“It takes enormous courage and enormous compassion to face reality. To say ‘I want my little contribution to make a difference. Maybe only in the lives of my colleagues, family, and community, but that's enough actually.’”
Today's episode is with author and systems thinker, Margaret Wheatley. For over four decades, she's been helping leaders show up fully in these chaotic times and find meaningful ways to serve. She’s the author of Leadership and The New Science and Who Do We Choose To Be?.
I'll be honest - I find Margaret's work both inspiring and deeply confronting. Part of me appreciates her invitation to look directly at the pattern of societal collapse we're in, relieved someone's telling the truth without sugarcoating. Another part wonders if we can really predict how it'll all turn out.
We talk about facing the reality of collapse with clear eyes, redefining meaningful work and life in this context, and how coaches and leaders can move beyond individualism towards community-centered approaches.
⭐ Key moments
02:33 - The power of clear-eyed leadership in chaotic times
09:36 - Embracing reality to find meaningful service
13:09 - Breaking free from "hopium" to see our authentic path
22:45 - Cultivating presence through mindfulness practices
25:42 - Embracing the warrior spirit in a changing world
30:39 - Redefining meaningful work and life in turbulent times
36:15 - Community as the answer to individualism
41:54 - Ancient wisdom we need at these times
📚 Resources & Links
Who Do We Choose To Be (book)
Restoring Sanity (book)
So Far From Home (book)
Warriors for the Human Spirit (Margaret’s training program)
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Transcript
Margaret Wheatley: It is extremely painful and difficult to take in what's happening.
It takes enormous courage and enormous compassion to face reality.
And the compassion part of it is, I want to stay. I want to be of service. I want my little contribution to make a difference. Maybe only in the lives of my colleagues, family and community, but that's enough actually.
Jeremy Blanchard: Welcome to the Wider Roots podcast, a show about how we can use the power of coaching and personal transformation to help create the world we most want to live in. I'm your host, Jeremy Blanchard.
And today's episode is with author and systems thinker, Margaret Wheatley.
For more than four decades, she has been supporting leaders to learn how to show up fully in the chaotic times that we're living in. And find their meaningful way of being of service.
And I'll be honest with you. I find Margaret's work both really inspiring and deeply confronting. There's a part of me that really appreciates her invitation to look directly at the pattern of societal collapse that we're in. And that feels really relieved that someone is actually telling the truth about it and willing to talk about it openly. Without any kind of sugarcoating.
And another part of me really wonders if we know enough to be able to predict how the game's going to turn out and like really call it in that way. So I wrestled a lot with this tension. As I was reading her book, Who Do We Choose To Be while preparing for this conversation?
And my hope is that you'll get to go on a similar journey of inquiry and reflection as you listen to this episode.
So in this conversation, we talk about how we can face the reality of collapse with clear eyes and without turning away or numbing ourselves. We talk about what it means to redefine meaningful work and a meaningful life in this context of societal collapse. And we discuss how coaches and leaders can move beyond individualism and start to embrace a more community centered way of being.
And dear listener, if you're listening to this episode and something resonates with you, I invite you to take a moment to share the episode with someone else who might also get something out of it.
All right. Let's dive in.
[00:02:33] The power of clear-eyed leadership in chaotic times
Jeremy Blanchard: Margaret, welcome to the show. So glad to have you here.
Margaret Wheatley: I'm very glad we have time to talk about important things.
Jeremy Blanchard: I've heard your name for a long time and the work that you've been doing in leadership and coaching. And, as I was getting this podcast started, about six months ago, I tried to find all the podcasts I could at this intersection of personal transformation and systemic transformation, individual and collective. And I found your interview on the coaches rising podcast a few years back.
And one of the things you said on that show was, something you say often, but you included the word coaches in it. You said, we need leaders and coaches who can help us embody the best qualities of being human, compassion, kindness, generosity. And you were one of the first people I'd heard include coaches in a declaration about what's needed in this moment.
