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Why Poetry In Business Matters.

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Through exercises, rehearsals and seminars The Corporate theatre draws on the combined power of Performing Arts, Philosophy, Psychology and business acumen to develop new ways to reconnect leaders with their inspirational powers, something we consider vital in the relationship economy. In this post, our resident poet suggests that by developing our ability to sense and communicate inspiration through poetry, we can deepen the impact of our leadership and open up new opportunities for inspired growth. In this rapidly changing world, we tend to rely on surface data to make sense of our environment. In the short term, this tried and tested approach may work. However, it usually only results in incremental, uncompetitive improvements. For truly paradigmatic change, we must modify  how  we work out what something means. ‘But  poetry!?’  you ask. Well, poetry engages both our rational mind and our intuition to bring about a radical shift in cognition. We...
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The dominant mode of our existence...

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The dominant mode of our existence has become Transaction. Most of us have chosen, consciously or not, to be bought and sold. Our living standards are sacrosanct, our sense of entitlement to increasing wealth seems embedded in our approach to life, and we assume, wrongly, that the current model of corporate capitalism will last for ever. We are, most of us, members of the bourgeoisie, and as such complicit in the economic systems and ills that imprison us. This is out of step with Nature as a system, of which we are a part. We are out of step with ourselves. Yet, we are born to be inspired and to inspire. Inspiration is not the sole province of great public figures. Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa believed themselves called to enormous tasks and great destinies; they gave their lives in service to them, were renowned for doing so, and their...
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2419 Hits

The Receiving and Transmitting of Inspiration

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  The receiving and transmitting of Inspiration is like breathing in and breathing out. Only like it, though. What I receive, or breathe in, is not just air. It is my version, or my picture, of what I experience with my five senses. It can only be my version, because ‘my’ experience is shaped by who I ‘am’. To explain what I mean, I would ask you to think of a moment when you have been with a friend to the same place at the same time, let’s say a beach on a summer’s evening. You both see the waves moving in the light of the setting sun; you both feel the warm wind on your skin; you both move your toes in the wet sand. You both smell the seaweed on the rocks, hear the sucking of the water as it moves out of the pools, and taste the...
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Inspiration lies at the core of what most of us want...

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“Inspiration lies at the core of what most of us want to become as people; and the lack of thoughtful, felt, and trusted Inspiration is behind many of the problems we face today. I believe Inspiration can lead us to some of the answers to the questions we grapple with, and that this ‘leading’ can help each of us ‘lead’ our own lives more fully and to greater effect. Inspiration can give us the collective intelligence we need to counteract the rise of destructive forces. Indeed, it represents a ‘different kind of force’  -  one that can ‘animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble." I look forward to sharing more thoughts on Inspiration, including what it really is and how to do it. Martin Best, The Corporate Theatre.
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2299 Hits

Inspiration comes in two ways.

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It comes into us when we let our experience of the world enter us and awaken our full nature. And it comes out of us when we offer that awakened full nature to others. These two ways in which Inspiration comes to us and to others form a kind of equation whose ‘answer’ is equal to its ‘question’. We can call them breathing in and breathing out. We inspire, or breathe in, experiences that awaken our full nature; and we inspire, or breathe out our awakened nature, for others. Inspiration is simultaneously the most mysterious, and the most accessible, part of what we are and who we can become. Its power is unlimited and all embracing. Moreover, Inspiration is not exclusive. It is the property of each one of us, however flawed we may be.
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2421 Hits

A Force For Connection

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Mindfulness is great, but inspiration is greater. If leaders of large organisations learn to do inspiration as part of their leadership strategy, all kinds of good things will begin to happen. First, they will become themselves: if being a leader means being oneself, as Bob Goffe of the LBS remarked, then inspiration will be their fastest and most reliable route to inspiring performance.  If, as Peter Senge remarked, being a leader means becoming a human being, then inspiration, the awakening and exercising of the neurones of Pathos, Logos and Ethos will take you there. Second, they will become creative. They will learn to refashion their own language, making one that is truly their own, by learning to describe people, places and actions, the three dimensions of depth, space and time that are the basis of a picture that tells a story. Instead of looking only for rational arguments, they will...
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2832 Hits

Surprised by Joy

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I’m feeling terrible today. There is no sun. Everything seems flat. The weariness engendered by lack of sleep buzzes in my head. I lift my eyes and let my sight fall on a large cypress tree out there. It lives for no other reason than to live. Its branches wave at me. At me? Or is it waving to me? At me or to me, the tips of its branches are most certainly a whiter shade of pale. If I were painting them, there’d be Chinese white in the mix, definitely. The darker parts behind those tips have brown in them. The branches move, move, move, in a wind-blown dance. The buzz of weariness disappears, or at least seems less important. The movement of the cypress tips is like a stroking hand, many stroking hands in fact, each one stroking my weariness. Somewhere inside me an emotion stirs. Gratitude. Gentleness....
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2982 Hits

