Robin is an executive coach, facilitator, a mediator, an organisational consultant, works in leadership development and sometimes known as a mystic (Twitter, LinkedIn, Website).
Our conversation concentrates on the importance of feeling present, and being fully open to what is happening in that moment. Only then can we integrate the past, and not be unconsciously driven by it. Only then can we hear the calling of the future, and act courageously towards something different. Only then can we act in alignment with a deeper ethics.
This is all very much at the spiritual end of acting in these powerful times. You can read about my own experience on a previous version of Robin’s course, Leading from the Future, is in this blog ‘Facing the Future’. Here is the current one (as at Jan 2023) Leading from the Future programme (starts 14 Feb 2023).
Listen
Links
Findhorn Foundation (and on wikipedia here).
Robin’s course on The Art of Facilitating Transformational Fields.
Otto Scharmer on wikipedia
When Robin talks of ‘the bottom of the U’ he’s referring to Scharmer’s Theory U.
Timings
0:58 – Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?
21:19 – Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?
25:45 — BONUS QUESTION: What values are embedded in taking the next evolutionary step?
27:46 – Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why
30:02 – Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?
34:02 – Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?
36:11 – Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?
37:33 – Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?
Quotes
-“I’m trying to bring timeless wisdom and mysticism, which in my experience and understanding is really a search for the deepest levels of truth, into the arenas that I’m working in, whether it’s coaching or facilitation, or leadership development, or organisational consulting.”
-“We can address things at a kind of problem-solution level, which is not so interesting and generally doesn’t work. Or we can go into deeper levels and actually try to sense what’s really going on underneath the surface, like what are the things that we don’t either dare to look at, or want to look at, and surface, the deeper rivers that are running in our lives, and then pay attention to those. And out of that comes a movement.”
-“A lot happens [when we are fully present. We] can onboard the past, we can listen to the future and recalling of the future, and then we know the path that we meant to play.”
-“So what I would call, it’s not necessarily that we move to something better, as you were saying, like, it’s maybe that’s the most precise way to talk about it. But it’s more than in those moments where we feel imbued with a lot of presence. And we can, we can feel like the future is calling us. And we know what our contribution is, we know what the Movement is that arises in me and in us, and we play that part. Or at least we know what we’re meant to play, then we need to have the courage to act on what we hear.”
-“I’m not trying to create a future that’s also really interesting. …Because if I try to create a future, I already have an image picture concept of what the future ought to look like. It means I was pleased that I’m actually in the driving seat of this, I have the brilliant capacity to somehow imagine and even know, what the world needs, and it looks like this. And so that’s what I’m gonna do. So that feels a bit grandiose to me.”
-“my intention, well, it’s gonna sound a bit circular, because my intention is to listen deeply enough to know what I need to do next.”
-Three parts to sensing and then acting with alignment:
1.Notice how strong your longing is to do that.
2.Find your own practice (be that meditation, Tai Chi or whatever).
3.Find other people to do it with.
David Bent 