And I thought, yes, it. And that became a real seed for, what this podcast has become. So that's one of the themes that I hope we can, circle around is how does this apply specifically to coaches?
Margaret Wheatley: Yeah.
Jeremy Blanchard: I just finished reading your book, Who Do We Choose to Be? And I know you just came out with another book, Restoring Sanity, which is like maybe a companion to that. One of the things I deeply appreciate about you and your work that feels very resonant and also sometimes confronting for me is your dedication to seeing the world with clear eyes and looking at reality with clear eyes, so maybe we can start there of what do you see in this moment? And what do you hope others are start to see with clear eyes? That's a big question
Margaret Wheatley: Well I have been a student of civilizations since my freshman year in college. I've been a student of leadership since 1966. I've been a student of living systems and how life organizes and behaves itself since the publication of my first big book, "Leadership in the New Science". So I have several different lenses by which to see what's going on.
And I have not been afraid to face reality, which I want to just flag. We need to talk about this because the evidence of where we are in the history of civilizations in the pattern of collapse is so clear cut. It's irrefutable. The science of where we are with environment and climate changes is so clear and how we behave as human beings when we're in fear, when, we have no capacity to be conscious, to be thoughtful, to be compassionate.
That is so clear. You put those three things together. And this is why I write books called, "Who Do We Choose To Be", because we need to face reality so we can choose our meaningful work so we can choose what is a valid contribution at this time. It is extremely painful and difficult to take in what's happening.
We're in the last stages, well documented throughout history. We're in the last stages of collapse in the United States and quickly, spreading out to Europe and the world. We're in the last stages. Now that's not a, casual statement, but I've documented this in "Who Do We Choose To Be", but I want to go with the title for a moment because we still want to do meaningful work, right?
And as coaches or consultants, we still have access to leaders. Leadership has never been more difficult, never been this hard because leaders are dealing with unending escalating uncertainty and they don't know what to do generally. I'm not sure I know what to do, by the way.
But in Restoring Sanity, I gave practices that bring people together in robust community and in highly participative structures that create meaningful work and good solutions. Within a very finite space that I'm calling "Islands of Sanity" generally for leaders. And I'd like all of you who are coaches or consultants to think about what you're seeing, because what I'm seeing is leaders confront this terrible escalating uncertainty. They look for certainty with staff, with lower down in the organization.
They're pushing more for timelines, for plans, for outcome measures that are impossible. So what do people do? They leave, they withdraw, they refuse to participate because they're working in a false reality. I want us all to face reality because only then can we define what is meaningful work at this time.
It's not five year strategic plans. It's not thinking we're going to shift the these global dynamics of greed and power and aggression. This is a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt: "what can we do where we are with what we have?" And that's what I want us all to focus on.
It takes enormous courage and enormous compassion to face reality.
And the compassion part of it is, I want to stay. I want to be of service. I want my little contribution to make a difference. Maybe only in the lives of my colleagues, family and community, but that's enough actually. So it's a time of profound need for us to re reconfigure or redevelop what is a meaningful work life for us.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah, what I appreciate about that is I know I go through phases of being willing to look at reality with clear eyes since I got involved as a climate activist in college many, many years ago.
And then I'll, be willing to look at it and then I'll say that was enough.
That was as much as I could take right now. And I need to sort of just coast with my current level of understanding and be informed with that. And so reading your book was another moment of like, Oh man, this is really uncomfortable. This is very hard and I feel the commitment in myself.
And I think many people can relate to this. There's a part of me that really wants to look at the truth and not shy away from it. And there's another part of me that's like, Is it that bad? I really don't want it to be that bad. Can we just like make it a little less bad, please?
Margaret Wheatley: I love your description. It's perfect. I still have the same responses.
[00:09:36] Embracing reality to find meaningful service
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah, I was gonna ask. Do you struggle with this? How is this for you?
Margaret Wheatley: I don't struggle with it nearly as much because I've been in this prophesying role now since 2012 when I published "So Far From Home."
