The Yoga of Leadership: A Practical Guide to Health, Happiness, And Inspiring Total Team Engagement

day.

Introduction

Old Maxim

Being a leader is a title one earns.

New Maxim

Being a leader is an embodied state.

The Yoga of Leadership elucidates the aspects of yoga that can help you develop qualities and skills essential to leaders, which will help you become a happier and healthier leader who is able to connect with and fully engage your team. Embodying these qualities will allow your truest expression of an inspiring and powerful leader to emerge. While some people possess leadership qualities more naturally than others, in our fast-paced world it is likely that every leader could use a little help from time to time. If you are already inspiring the masses, you will discover insights into reasons why you are so engaging and learn ways to teach others what comes so naturally to you.

Let me paint a vision. Wouldn’t it be great if we all woke up every morning feeling energized, excited to go to work, and enthusiastic about the day? We kiss our happy spouses and kids goodbye and commute to the office, content and relaxed. Our team welcomes us with smiles, eager to work hard. When the day is done, we go home, eat dinner, and have some non-work fun. Before our eyes close that evening, we reflect upon the abundance in our lives and sleep soundly.

Sound crazy? From today’s perspective, it might, but this scene does not have to be a dream. It is possible for each one of us to enjoy this reality most of our days if we choose to. But we’ve forgotten that our bodies and minds are meant to live this way to be healthy and well. And we aren’t sure how to get there from the frenzy of our current reality.

Included in The Yoga of Leadership are practical steps to maintain holistic health and foster team growth and engagement. With a base of vibrant leaders serving as examples to their teams, an enterprise will have the foundation that affords it the opportunity to optimize productivity, enhance team engagement,

attract and retain top talent, boost morale, and improve results—all while decreasing healthcare costs.

Given my work in the investment industry and driving organizational change as a consultant, I understand. Like you, my days were full. I wanted to perform, to make a difference, to succeed. But somewhere along the way, I realized that my perspectives and desire for achievement were, in certain ways, contradicting my ability to be the effective and inspiring leader I wanted to be. I began to look for a way to improve, and I found it in a surprising place: the philosophies and techniques of the ancient practice of yoga.

In writing this book, it has often felt like a paradox to marry leadership and yoga, as the nature of these two things is witnessed today as quite incompatible. Yet I love to defy convention, to envision new possibilities, and to make people think. To me, there was a practical and pragmatic union between the two seeming opposites. This program synthesizes Eastern and Western thinking and practice into a new paradigm that offers engaging and inspiring leadership as an embodied state, one that is not separable from the health and well-being of the leader.

In the last two decades, more and more research has been done around holistic well-being, and the ancient wisdom of yoga is now complemented by the most current evidence-based findings that validate the efficacy of its tools and techniques. Modern science is proving over and over how the methodology and tools of yoga help us control emotions and manage stress, focus and concentrate better, think more clearly and decisively, and make more conscious decisions. And the principles of yoga mitigate risk while enhancing connection, positivity, and happiness.

The program outlined in the The Yoga of Leadership uses a holistic model for well-being inspired by a yoga framework called the Pancha Maya Kosha model. The model is based on teachings from ancient Sanskrit texts called the Upanishads, which are believed to be over three thousand years old and are collectively considered some of the most influential books ever written. The Taittiriya Upanishad introduces the five interlocking dimensions, or layers, of holistic well-being: physical, energy, mind, knowledge, and bliss.

We all have bodies with lots of parts; we are living, breathing, energetic beings. We have minds that think; we have intellects that discern, and at our innermost depths, we have the capacity for great joy. You can’t take our bodies, minds, and spirits apart; they don’t detach very comfortably! They must be considered as a unit, as an integrated whole. Research clearly demonstrates that the health of all these parts of ourselves directly impacts

our competence and ability to lead. Expanding consciousness through self-awareness supports our ability to be engaging and inspiring to others. When the rubber meets the road and we have to perform as leaders, it all needs to be in check.

This program offers practical tools for connecting with each of your layers, so you can show up at work happy, healthy, and vibrant, leading a team that loves working for you—and works with enthusiasm as a result. Leaders with great habits of health and well-being have the ability to penetrate the entire organization with an influence that is highly scalable. As you take care of yourself, you take care of your team.