Infinite Empathy

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The thinker Charles Eisenstein posted last November that 'the dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify.' And he suggests that this is both a huge danger and a wonderful opportunity. Let's not assume, though, that he is right about the dissolution of anything. It might be truer to say that discontinuity is speeding up in line with the increasing speed of communication. There is perhaps more reliability to be found in his assertion that 'we are entering a space between stories', and that in this place of unknowing the one thing we can rely on is Empathy. Can we, he asks, take Empathy into the political world and 'create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex?' My question is: can it come from the corporate world so as to infuse the political one? Our work in The Corporate Theatre has...
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3040 Hits

Thoughts on Empathy

I am re-reading Iain McGilchrist's great book  The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western World.  It's a huge work, and repays every minute of every hour in the reading. And it stimulated me to share a few thoughts about Empathy, which is one of its main themes. Empathy is sometimes called 'the ability to stand in someone else's shoes', and this has always seemed to me to be an inadequate description. If we read Martin Buber's  I and Thou , we find that he gives a lot of attention to letting other people and the world 'come to fetch us.' This is, for Buber, a state of Empathy, because it does without ego and the control that goes with it. If I choose to be without will, then others and the world I experience can come to 'fetch' me without me controlling their...
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Inspirational Leadership Workshop GSK CEE in Warsaw - Poems featuring transformational moments





We shared transformational moments from our past and visualised moments from our future which were then fused together in a rich session when we realised that every one of us is a poet  
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Inspirational leadership workshop with GSK- CEE in Warsaw







Once again, for the fifth time in CEE, we gathered together a cohort of leaders for the Inspirational Leadership workshop run by our partners The Corporate Theatre. Twenty leaders representing eleven different nationalities from across CEE and an invited guest from the US spent two and a half days learning the principles and techniques of becoming even more inspiring leaders. For those unfamiliar with this programme we started by sitting around a campfire and sharing our feelings about how we are and what we are leaving behind. We invented stories showing how we naturally bring together elements of people, places and actions in order to create more vivid and memorable images, a process strengthened by an exercise in inspirational observation contemplating a street scene which our collective imaginations filled with rich stories. We learned about the importance of posture, breathing and clear pronounciation, shared stories about the people who have...
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3579 Hits

Inspiring Growth - In the forest


Yesterday my wife and I took a walk through a nearby forest, a so called heritage forest indicating it’s non commercial use. Trunks were laying around wherever they had  fallen, trees of all types were growing without predefined patterns. Bogs were spreading and all sorts of plants were growing wild. We immersed into a world of peace, a frog jumped into a pond covered in green weed, the wind was rustling in the trees, the sunshine was cut into beams illuminating the area fairy like. We breathed in, feeling inspired by a perfect nature surrounding us.   Suddenly the peace and quiet was interrupted by some giggling laughter and penetrating human chatter. Like switching off a light the mystery of the place was lost. Annoyed I started to think about I-Thou and I-It . I undoubtedly had opened myself to nature itself and felt rewarded by the spiritual energy flowing...
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3132 Hits

Forgetting the 'I' allowed me to access unlimited energy


It was hot, it was mystic, it was impressive, it was unreal the trip through the Sahara. We, 8 friends, exploring the desert in Algeria and immersing into another world: hours without the site of another human being, almost unreal a caravan at the horizon slowly moving along, a small group of tents in the middle of nowhere, abstract formations of rocks sculptured by 100000 years of grinding storms, dunes artistically rippled by the everlasting winds. When the sun slowly turned red we just stopped anywhere for the night. One of these nights I left our camp after sun set and walked into the darkness just far enough to leave any noise or light behind curious how I would feel in this vast emptiness. The sky above me sparkled from trillions of shiny dots plastered on to true blackness. No noise would interrupt the grandness of this moment. I was impressed...
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2966 Hits

The Poet's Eye

At The Corporate Theatre we believe that the iron grip of jargon on the business community—and on all organizations—is the greatest weight that individuals choose to bear. It appeals to the desire for comfort, familiarity and risk-aversion, and it kills thought, feeling and the true sense of personal purpose. The foundation of all that we do is the re-shaping and re-directing of language from corporate jargon to the creation of realities.

Our founder Martin Best talks about how embracing the 'Poets Eye' can help leaders unleash their creativity and imagination.

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4105 Hits

I-Thou: A Personal Connection

Here at The Corporate Theatre we have been deeply influenced by the philosophy of Martin Buber. His approach to analysing human relations is baked into everything we do, helping leaders to connect with each other and the world around them in more truly meaningful, powerful, and human ways. We know, and our clients tell us, that this allows leaders to be more authentic, empathetic and creative—qualities which, when combined, make leaders more inspirational. The guiding lights of Buber’s philosophy are: “I” only exists in relationship to everybody and everything else. We can’t build relationships; they already exist. We can choose what kind of relationship we want, by choosing our mindset to things and people. Buber shows us that there are two mindsets to choose from in all situations: “I-It” - which is transactional, authoritarian, distancing “I-Thou” - which is reciprocal, equal, close. At The Corporate Theatre we show leaders how...
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5228 Hits