But I know I deal with it in those that I train as Warriors for the Human Spirit. It's a constant conversation of how much more can we hold? Well, the human heart is, as one meditation teacher put it, as wide as the world.
And the real need for us in trying to face reality is, first of all, you take it in bits because it's so atrociously overwhelming. At this point, I have periods when I'm just allowing myself to be in despair because I trust myself enough to know I won't stay there. And the way I trust myself is because I have practices for connecting compassionately, opening my heart to those who are suffering.
That's a core need. We have to, you know, we can't handle it. Well, what about the people in Gaza or Ukraine or Congo or Sudan who have to handle it? Let's just say that this is our work to be able to be with those who are suffering so terribly. And to be with those who are suffering also from climate, natural disasters.
These are on the increase. It's all part of the cycle that we're engaged in now. And I think we have to get over ourselves because as long as we're focused on, well, I can't handle this, we're withdrawing ourselves. It's a very privileged position to say, well I can't handle this. So I'm just going to tune out.
You do have to be very careful of your sources of information. And how much you can take in at any one time. I know when looking at photographs, which I do quite deliberately, of people who are suffering, I know when I've done enough for the moment, but just for the moment, but you have to want to be of service rather than self protection. That's the gate for all of us. In your work, where you have access to coaching leaders or supporting organizations and people in them, you have to make a decision. Not can I bear it, but do I want to stay here? Do I want to be of service as painful as this world is?
And then there are practices and paths that allow us to stay, and then withdraw when we absolutely need it.
But this is where I just come up against, are we in self protection or are we offering ourselves in service?
It's not easy, but you have to have this, it's almost like an identity imperative. I still want to help. I still want to, be a good person. I don't want to withdraw and hide and just become fearful and overwhelmed. So this is a moment of great personal choice for all of us.
[00:13:09] Breaking free from "hopium" to see our authentic path
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah. One of the things that's occurring to me as you're saying it right now is I can see in myself the way that I have made a bargain at times, that your work helps me question deeply, which and the bargain goes like this if I can see that the outcome that I want the thriving, regenerative, transformed, spiritually awake world, you know, the like, the utopia.
If I can see that the utopia is available, that's how I can confront the reality.
Margaret Wheatley: So you are a victim, you're addicted to hopium.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah.
Margaret Wheatley: And hopium is taking hope to the extreme. Hope for outcomes that could only be achieved if we deny the laws of science, physics, chemistry, biology. If we're into deep denial or if we hope for technological solutions. So these techno optimists are rampant these days, ever more so as things get worse.
So hopium is an addiction and it blinds us to seeing opportunities for contribution and service. It simply blinds us. Because we need the world to work well in order for us to volunteer our energy, our passion, our generosity of spirit. Well, the world isn't going to work well. Do you still want to be someone who knows how to offer their generosity and compassion and creativity?
I think there are many of us, an increasing number of us, who really want to figure out a role for ourselves. But we can't identify that role if we're locked in this grip of hopium, I've written tremendous amounts about hope. And it's companion fear.
When we don't get what we hoped for, we move into fear, depression, withdrawal.
It's just an ancient cycle defined in all Asian spiritual traditions. Hope and fear are different sides of the same coin. But when we take off the blinders of hope, we see what's needed here. And am I the one to contribute to this need? Then the work just blossoms.
There's so much we could do. So Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, who was a great playwright and poet before he became a political activist and president of the new state of Czechoslovakia, he said that "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, it's the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out."
And that's where we need to place our hope is the certainty that I'm doing the work that feels like right work to me. And It's defined by my asking the question, what's needed here and then assessing, do I have the skills to contribute or should I just let that one go and pray that someone else comes in to do that work?
Jeremy Blanchard: The thing I'm really appreciating then is that if we, take off that condition of I need to get the outcome
Margaret Wheatley: Yes.
Good luck with that, by the way.