I come to this writing from a distinctive background in both business and yoga. My most recent work was in private equity, a subsector in the investment field, directing billion-dollar fundraising events and ushering in commitments of capital from institutional investors. Along with the job came extensive travel and a lot of moving parts. I loved the pace and the money; I was addicted to the work and the constant adrenaline rush. Private equity is an intense and competitive field: fast-paced, uncertain, and filled with the highest of expectations. It fit me perfectly, as I thrive on work and can easily be a workaholic. As such, I have always tended to gravitate toward and almost thrive on stress, too, but that hasn’t always served me.

At the same time, I have always been a fitness buff. I wish I could say it happened because of my desire for holistic well-being but, in fact, my interest in fitness was borne out of a burning quest to be skinny and a bad body image in my teens. A curvy sort of gal, I am not built like an athlete. I am rather uncoordinated, a slow runner, and was never very good at sports. But I discovered early on that working out allowed me to keep my emotions in check. I was always less stressed and happier when I worked out. For me, physical health has always been a mandatory part of life, tied directly to my state of mind.

I took my first yoga class twenty years ago as a stressed-out business school student, thanks to a new friend who encouraged me to buy a pricey yoga series with her. I was an exercise fanatic, used to high-intensity group fitness classes, weight lifting, racquetball, and mountain biking. I was in great shape, always in motion, and willing to try any type of exercise. I thought yoga would be easy.

This teacher wore all white and had a wrap on her head. She made us hold poses for minutes at a time and breathe in a way that felt very strange to me. My racing mind never stopped chattering, and the long holds of the

poses required so much concentration I just wanted to leave the room. The worst part was savasana, or corpse pose, where we laid on the floor for five minutes with our eyes closed, just relaxing. Lying quietly was pure torture. I had too much to do. I could not wait for the class to be over. Even so, I had paid for the series in advance, and I liked the special time with my friend, so I continued to go. Deep inside me, I think I recognized that something wasn’t right if I couldn’t be still for even five minutes.

During my post-business school career I was called a bull in a china shop, a feather ruffler, and a task-master on several occasions. I produced and broke new ground. I made change happen. And I got a ton of work done. This seemed to please the senior executives on a certain level, the level of results. They knew if they gave me responsibility I’d surpass expectations no matter what. My record of accomplishment stands on its own. Yet, these are not descriptions that made me feel proud, nor did they make me feel good about myself. In fact they gave me pause and caused me to self-reflect. I knew my natural leadership tendencies weren’t enough, not to emerge as an inspiring leader that connects with and engages her team at least. Something needed to shift—in me. I found myself, slowly, over a long period of time, starting to figure things out and piece things together in a very unexpected place – yoga class.

As time went on, I began to notice that yoga was affecting me in ways I couldn’t fully articulate. My yoga practice made me feel better, calmer, and more positive. The words of certain teachers made me think about life beyond the daily grind. Something about yoga also reminded me of a side of me that had been overshadowed by a competitive field and discussions about complex financial instruments. In my career, my analytical side that enjoys intellectual challenges and my strong work ethic allowed me to rise quickly through the ranks—but over time, I allowed that side to overwhelm my intuitive and creative side. In my younger years I had been an artist and crafter, spending much of my time in high school and college in pottery studios with clay under my fingernails. There is a part of me that is inherently creative and very curious. There was also a lurking and senseless insecurity in me that I didn’t like, creating stress and fueling unhelpful emotions. Over time, yoga allowed me to slow down and reflect on myself overall. I began to consider that if I walked through my days a little more balanced and worked on cultivating a more helpful perspective, I could be a more effective leader, more authentic, confident, trusting, discerning, calm, connected, and happy.

For a long time, my tenacity, drive, and strong desire to succeed obscured

my ability to see clearly my unique value and to be empowered by my value. In my mind, I just didn’t have time to take a breath, pause, and be more thoughtful about my choices and perspective while still continuing to achieve at work; nor did I appreciate its importance. So, I doggedly powered on. Really I was afraid of the consequences of not overachieving and letting my guard down. At the first annual Women’s Private Equity Summit at Half Moon Bay, I was discussing yoga with another attendee. She had never tried it, and she asked me why I liked it so much. At a loss for words I paused and said I liked it because it was the answer. She asked, To what? I said, To so many things.

