Launching Off the Mat. In the Office.

In the past year I have spent a lot of time thinking about what is important to me professionally and personally. The bottom line is simple:  To do things that matter with people I care about. This has been a significant motivation behind my decision to start my own company.

Culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group. That might sound like some sort of corporate vision handed down (or nurtured) from above, but culture is really defined by every one of us; it is reflected in how we choose to “show up” every day at work. I think a happy and healthy as well as productive and effective work environment is an attainable and worthy goal.  And like most things worth doing this takes purposeful effort and winds up being more of a journey than a destination.

This blog is about my reflections on corporate culture. In particular, I am interested in two different approaches to personal growth and individual development. Together or separately I believe these can have dramatic and positive impact in how we show up at work, on a company’s culture, and in our lives and on our relationships. The first is Emotional Intelligence. One definition of emotional intelligence is to “the ability to sense, understand, manage, communicate, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, trust, communication, creativity, influence, and conflict resolution”. The second is yoga. Yoga is recognized in the West first as an exercise program, but yoga is, more broadly, about becoming skillful with respect to what and how one is thinking. Yogis undertake a daily practice in order to become aware of unskillful mental states, to give them up, and to cultivate skillful ones.

Myself, I started practicing yoga (yes - for exercise!) in 2006, attended teacher training with Rolf Gates in 2011-2012, and I received my first introduction to emotional intelligence in leadership training in 2007. I hope you’ll find some of my notes and reflections interesting.