Jeremy Blanchard: right, luck. if I take off that condition to my action, or, that, other way I'm thinking of it really is as a bargain, it's an internal sort of putting on of blinders so I can keep myself in the game.
Margaret Wheatley: Jeremy, I want to acknowledge we were raised that way.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah, totally.
Margaret Wheatley: We knew to make plans, to set objectives, to have a well defined purpose, to know what our values were, and then the world would satisfy our needs by giving us work that we had defined as meaningful. Now I'm just reversing it.
Put yourself into the world, see what the world needs from you. But we all had this. I used to teach this stuff, set goals, define your purpose, et cetera. This is not how you deal with this world in such egregious pain and such exponentially increasing uncertainty. We have to be present and we have to learn to see more clearly what's needed from me.
Not what I want, but what's needed from me.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah. And so I feel the liberation that comes from, well, I'm not going to make that bargain anymore.
It's at first there's a huge grief, right? At first it's Oh, I'm really looking at it with clear eyes. And then I can sense the liberation of, Oh, I'm actually freed from this conditional participation.
I'm actually going to show up regardless as you're talking about.
Margaret Wheatley: So you're discovering that it's not only the feeling of liberation, which is essential, but you then have experiences of really contributing. So it may be quite modest. It usually is much more reduced. It's a much smaller level of scale. But, It's very meaningful work when you can bring people together in ways that we've forgotten how to be together, when you can create possibilities for people, when you can just help them in talking to you.
I'm thinking now the coaching environment that they recognize in you, Oh, you're peaceful or you're centered, or you actually have an inner life here. Now we can get to this overarching theme here. You are someone I like being with. I mean, I've been training Warriors for the Human Spirit, spiritual, peaceful warriors for, nine years now and because they have trained to have a stable mind, they don't get triggered so easily.
They don't get upset so easily. They know how to deal with their despair and moments of how could this be happening so terrible? And we have a strong community of support. We're not trying to change the world. We're trying to work within the domains of where we are with who we're with and as we develop these skills we become present and we're present with insight and we're present with compassion and people we're finding now this is several hundreds people people love being around us why wouldn't they you know it's so hard to find someone who doesn't suddenly get triggered or suddenly get aggressive or, just go off on you or just want to tell you their terrible victim story.
This is so common. And we know how to just be present as a good listener, but it's actually what we're finding, and this is documented by other people. teachers, that people are magnetized to places that's people that feel open, available, peaceful, present, so for me, what I want from all of us is to learn how to develop those skills of a stable mind and open perception, curiosity, which includes good listening, but doesn't stop there.
Because I know that if I'm sitting in front of someone, what they're getting from me is so far beyond the words. It's my ability to be present for them. We were so missing this. But you have to learn these skills.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah. And those are, in my experience, skills that coaches have in abundance. A lot of training in how do I be present? How do I sit with suffering? How do I help invite someone into discovering their contribution? And as you're saying, the contribution the world needs from them?
Margaret Wheatley: I want to add one factor to that because I was a consultant for decades,
Margaret Wheatley: We have to learn how to not want to be liked in those relationships. This is a level of authenticity that actually gives us power. One of my Buddhist teachers said, authenticity creates a field of power.
It creates a field presence and also safety for people to step into it. But if I know this first hand for many, many years, always in the back of my awareness Are they liking this? How are they judging me? What are they thinking of me? Are they going to keep hiring me? I mean, we know this, right?
And so there's a level of confidence that we need to develop in ourselves as well, that I know who I'm choosing to be, and I know I'm trying to embody it in this conversation right now. Can I silence those voices, like when the person sitting in front of me, whether it's on Zoom or in person, starts to scowl or look disturbed?
Do I change what I'm saying? Or, do I have enough confidence that maybe I'll just change the way I'm saying it, but I'm still holding my presence?