And so a seed was planted. It dawned on me that yoga had become a necessary complement to my fitness and nutrition regimen. Since that day, I’ve been on a search for a more rational answer to what I then intuitively felt to be true: yoga offers tools, techniques, and philosophy we can implement in our lives and at the workplace to support our holistic well-being and become the kinds of leaders we want to be. What I now know is that yoga, including the meditation and self-awareness (mindfulness) aspects, is infinitely rich in its benefits—traversing fitness, stress management, pain management, psychology, philosophy, and conscious living. The most desirable aspect of yoga for leaders taught in this text lies in its ability to help a person control the mind and senses. I now realize that I need to practice yoga because it helps me control my mind and senses and accordingly reactions to ordinary stressors, which allows me to maintain a clear and open-mind. Control of the mind and senses is necessary to possess or to cultivate the skills essential to inspiring leadership. It is not possible to be a rational and discerning leader without control of the mind and senses.

Back in my work world in early 2009, the markets were bleeding all over the globe. I called it quits on an ill-timed investment company I’d founded, had my son, and decided to weather the financial storm in a state of Zen by training to become a yoga teacher. I started to write about life and living. I began to teach and study a lot of yoga and meditation. In fact, I immersed myself in yoga and meditation and became a yoga philosophy junkie. Slowly—this took some time and investigation—an understanding began to emerge.

Looking back, if I practiced then what I practice now, work would certainly have been easier and less stressful. I would have been a more engaging, mentally strong, resilient, confident, and principle-led leader and a more courageous and calm person. This writing stems out of a long interplay

of work, family life, extensive international travel, and years of research and instruction.

The first two chapters of The Yoga of Leadership summarize the state of our health and well-being and introduce the key frameworks used throughout the book. The text then illuminates seven yogi secrets, including each of the five layers of holistic well-being, one in each chapter, taking you on a path to personal transformation. By connecting to each of your layers you will learn how to make choices along the way that lead to a healthy body, an untroubled mind, and a renewed sense of meaning and purpose in your work. In the ninth chapter, you will be guided to create a practical and possible holistic well-being action plan for your life, so that you can to show up each day with essential leadership qualities like authenticity, vitality, strength, equipoise, and discernment. Through your own holistic well-being you transform your ability to engage and inspire others improving every imaginable business outcome.

It is an honor to be put in a position of leadership, one that involves responsibility to yourself and to others. The state of being a leader is an embodied state, not merely a title on a business card. It does not matter whether you are a leader with a team of ten thousand or a leader with no direct reports. If you are in a position to influence others toward a goal, you are a leader and you have an opportunity to lead by example. You have an opportunity to serve as a catalyst for positive change through your own efforts toward holistic well-being. We function better when all of our dimensions are healthy and well.

Be a vanguard. Be the change. Be the leader you are meant to be.

Section 1

Holistic Well-Being

and Leadership

The actions of a great leader will surely be emulated by others; the exemplary acts of such leaders set the standard by which all others are measured.

—Bhagavad Gita 3.21

Chapter 1

Leadership and Well-Being

Old Maxim

I am my body.

New Maxim

I am a complex, holistic being.

Resolve: I will think about my well-being in terms of the interconnected layers of my being. I will honor my dimensions by giving each balanced attention.

Holistic well-being allows me to establish a framework for developing personal qualities inherent in great leaders who are happy, healthy, and able to connect with and inspire their teams.

Being a leader brings with it a responsibility to do something of significance that makes families, communities, work organizations, nations, the environment, and the world better places than they are today.

—A Leader’s Legacy, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

Definition of a Leader

A leader by conventional definition is a person of influence who guides others toward the attainment of objectives. There are two types of people we refer to as leaders. First are those who lead by example. We choose to follow this type of leader not because we have been recruited or paid but because they are great at what they do, and on some level, they make us feel safe, secure, and supported. At a fundamental level, we want to feel safe, secure, and supported in all areas of our lives, and certainly at work.

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In contrast, the other kind of person we have come to call a leader is someone who has been given a leadership role but does not lead by example. They are neither role models nor mentors. We do what these people say simply because someone pays us to do so. These are not true leaders; they are

merely people in positions of power. But because our society has empowered so many of these kinds of leaders, we look primarily to them as examples of what it means to lead. As a result, the very idea of the word leader has been distorted. We don’t simply need more leaders; we need great leaders who are awake, aware, and inspiring. We need leaders who have control of their mind and senses and can see life at a deeper level. Consider this definition.

