Essential reading for those who'd like to find more meaning in their jobs, "The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace" offers ways to balance a personal spiritual path with job realities and expectations.

Essential reading for those who'd like to find more meaning in their jobs, "The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace" offers ways to balance a personal spiritual path with job realities and expectations.

Presenting a "fine blend of spirit and practicality" (Peter Block), the authors detail useful strategies for finding meaning at work by tapping into the deeper realms of the soul and spirit.

How do caring and compassion show up in the demanding, often chaotic experience of health care practice? This book, in full-color and supported by magnificent photography, seeks to answer that question and put caring and compassion back at the center of excellent health care in spite of the time-pressured, cost-conscious, high-tech focus of modern health care. Authors Alan Briskin and Jan Boller met with 20 registered nurses for a sustained dialogue at a California community hospital to work toward an answer to this very question. Telling stories and discussing key principles of caring, the group engaged in conversations that revealed the inner landscape of both caring and caretaker. Using principles of appreciative inquiry, reflective practice, generative dialogue, and the power of speaking in circle, the work was an affirmation that when people are ill, they need a team to care for them. Likewise, caregivers need to be part of a group that cares together. Illustrated with original photography by one of the authors, the book has a beauty and spaciousness that is reflective of the book's message and perfect for anyone who wishes to experience relationship-centered care as a lived experience.

“An exceptional work challenging leaders to question their assumptions about how to achieve organizational excellence . . . a new narrative for leading.” —Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within If we are to disentangle the extraordinary challenges that we face today in organizations, communities, and nations we must transcend our divisions and develop solutions together. But what enables us to collectively make wise choices and sound judgments instead of splintering apart? When human beings gather together, a depth of awareness and insight, a transcendent knowing, becomes available. Based on nine years of research The Power of Collective Wisdom shows how we can tap into the extraordinary cocreative potential that exists in every group. Collective wisdom is elusive and unpredictable—it can’t be willed into being, but the authors describe six commitments people can adopt that will increase the likelihood of its appearing. Stories and historical examples throughout serve to illuminate and illustrate how collective wisdom has emerged in a range of settings and through the lives and traditions of varied cultures. Equally important, the authors describe how to recognize the pitfalls of polarization or false agreement, either of which can lead to collective folly—a phenomenon with which recent history has made us all too familiar. And they offer a set of practices to help readers maintain the key lessons of the book. The Power of Collective Wisdom is a foundational book for an emerging field of study and practice relevant to everyone seeking more effective and satisfying ways of working with others. “This book takes knowledge about groups and elevates it to a field and a movement.” —Peter Block, author of Community and Stewardship

Dozens of books about spirituality and management have demonstrated the yearning for spirituality in the workplace that exists in people like Kerry Hamilton. No longer content to abide the widening chasm between their deeply-held values and the all-too-common business practices they encounter, these readers long for congruence between their values and their work. They wonder whether the days of the giants of corporate character like Johnson & Johnson, businesses who believed that integrity and profitability could co-exist, are gone for good. Are we living in a state of business and organizational entropy? Are we doomed to endless repetition of the Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing scandals? Must integrity and profitability now be opposed? What has happened to American business, healthcare, and non-profits in the last forty years? Soul at Work: Spiritual Leadership in Organizations demonstrates vividly that another way is possible, based on the contemporary restoration of the partnership between integrity and profitability. It translates the core of what companies like Johnson and Johnson stood for forty years ago into contemporary forms. Through compelling stories of contemporary businesses, healthcare organizations, and nonprofits, Soul at Work shows how integrity, profitability, and personal and organizational transformation are all of a piece.

How do your values influence your leadership style? -Have you clearly defined your own values? -Does your leadership style reflect your values? -How is your organization's development influenced by its values, by your values? 'Values Shift' will guide you to an understanding of how Òvalues are basically a quality information system that when understood tell about what drives human beings and organizations . . . 'Values Shift' will help you clarify your values, those of your organization, and to use this information to lead organizational development and change and to fulfill your organization's mission.