[00:22:45] Cultivating presence through mindfulness practices
Jeremy Blanchard: I'm curious for coaches and really anyone who's committed to that because we need a lot of people. We need more than just trained coaches to be embodying that presence. What are some of the ways that you help people develop that capacity to stay present even when they're receiving,
Margaret Wheatley: at first I want to say it takes time, especially in a profession where being liked and respected is core to getting you in, the door and to getting you work. But we teach and this is now I'm describing the training we offer for Warriors for the Human Spirit. You can read all about it, how we do it, what we're offering right now on my website, margaretwheatley. com, but we need to develop a stable mind. We do that only through meditation. There's no substitute for meditation in terms of grounding ourselves, but also learning to watch our thoughts. You know, grounding is easy, but learning to watch my thoughts so that when I, when suddenly get triggered, I notice it sooner rather than reacting.
Shifting from reactivity to responsiveness is the core of most spiritual teachings these days. And you can't do that if you don't know how to watch how your mind works. And that you do through meditation, not guided meditation, but just good sitting practice where you're watching thoughts as they come.
And if you don't attach to them, they leave of their own volition. But of course we get attached to them and then we lose our way and then we come back. To watching. So we spend a lot of time on meditation. We spend a lot of time on mind body awareness, which includes in our trainings, Qigong, but there are many ways to develop awareness.
So much good somatic work being done these days. Where am I feeling this? What just happened? Can I just release it? very valuable work being done. And then we teach direct perception. How do we see more?
How do we take in information that's all around us, but that has been clouded or we're blinded by our filters.
So this gets into the area of judgment, right? Biases, all of that. This is very hard work. I've been working on this for 40 years. I still catch myself when I'm about to meet anyone or read anything is, okay, what am I assuming about this person? I have no evidence, but my judgment is right there.
But the quicker you notice these things, the more open and available you are past your judgment. So we teach a lot of direct perception exercises.
[00:25:42] Embracing the warrior spirit in a changing world
Margaret Wheatley: We also know why we are training to be warriors for the human spirit, why we want to stay and serve. We do not deny where we are. The pattern of collapse is so clear to us, and we know that our work is not to change the world, which cannot be changed any longer, and you know this as a climate activist.
We can't stop what's happening now as the planet just enacts its own laws. We cannot reverse what we set in motion decades ago, and we can't stop what's happening, the dynamics of fear, which is deliberately used by those in power now that drives us into our self protection, human animal behavior.
We can't use any of the great capacities of being human, much less know that we are sacred. We have human spirits. We can't do that when we're back in the reptilian brain. It's just impossible. And, so being awake in the world, and asking what's needed, seeing more of what's because we've removes the perceptual clouds. This is the essence of training to be a warrior for the human spirit.
And if you're finding any problems with the word warrior, just get over it. These are spiritual grounded warriors, nonviolent warriors of peace, whatever. I mean, it's a long, long tradition. And, there was no other word that, actually grounded me and this training, warriors are always few in number and completely dedicated to serving, protecting. And there's a choice of weapons and we choose the weapons of compassion and insight. And that's a long spiritual tradition.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah, You're, referencing the Shambhala warrior prophecy that Joanna Macy, among others have helped, make popular in our culture, at least, can you share a little bit about that context for folks listening?
Margaret Wheatley: The Shambhala warrior prohecy became Joanna Macey's bedrock work, because it was given to her by her Tibetan teacher and she was told to offer this to us. The prophecy reads as Joanna's teacher gave it to her: there comes a time when all of life on earth is in danger. Great nations threaten one another with weapons of mass destruction, and life hangs by the frailest of threads. At that time, the Shambhala warriors come forth armed with only two weapons, and that was the word her teacher used, compassion and insight, and you must have them in balance.
We're devastated by having too much feeling, too much compassion these days. That's what makes us turn off the news. That is what makes us feel I can't hold this any longer. It needs to be linked, combined with discernment. And I have introduced that the discernment can be most easily found if you ask what's needed here?
And you look with clear eyes, you look with enhanced perception past your filters of hopium, and then you can decide, what can I do here?