A great leader is one who inspires the highest level of work that teams can reasonably aspire to for the satisfaction of the organizations mission. To inspire others, this great leader must do his or her personal best to serve as a positive example by taking care of his or her physical health, controlling his or her mind and senses, cultivating mental strength and resilience, and operating with principle and purpose. At work this great leader must foster a healthy and supportive work environment, build strong connections with the team, and take responsibility for all stakeholders in the ecosystem in which the organization operates. To inspire the highest level of work, with humility this great leader must orient all actions toward the highest good and consider all possibilities by expanding his or her usual ways of thinking.

Great leaders lead from a place of principle and holistic well-being; they know themselves and have figured out, consciously or unconsciously, how to take care of themselves holistically.

Some of the challenges and misconceptions that prevent great leaders from emerging involve the following:

A distorted definition of a leader reinforced by unprincipled behaviors we witness by others in highly visible leadership roles.

Organizational cultures and leaders that place a sense of urgency on all work products and tasks, including those that are not urgent.

A model of healthcare that focuses fundamentally on the physical body, limiting us from learning about and understanding ourselves holistically.

A lack of education concerning how measures of holistic self-care, including the control of our mind and senses, directly benefit our ability to lead and function optimally.

Organizational cultures and leaders apathetic toward the well-being of their teams.

A lack of motivation to place self-care on our priority list when there are countless other seemingly more important things to do.

A lack of compelling reasons and ideas around what we can do to fit well-being into our busy schedules every day.

A disconnection from our internal selves, i.e. our feelings, emotions, sense of self, sense of being centered and balanced often resulting in a degradation of meaning and purpose in our work and our lives.

A lack of self-awareness that would allow us to begin to see how our actions and words affect other people and how this helps or hinders our ability to engage and inspire others.

An unmet need at the workplace to feel safe, secure, and supported exacerbated by technological advancement and a subsequent movement away from human interaction, ultimately leading to disconnection and disengagement.

These challenges can be remedied through education, some simple action items to get you started, and the belief that you are worth the time and effort. As leaders, the onus to better ourselves—so that we can be healthier, happier, and fully engage our teams—must be borne first by us. You have an opportunity to serve as catalysts for positive change through your own efforts of self-care and holistic well-being. Organizations have the responsibility to adopt cultures that advocate for the well-being of their teams through education and encouragement.

From Good to Great

The Perfect Leader

Of course there is no such thing as perfect, since the idea of perfection itself is an illusion. But for a moment let us imagine that we can select the most optimal qualities for every leader, for every role, at every organization. That would be the perfect leader, right? Then how do we maintain those qualities? When we buy a car, we know we need to send it to the mechanic from time to time so that it functions for us as reliably as possible. We also know professional athletes must spend a lot of time maintaining their physical condition in a way that supports their sport. In the same way, if we want our perfect leaders to maintain these perfect qualities—or perhaps our imperfect leaders to learn to adopt these perfect qualities—then they too require ongoing maintenance.

Humans need, on average, eight hours of sleep per night to maintain health, which leaves sixteen awake-hours per day. Let us assume that most people working full-time spend eight hours at work. Add an average of an hour for lunch and another for the commute to and from work, and the average person dedicates ten hours per day, five days per week to their organization. With these numbers, 62 percent of our time is devoted to work, five days a week. Leaders typically work a longer day, devoting closer to 75 percent of their daily awake-hours to their employers and often time on weekends as well. Does the organization bear a responsibility for the

well-being, the maintenance, of the leadership and the team that devotes 62 percent to 75 percent of their non-sleep time, five days per week, to work?

Imagine how much better the organization could perform if we optimized the holistic well-being of the leaders and the team. Like many things, however, this approach toward well-being must first begin with you as a leader. You maintain your holistic well-being, not only for yourself but also for others.

Holistic Well-Being and Leadership Success

This program is based on three fundamental truths:

The holistic well-being of a leader is part and parcel to his or her ability to be mentally strong, resilient, productive, motivating, and inspiring.

When a leader is well—and consequently mentally strong, resilient, productive, motivating, and inspiring—all of his or her dimensions are in good shape: physical, energy, mind, knowledge, and bliss.

When a leader’s dimensions are in good shape, s/he positively influences the well-being of her or his team, consequently accelerating team engagement and organizational growth.

