Leadership Notes -- Thoughts on Leading People and Making a Difference in Organizations

Word count this issue: 277

Estimated reading time:  1.45 minutes

We’ve been working all week here in the house in Gibsons, BC. http://www.gibsons.ca The room I do my coaching and webinars from looks out into the ravine beside which the house sits. I’ve been conscious of wanting to see, smell and feel the natural world since I returned from my travels working with amazing people.

I love travel; there is a little boy inside me that gets excited whenever he gets on the air side of security. I could be flying anywhere, and I am excited. And I’ve been conscious the past few months of the sterility of airports, airplanes and hotels. There is very little “natural” about them. I found myself starving for green and the smell of wet forest. And since  earlier this week  we have seen a bear, a couple of eagles, a racoon (rare in these parts) and countless ducks and cormorants. I’m feeling very grounded. 

I wonder about if our busy lives have become too sterile. I have written in the past about my concern about binary thinking overtaking us.  What I’ve been calling quantum thinking, the space between and around the 1 and the 0, is where our creativity actually exists. I think our sterile spaces are very similar; they work efficiently and are very good at what they do, but they leave little or no room for creativity. (I do thank the airports and hotels that have built art collections that can take us into quantum thinking.) 

I wonder then, how do you move into nature, how do you move into quantum thinking?  What is the impact on your work as a leader when you find time and space in the natural world?