It will never be enough. Let's just start with that. We can never offer enough to solve this horror show that we are participating in now, and it's going to get worse. I'm always in the question of, How can I be more grounded? How can I open to the world as it is? So practice among my warrior community. We all recognize we need to practice more and more. We need to meditate more and more. We need to be more aware of mind body awareness.
We need to notice when we're getting triggered or filled with rage. But we notice it, we don't act on it. That's fine, as long as we don't act on it. Anger and rage, we find other ways to contribute, and it's a drop in the bucket these days of suffering. It really is.
[00:30:39] Redefining meaningful work and life in turbulent times
Margaret Wheatley: So, all of us raised in the western world of management, leadership, and coaching, I think maybe the most profound shift we have to go through is our definition of what is a meaningful work.
What is a meaningful life? I can start to sound like the best preacher you've ever heard at this point, but let's just, we won't go there,
But it's true. We were given a definition of a meaningful life, right? Healthy relationships. great children, success, good home, good car, whatever. I've been there, done that, and those measures of what is a meaningful life now have to shift to meet the context of How do people that we admire behave in war?
How do people who are facing great poverty, who've had to migrate, who've had to give up everything, what do they illuminate for us about what is meaningful and what is meaningful human behavior? So in "Restoring Sanity", I focus on these qualities of the human spirit. In an organizational context, who knows if that's going to work, but generosity, creativity, and kindness.
Those are qualities that I have seen in the worst circumstances, I've done quite a lot of work in Southern Africa, and I've done a fair amount of work in Australia with Aboriginal peoples. So we need to understand what is truly meaningful at the end of our lives. It's nothing like we were told.
It's nothing like we were told. But again, we have so many examples in our face right now. Stories from Gaza, stories from Ukraine, stories from Sudan, stories from Rwanda, I mean, these are the places that I focus on, of people just rising up to take care of one another. That's not what we thought we were doing with our lives and work. You know, whoever you're coaching, for me, what was truly meaningful always was relationship that we developed that spark that appeared in a conversation, that feeling of, Oh, I just offered something really fine to this person.
Not because I told him what to do, but because I was fully present for them.
I want to, this story goes way back. I think it was 1987. I was working for the director, of the Children's Museum in Boston. I lived in Boston at the time. And he had two consultants. He had me. I was just not like this. You know, we're talking about 40 years ago.
I was interested in working at the organizational level. I was interested in his approval. He had another consultant from Harvard Business School. And we were sitting in his office one day, I think he was quite upset at me for something I had said in a staff meeting, but as we started to talk about where he needed to go, and again, I'm just a pretty normal consultant, I just looked at him and I said, I'm not talking to you about success. I'm talking to you about your soul. I was stunned. The Harvard business school consultant almost came out of her chair and he just looked at me, but it was a true statement.
Jeremy Blanchard: Wow
Margaret Wheatley: Maybe that was a precursor. I mean, I was trying to get him to explore the deeper levels of why he was doing this work.
I'm not speaking about foreign or strange experiences that we've all had as coaches and consultants when we really were present, got to the heart of the matter and we watched the person that we were coaching, come to their own realization. That's meaningful work.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah
Margaret Wheatley: and that's what I find now if I can be in a good helpful Conversation with anyone I feel good about the whole day, So I would ask all of you to consult your own experience of what have been truly meaningful moments in your career. Do this at home, also painful moments. With your kids, with your partner, and look at what was going on there. And I can guarantee this was always a moment of true connection of working in the richness and fullness of who we are when we're being fully human, it wasn't based on fear, panic, stress. It was a moment of true presence. And those moments often feel joyful. So this is how we need to reconfigure our expectations about what is a meaningful work for us. We always remember those moments when there was true connection.
Jeremy Blanchard: What I love about that is that Yeah, coaches, we are particularly trained, experienced. We've put a lot of hours in to how to help people discover what that is for them.