We all function better when we are healthy and well. You’ve seen it in your team and you’ve seen it in yourself, even if you haven’t connected the two. Addressing our own holistic well-being is one of the most important things we can do to function as great leaders. When we commit to becoming aware of and caring for our needs each day, we adopt new habits, and we naturally become more interested in the well-being of our teams. By serving as examples through our own measures of self-care and efforts to connect with meaning and purpose in our work, we can then provide the necessary education and opportunities for employees to do the same. In time, it becomes a natural part of the culture to expect employees to maintain their well-being as part and parcel to their employment. When you connect deeply with yourself you can better connect with meaning and purpose in your own work. It then becomes possible and more natural to create a sense of purpose, a shared purpose amongst the team by breaking down silos and bringing people together. When this happens, the enterprise thrives.

When we are happy, healthy, and engaged in our work, we are more likely to have the following qualities:

Is it audacious to put a priority on your health and well-being? Absolutely not, it is essential to your success as a leader.

Holistic Well-Being and The Pancha Maya Kosha

Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

—World Health Organization

The three-pillared definition above, created by the World Health Organization in 1946, is said to be the most accepted version of what constitutes health around the globe. To be healthy, our physical bodies are well, our minds are well, and we have healthy connections with others. The definition of health is holistic but we don’t think of health this way. The word commonly used to describe what the definition of health above

is well-being. The phrase holistic well-being is often used in this text to bring attention to the fact that the health of a human being is holistic and comprehensive. Holistic well-being in this text includes physical, energetic, emotional, intellectual and spiritual health as well as connectedness with the world around us. Holistic well-being can also be thought of broadly as how nourished we are, which also considers our emotional well-being and an evaluation of our lives.

The holistic model used (referenced earlier) is the Pancha Maya Kosha model. As with any writings that originated in ancient times and in ancient languages, there are various academic views on the exact meaning of the words and the definition of this model. I offer one interpretation that is accessible, relevant, and specific to the lives and needs of leaders, often working in office environments. My interpretation is merely one of many possible ways that the model can be applied to modern life.

In Sanskrit, the language of yoga, pancha means five, and kosha is often interpreted as sheath, referring to the layers or dimensions that cover atman or our core essence. According to this model, our core essence is what some might call: pure light, the soul, divinity, consciousness, or the pure self within.²

Maya has several meanings; it can mean, that which spreads,

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implying that the dimensions are interconnected and impact one another, or it can mean illusion. Our dimensions are beautifully manifested in our complex lives; however, they are illusive (maya) in that we are not any single one of these dimensions.

In this ancient, holistic model, we progress through and have a relationship with our layers as we evolve and change. Each layer represents an interconnected, multidimensional part of our being that, like facets on a gemstone, together create the unique and brilliant qualities we share with the world around us. The dimensions (layers) are integrated; work on one affects the others. It is important to understand that the gateway to our life of well-being and balance can begin with any of the layers. Take care and note that there is not an order you must follow. And there is not any basis in this model for perfection, for waiting until one dimension is perfect before moving onto the next. That would be missing the point of this holistic framework. As life brings change and challenge, disharmony may present in one or many of our dimensions.

From a therapeutic perspective, a holistic model believes that disease itself happens when there is imbalance, and all dimensions must be considered to create harmony and balance. For example, in the forward to The Healing Path of Yoga, world-renowned preventative medicine doctor Dean Ornish, MD, explains what he has demonstrated in his cardiovascular studies of over twenty years: that a comprehensive lifestyle program involving diet,

moderate exercise, no smoking, stress management techniques (he cites yoga and meditation), and psychosocial support can alone reverse the progression of severe coronary disease. These changes are in lieu of expensive surgeries, procedures, and a lifetime of drugs.

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We need to tend to all of our dimensions to care for our holistic well-being.

A Note on Genetic Determinism

Although yoga and the Pancha Maya Kosha model are from an era prior to modern science, modern science has begun to validate the efficacy of many yogic exercises and tools, such as the effect of meditation and self-awareness practices on emotional control. It is also easy to find parallels between the yoga philosophy and psychology discussed in this book and the work being done today in the fields of Western psychology, positive psychology, and happiness research. The approach offered here is integrated and multidisciplinary as must be the case for a holistic model for well-being.

