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Leadership by Soul
Regular reflections for leaders who want to make a lasting difference.
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"Jonathan nimbly blends philosophical insight with practical solutions." -
rich content
"He built his talk to such a powerful crescendo, with such quiet and graceful ease"
Jonathan's Speaking -
remarkable story
"Not many great speakers on leadership can draw on their experiences living in the centers of conflict in Africa and growing up in tribal New Guinea. The audience was mesmerized ... and fundamentally changed by the experience."
The Story
What do you care about most?
What are you doing about it?
Leadership begins with vision. Vision arises out of the collision between what you know matters most, and what’s not right with the world around you — whether what’s not right is structural, technical, methodological, procedural or ethical.
Leadership ends with legacy. Between vision and legacy is unrelenting action — acting on your vision, again and again, day after day, with resolute focus, with dogged determination, relentlessly, for years. All great achievements — the building of value-creating companies, the abolition of the slave trade, the ending of Apartheid — were the result of what the philosopher Nietzsche called “a long obedience in the same direction”.
Action that builds legacy is shaped by purpose, discipline and trust. What drives it is soul — that clear-eyed understanding of what the leader knows is utterly important, and what he or she is uniquely qualified to do about it.
Leadership by Soul™ is where I explore, with you — through blogging, videos and public speaking — how we can make the difference that lasts.
Thank you for coming here. Welcome to the journey!
The Task of the Corporation
Whenever social responsibility is a struggle for business it is precisely because we have falsely separated the task of the corporation from the task of being human. We have identified social responsibility as something to be considered as secondary to the pursuit of profits. Milton Friedman’s now famous argument that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” is specious precisely because it divorces from profitability the very thing that drives it: the creation of value.
Value increases when our products and services are not just socially responsible (a negative term that suggests compliance) but socially creative.
Clear-Eyed and Calm: Leadership in a Time of Crisis
Issue 5.12 | May 2020 In this Article: how to make good leadership decisions within the confusion of a crisis. [ … ]
Read MoreIn Search of Stable Ground: Leadership in a Time of Crisis
Issue 5.11 | April 2020 In this Article: How to provide stable leadership when everything around you is unstable and [ … ]
Read MoreLeadership in a Time of Crisis
Dear Readers, It is a season of fear, but it doesn’t need to be. A measure of fear is [ … ]
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