And to go back to something you said earlier,
[00:36:15] Community as the answer to individualism
Jeremy Blanchard: in the West, we have grown up in a culture that has, glorified individualism that has glorified individual definitions of success. That's, 100 percent on display in the coaching industry. All coach training is okay: you discover your vision, your values, which, as you say, there is a place for that, that still has a role, but 99 percent of the coaching modalities and training and books that I've encountered are all about, okay, and then we stop the great, go do it.
You've got your, you got your plan. Go live your values and your vision. That's it. That's the end of the story. This podcast, what I'm committed to is it's so obviously incomplete to stop at what's your vision, what's your values end of story.
Margaret Wheatley: I want to give you a better adjective or at least it works for me: It's a poisonous concept
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah.
Margaret Wheatley: to think that, first of all, we have to make it on our own. If you don't make it, it's your failure. And, it leads to this misinterpretation of what privilege is. And then we feel guilty about it. Everything that focuses on the individual leads us away from the solution to life, which is community, being together. And who do we choose to be? I had to spend quite a lot of time describing the power of community within indigenous peoples at least in the past where when something goes wrong, it's not the individual that's at fault that we have to lock away to protect society from that aberrant individual.
No, it's a failure of the community. And also, the poison of believing in the individual is what also leads to competition, greed, and aggression, right? It's me against them, it's not our fault that we're here. It really isn't. These are far beyond the dynamics that are at play, which are always at play in civilizations at the end of their life cycle. These dynamics are not controllable. We tried our very best to stop them. They cannot be stopped. So now we have to choose to step outside of those dynamics and get busy on our interior development, so we can be in the outer world, not as a lonely individual trying to get ahead and be liked, but as an individual who knows.
--This is the motto of my burkina Institute -- knows that whatever the problem, community is the answer. Coming together is the solution here. And this is hard work because when people are in fear, they withdraw, they fear any difference. This is just pure neurobiology. We fear not just the stranger, but anyone who looks different when we're back in our reptilian brains. Our work is to develop ourselves and our own inner strength and confidence so that we can be in these very difficult situations where people are acting not from human goodness but from self protection, animalistic behaviors of fear and aggression,
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah.
I'm curious to get concrete with coaching for a moment here. Ow, if you could give all the coaches listening a task within their role, within their, position of relationship and support and influence.
Margaret Wheatley: I wanna
Answer that by saying look at what was truly meaningful
to also look at how your great skills of listening and being present were somewhat warped by needing to be liked and needing to be successful.
So that's where we start. And also, changing your view of what is your meaningful work and what is a meaningful life.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah.
Margaret Wheatley: Let's just say in your next coaching moment, just become aware of whether anything I just flagged for you, your need to be liked that distorts what you're saying, or you're getting triggered that, makes you less centered or less available.
Just start to notice the nature of your emotional reactions when you're in a coaching session. That's a good place to start.
I created the gold standard here that we want to be fully present. We want to embody compassion and insight. We want to get past our own triggers, but maybe this isn't fair because I spend months with people training them to be less triggered and to be more aware. of when they go off and lose their center.
But this is a good place to start, I would say, in your next coaching session. Also, look back at it later and reflect on what did you seem to need during that session, and what was needed and how did those two play out together. So I'm actually just giving you some ways to become more aware of the things that influence our behavior when we're coaching and also interfere with our ability to be fully present.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:41:54] Ancient wisdom we need at these times
Jeremy Blanchard: As we draw to a close here, I'm feeling very grateful to get to look with clear eyes and be invited into the clear seeing that you've spent so many years developing and then the what do we do once we see one of the questions I like to ask all my guests as we wrap up is about where you get some of your inspiration or nourishment.
Margaret Wheatley: Oh, absolutely. It's interesting, I've just been asked by a book distributor, to name the five books that I have benefited from that inform my own work, which my work now is to restore sanity. But it wasn't books. It was books that led me to spiritual teachers. So I have for many years, I raised a large family. I had a very flourishing career. I traveled seemingly constantly. Now I'm home. My kids have their own families and I have enormous opportunity just to stay grounded, not get caught up in the world. But I have to say many, many years ago, probably decade, I put my spiritual practice at the center of my life.
