Leader as Spiritual Warrior
Transforming Difficulty into the Way of Generosity and Power
With Jerry Granelli & Margaret Wheatley
As leaders, how do we respond to pressures, fears, and conflict without creating more of the same? How do we claim our own power without disempowering others? How do we work with the conflict inherent in an interconnected system to achieve our desired outcomes without resorting to aggression and domination?
In Tibetan, the word warrior means “one who is brave.” Spiritual warriors are those brave enough to commit to not adding to the aggression and fear of this time. As leaders, spiritual warriors work within systems of conventional power but refrain from using coercion, control, and fear to accomplish their work. They use the skillful means of compassion combined with clear seeing in order to act wisely and well in challenging or chaotic situations. Their leadership is grounded in an unshakeable belief in human goodness; they create the organizational conditions that can evoke people’s inherent generosity, wisdom, and caring no matter the intensity or size of the challenge.
Leaders as spiritual warriors act from deep self-knowledge. They become familiar with their strengths and weaknesses, their talents and hot buttons. This self-knowing allows them to trust themselves in situations of fear, aggression, and conflict and not lose their way or contribute to these negative dynamics. They develop the capacity to remain open to what is, to bravely encounter any situation, and to skillfully work with whatever circumstance they encounter. In this way, they become fearless and effective leaders, even in the midst of tumult and uncertainty.
In this track you are invited to practice the way of spiritual warriorship. Each session will be a mixture of teachings, applied practices, and creative experiences. We will use personal work-life challenges to apply and test out these new skills and insights. Together, we will create space that both supports and challenges each of us to develop deeper self-awareness and greater confidence in how we claim our power and generosity as leaders for this time.
We encourage you to join this track if you already have a spiritual or contemplative practice of any tradition, or if you’re ready to commit to beginning such a practice.
Guest contributor for one session: Jim Gimian will teach strategies from The Art of War.
We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency, and bravery are available—not only to us, but to all human beings. - Chögyam Trungpa
Jerry Granelli
Jerry Granelli has been a core faculty member of the ALIA Institute since its first year in 2001. Jazz Times magazine calls Jerry “one of those uncategorizable veteran percussionists who’s done it all.” He burns with an intensity fuelled by a passion for “the pursuit of the spirit of spontaneity which drives the player.” A veteran of the San Francisco jazz scene, Jerry performed with many major players including Mose Allison, Lou Rawls and Sly Stone. He later shared bills with Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead.
Granelli became a Buddhist in 1970, and from the mid-70s through the ’90s he focused on teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Seattle’s Cornish Institute, the Maritime Conservatory in Halifax, and the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin.
Jerry is a keystone in the jazz community of Halifax. Along with the Jazz East organization, he founded the Creative Music Workshop, a two-week intensive music program that takes place every summer in conjunction with the Atlantic Jazz Festival.
For a video biography of Jerry and a sampling of his music, go to his website.
Margaret Wheatley
Margaret Wheatley, Ed.D. writes, teaches, and speaks about how we might organize and accomplish our work in chaotic times, and willingly step forward to serve. She is co-founder and President emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable global foundation that works in partnership with a rich diversity of people around the world who strengthen their communities by working with the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions and environment. Meg has written six books: Leadership and the New Science (in twenty languages, with the 20th anniversary edition to be published in July 2012), Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (7 languages and second edition 2009,) A Simpler Way (with Myron Rogers), Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, Perseverance, and Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey Through Communities Daring to Live the Future Now (with Deborah Frieze). Her numerous articles appear in both professional and popular journals and may be downloaded free from her website. Meg received her doctorate in Organizational Behavior and Change from Harvard University, and a Masters in Media Ecology from New York University. She has been a global citizen since her youth, serving in the Peace Corps in Korea in the 1960s. She was a practicing consultant for more than 30 years to an unusually diverse variety of organizations on all continents. She travels the world willingly, speaking and teaching in organizations, communities, universities, churches and at conferences. She lives in the mountains of Utah; her large family is now dispersed throughout the U.S.