The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

After presenting what is to be learned, why it’s important to us, and what it looks like, we begin the practices that allow us to fulfill on our vision. This is the critical difference in learning: that is, being able to actually take new actions, distinct from simply collecting new information. This comes from recurrent practices.

To blend effectively one must act from a state of feeling and sensing; this requires us to live fully in our body. Blending asks us to be with someone in an extraordinarily intimate fierceness, to join with others in order to negotiate separateness, to transform aggression from discord to accord. This doesn’t mean compliance, acquiescence, or submi

The body is where thought begins, since the body is where we are.

It’s also important not to overextend and leave one’s body in the desire to make contact. When we overextend we’re either looking too far outside of ourselves for approval or we’re not firmly anchored in our own bodies—our own experience—and suddenly find ourselves lost in another’s experience or value system without consciously intending to do so.

The traditional way of committing to something new is to begin by defining what it is we’re bringing into form. For example, if it were to be a better listener, we would first define powerful listening. We would then read or hear examples of leaders who were powerful listeners and how this made them effective. We might read a paper or see a PowerPo

In other words, you can extend your attention out into the world or deep into yourself by simply directing your attention without moving your physical body. Try doing this with your gaze so your eyes are relaxed but extended, and imagine that your attention, through your eyes, is literally touching what you see. You can also do this with your breat

Technical skills such as accounting, analyzing reports, business planning, running a division, strategy, financial implementation, and so forth are necessary skills for leaders.

the self is the fundamental power of a leader and the self is indistinguishable from the body. That is, our comportment, body alignment and function, capacity for action, and how we presence ourselves through our bodies reflects who we are as persons, reflects our orientation to others and to the world. In other words, the body is a manifestation o

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