I had my spiritual practice. I had my work and my family. And it got easier when my kids were not at home any longer, but I think that shifting to paying first attention to the state and quality of my mind, which I then did by doing very long retreats, two month retreats every winter with Pema Chodron's abbey, Gampo Abbey, for 10 years, she was my teacher.
And that was my graduate course to have a stable mind and to be very present for people. But I also find, great nourishment in reading ancient, ancient history. If anything is less than 10,000 years old, I basically am not interested right now. That was for a while was my escape literature, but right now I'm studying, reading, delighting in learning about the goddess cultures that were the only way of being on the earth that we now see remnants of in indigenous cultures, but 35,000 years ago, ways we live together. I know that we were much more,
both intelligent and spiritually grounded hundreds of thousands of years ago. And so I study archaeology, I'm just fascinated how we keep pushing back first evidence of human consciousness, human caring and compassion. So I don't ground myself as much as I'm talking about the history of this time and the pattern of collapse.
My true grounding is in going as far back as I can now to discover how we have manifested ourselves. We didn't need to be Homo sapiens with other categories of the genus Homo. But I have to say that it was those long retreats that gave me a stable mind and I'm forever indebted to Pema Chodron and we're very dear friends also.
Jeremy Blanchard: Yeah.
Jeremy Blanchard: Thank you so much. I feel it's,
a privilege to, get to see the gems you bring back from hundreds of thousands of years ago, research back to that time. That's not what everyone is doing with their care and their time. So I appreciate that and all your practice that you're able to bring to bear to share with folks.
Margaret Wheatley: Thank you.
And I, I just want to again, refer all of you to my website, which was meant to be a resource, a library, but right now there is self paced Warriors for the Human Spirit training that we're offering that you can, it's quite inexpensive and you could Sign up for the, and do that if you're interested.
It's at your own pace, but I meet with everyone once a month and I'm also, starting a course. On developing the skills of perseverance so we can restore sanity. And then there's things you can just watch and enjoy. And so it, it's my way of staying active in the world is just to create a very lively website for you.
Jeremy Blanchard: Great. Yeah. And we'll link to that in the show notes so that folks
check it and sign up. Yeah. Thank you, Margaret. So grateful.
Margaret Wheatley: You're very welcome, Jeremy. And I, offer many blessings on your good work. I think You've really answered some of the question of who do I choose to be by offering this and doing this. So thank you for that.
Jeremy Blanchard: Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to Margaret for sharing her wisdom and her compassionate perspective with us. Check out the show notes for links to the resources mentioned in today's episode.
Episode 11 comes out soon with anticapitalist business coach Bear Hebert.
Bear Hebert: Like reminding ourselves that commerce is not the same thing as capitalism, so buying and selling things is a really old thing that human beings have been doing for way longer than capitalism has existed. I think that it's possible to try to do commerce in ways that are actively anti capitalist even inside a capitalist system.
Jeremy Blanchard: So make sure you subscribe in your podcast app of choice so that you can catch that episode and all the future ones.
I wanted to share a review that came in on apple podcasts recently. It's from tap LCC. And they wrote, I'm just getting into coaching and have talked to many other coaches and mentors about the need for more community and guidance around politicized, coaching or coaching that is connected to larger movement work. Thank you so much for the labor of love that this podcast is.
So I just wanted to send some gratitude for that review. And invite everyone listening to take a moment if you're able to. And open apple podcasts and leave a rating and a review.
As always the website is widerroot.com, where you can find our newsletter. My email is podcast at wider rootstock com and you can follow the show on Instagram at wider roots pod.
And special, thanks to Lindley and Yi for offering feedback on this episode.
Thanks to wild choir for the theme music for the show, you're currently listening to their song. Remember me, which will play us out.
See you next time.