way of subtraction, of letting go, one by one, of our fears, our doubts, our prejudices, our judgments, our inherited notions of how it should be, who deserves what, who is to blame. What’s happening in the world is a result of our collective input. The morning headlines are the news that we are making as a whole human family, by what we do and what we fail to do. Each one of us is a co-creator of the very culture we are immersed in, and if we want to see change, we can make change by changing ourselves, our thinking, and our destructive habits. Transformation originates in people who see a better way, a fairer world; people who reveal themselves, disclose their dreams, unfold their hopes in the presence of others. And this very unfolding, this revelation of raw, unharnessed desire, this deep longing to be a force for good in the world is what inspires others to feel their own longings, to remember their own purpose, and to act, perhaps for the first time, in accordance with their inner spirit.

Dee Hock, founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA writes in Birth of the Chaordic Age: “If your beliefs are based on the old model of top-down command and control, specialization, special privilege, and nothing but profit, your organization will, in time, turn toxic. It will become antithetical to the human spirit and destructive of the biosphere.” What he advocates is a leadership rooted in purpose and principles, organizations that have, at their very heart, concerns that engage and enliven the human spirit, that call forth from the membership the essence of their fertile imaginations.

As we have evolved beyond the mechanics and rigidities of the industrial age in our buildings and businesses, so have the workers evolved into beings who seek more purposeful lives, workplaces that require and inspire relationships, collaborative processes that stimulate originality and culminate in a sense of meaningful community. People want to engage with others, to feel the thrill of creative combustion, the joy of originating new solutions, like spelunkers in a cave, illuminating the unknown with the floodlight of their diverse wisdom and experience.

Every thinking person on this planet feels in their heart the toll of compassion and the weight of complicity. On some deep level, we are aware that our choices have an impact on others, that there is some ineffable connection between our lives and the lives of our sisters and brothers in Rwanda, Calcutta, Uzbekistan. We sense the inequities and a deep sorrow runs through our nervous system day and night. We are frozen in our silences, numbed by our distractions, waiting and yearning and praying for war to end, hunger to end, poverty to end. Many of us cry out silently in the night, but the time has come to be public with this pain, to speak of its relentlessness, its unbearableness, for it is only when we release it that we become free to address it, to embrace it, and ultimately, to heal it.

As individuals, the greatest courage that is called for is the courage to be real. When we are real, it melts the frozen places in ourselves and others. It opens the passageways between our hearts and our minds, thaws the blockages that constrain our imagination, and carries us down to our wellsprings of wisdom. The solutions to our crises are already here. They exist in our relationships, in our stories, in our unfolding forgiveness, and it is through the expression of these things that we will one day live into the answers we seek at this time.

The leadership that is required at this moment in history is a leadership of generosity, of humility, of self-offering. To lead, we need not know the answers. We must only convene the circles, articulate the questions, frame the conversation, and direct attention to the issues that matter. It is the community that will rise up in response to our calling—joyful to be invited, heartened to be involved—and it is the community that will lead us past our illusions, beyond our fears, and into an imagining brighter and bolder than all imaginings.

To be free to offer the gifts of your heart, to be free of what others might think, to be a truth-teller, a catalyst, a voice in the dark: these are the fruits of original thinking, and these are the signs of authentic thought leadership.