Beingful
Blogs & Stories
Being in Business
“There are two birds, two dear friends, who live in the very same tree.” So say the Upanishads, ancient Indian philosophical texts about the nature of reality.
Beingful Leadership & Business Performance
Business leaders who are sceptical of the business worth of the principles of Beingful leadership may well ask, Can such a Beingful business also do well in terms of conventional measures of success, such as material profits and market value?
Jochen Zeitz on Being in Business
If the ordinary senses cannot establish our connection between the material self and the universal self, then in what other ways can we do so? One way is to consider our hidden correspondence with other beings directly.
Being & Connection
When talking of Being and connection, I am reminded of an encounter involving Jeffrey Swartz when he was the COO of Timberland, an outdoor clothing and goods company.
Ancient Indian rituals and Business Leaders
Despite the considerable effort that the death rituals (and other ancient Indian rituals) required from the individual performing them, they provided value that far exceeded the costs.
Benefits from Beingful Leadership
As management scholars Louis Fry and Mark Kriger point out, this journey of centering in Being becomes a source of inspiration for every other aspect of business leadership, such as spiritual perception, moral sensitivity, leadership values, and leadership skills and actions.
The Higher Reality of Business Leadership
Since business is an institution that is created by and composed of humans, human reality can and should inform business reality because of the Upanishadic principle of correspondence.
Dharma of Business Leadership
The dharma principle gives the organising rule for maintaining balance among the different subsystems that describe business’s connections.
Aspire to a Higher Sense of Self through Business
Business is a key means through which individuals imagine opportunities to develop a higher sense of self that is special to them.
Shadows of Material Self on Leadership
If business provides great opportunities for individuals to aspire to a higher sense of self, then there are also vast shadows cast by our material self on the field of business leadership.
Business Leadership to Recognize Being
I have written until now of how my material self influenced my first start-up’s business leadership and the kind of organization we were aspiring to be in the early stages of our funding.
The Evolving Workplace
Depending on one’s perspective, today’s workplace is evolving into one that is filled with great opportunities, or one that teems with terrible challenges.
Well-Being in the Workplace
Given the growing pressures and uncertainty of the workplace and its domination of our daily life, employee well-being at work has become an important concern for both employees and senior management.
The Whole Being at Work
A holistic view of well-being, where the whole human being behind the employee badge is considered, is proposed in this blog. Moreover, just as researchers in eudaemonic well-being have turned to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, we propose that the concept of holistic well-being at work begin with the concept of the whole person in ancient Indian philosophy.
Stepping off the Treadmill: The Inclusive Materialist
What is true of the personal self is also true of the business self. Business leaders who emphasize the pursuit of profits and other material values excessively will damage the overall well-being of the corporation.
Long-Term Stakeholder Well-Being
If sustained delight is an end state vision of success, then what is the compass that Beingful leaders can use to indicate whether their business is pointing in this direction?
Workplace as Workspace
The previous research on well-being at work identified one key trend: Researchers over time have conceptualised the employee as a fuller human being, initially seeing him as a body performing work, then as a psychological person with hedonic or eudaemonic aspects, and more recently as a social being.
Two Ways of Prospering
Beingful leader-sages such as Paul Polman, Jochen Zeitz, and Azim Premji represent a well balanced synthesis of leadership qualities because of their focus on the higher relationships and shared purpose of business.
The Real Business Freedom
I have talked of Beingful leadership mainly in the context of the journey of the lower bird toward the higher bird that is Being.
Gandhi’s Freedom Through Being
The creation of modern India was a triumph of the power of Being used politically and peacefully to transform a people and their country during the difficult years of 1915-1948.