Business School Dean Explains Executive Coaching

 


 

 


 

Vision Series: Transformational Leadership from GMU-TV on Vimeo.

 

Jorge Haddock, Dean, School of Management talks about Transformational Leadership. Change focuses on behavior, whereas transformation focuses on “beingness” or culture. Transformational leadership is about shifting the organizational conversations or interpretations to create different results or outcomes. Organizational culture can become transactional, but transformational leadership creates conversations that generate a culture of relationships, moods, and actions consistent with the desired outcomes. The axiom is that our power to transform our commitments and subsequent actions is directly determined by our ability to engage in powerful conversations – to generate transformation we must generate different conversations. These conversations utilize language, which is most commonly descriptive. However, leaders use language in a generative fashion to declare something with no evidence or authority. Using this type of language, transformational leaders create truly new possibilities.

 


 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig

 

Robert Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a deep and impressive work that has sold millions of copies and stayed in print in many languages for over twenty years. I read it for the first time when I was about forty years old. It was good to wait until I was ready for it. I am not sure I can recommend the book, but I am glad I experienced it.

Mr. Pirsig presents the story of his search for the roots of deep (more…)

The Web of Life

The Fritjof Caprarenowned author of The Tao of Physics weaves a yet broader tapestry of reality in The Web of Life. Capra’s readable survey goes beyond quantum physics and eastern mystics to encompass biology, consciousness, and the ecology of the entire earth. From chaos and complexity science, through Heidegger and the Systems Thinkers, right up to the Gaia Theory, Capra explains in fascinating detail the key ideas of twentieth-century philosophers and scientists whose insights may be propelling all of us into the post-modern era.

See it at Amazon

The Web of Life:

A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems

by Fritoj Capra

 


Selected excerpts from the book. [My comments in brackets.]

p. 6 A social paradigm, which I define as “a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions, and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way the community organizes itself.”

The paradigm that is now receding has (more…)

The Last Word on Power

 


 

The Last Word on Power:
Re-Invention for Leaders and Anyone
Who Must Make the Impossible Happen

by Tracy Goss (Betty Sue Flowers, Editor)

 


 

Tracy GossCapsule Review

Tracy Goss has long been closely associated with Werner Erhard, the originator of EST and Landmark Education Corporation’s Forum. I expect happy graduates of those programs to be very happy with this book (I am and I am). The book presents the central concepts of those programs very clearly and in a format designed to help business people put the “distinctions” to work immediately. I doubt, however, that a person not trained in ontological coaching could get much sense from these pages. It can seem to be merely jargon and wild promises unless you have actually put the techniques to work for yourself with the assistance of a coach (as I have and I do).

For people experienced with the methods, this book is an effective refresher and spur to action. A friend and I (more…)