It is also now understood that the condition of our health cannot be blamed exclusively on our genes. It is true that we inherit certain DNA from our parents that they inherited from their parents but, in many cases, it is not exclusively this pre-programming, or nature, that makes things happen to us when they do. It is also the influence of our environment, our nurture both in utero and out. Our genes need something to make them express. That something is the topic of great research and debate. In the field of epigenetics it is generally understood to be environmental factors.

Once the work becomes part of our daily routine, it is no longer work. It becomes life.

With regard to the widespread conditions including Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular problems, and even our propensity to succumb to anxiety and stress, it is false to think that only our genes are to blame. In his national bestselling book, The Blood Sugar Solution, Mark Hyman, MD writes that to have change to the degree we have seen in the diabetes epidemic in particular is a genetic impossibility. Hyman adds that our inherited genes change only a tiny bit every twenty thousand years. The environmental conditions we have imposed on our bodies have changed a great deal and consequently have influenced the way our genes are expressed. Our lack of movement, processed and non-plant based diet, altered and tinkered with food supply, stress-causing life choices, and increased exposure to a wide myriad of environmental toxins and chemicals are what have changed.

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This new concoction is what tricks our genes to express in problematic ways. Often we like to fall back on our genes, thinking we’re doomed anyway, and therefore make poor decisions for our health and well-being. But that is an

easy scapegoat. In Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Belief, a fascinating book on cellular biology, he explains how cells function and includes the empirical proof that cell membranes are affected by certain environmental conditions. When these conditions are present genes are triggered to express.

This means, for example, while we may be predisposed to Type 2 diabetes or anxiety in our DNA, if we create the right positive conditions through a holistic model of diet, movement, stress-management techniques, and life choices, we may prevent chronic conditions from developing early in our lives—or even from ever developing. We all know that it is possible for many people with Type 2 diabetes to reverse the condition and get off insulin altogether. This means for the ailments mentioned we do have a measure of control over our health.

Yoga’s Five-Dimensional Framework for Well-Being

The dimensions of the Pancha Maya Kosha model will be presented from gross to subtle and as pictured represent an expansion of consciousness. The center of the figure represents our core essence.

The Dimensions of The Pancha Maya Kosha Model

This program involves ways to balance and address each dimension in order to enhance your health, happiness, and team engagement. Even though this program considers each dimension separately, it is important to reiterate that in this holistic model, all dimensions depend upon the others. For example, the food and drink we choose to put in our bodies will support or degrade our energy levels, demonstrating how the physical dimension can influence the energy dimension. Obsessing over our diet and exercise imbalances the mind and will deplete our energy, even if we are eating well and exercising. Accordingly, if we obsess over our desire to stop thinking during meditation, this, too, will deplete our energy, and our obsession will not help us find the tranquility of a serene mind but quite the opposite. The dimensions are described as follows:

The Dimensions

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Physical: The physical dimension is also called the cellular body or the food body. It includes what we can touch: our muscles, bones, organs, tissues, blood, etc.

Energy: The energy dimension is also called the vital body, the layer of the prana (life force), or the physiological layer. According to Gary Kraftsow in his book Yoga for Wellness, this layer involves the breath and refers to the vital metabolic functions that sustain our life and health.

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Mind: The mind dimension involves the lower mind and the senses, including thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, and moods.

Knowledge: The knowledge dimension, also called intellect, involves the functions of the higher mind, including intuition, perception, discernment, discrimination, and reasoning. This layer is subtle and is influenced by what we’ve learned through our lives.

Bliss: The bliss dimension is sometimes called the layer of spirit. It references pleasure, joy, and fulfillment, as well as the identification and alignment of our unique purpose in life.

Leaders are human beings whose bodies are made of bones, tissues, and fluids. What makes us alive is that we breathe. What makes us productive is that we can think with our brains. What allows us to be creative and innovative is that we have allocated enough space in our lives and space in our minds, to ponder and contemplate the what ifs and to allow creativity and innovation to flourish. What helps us to be inspiring is living consciously, through our principles, and with a vibrant spirit, so that we may fully connect with everybody in our lives. Our bodies, our energy, our minds, our intellects, and our spirits are aspects of our material being, and only when

they are all healthy are we well. Strong leaders who begin to see themselves as multidimensional will begin to see others that way, too.

Leadership Qualities

The following table summarizes essential leadership qualities associated with each dimension, along with a suite of things we can do to support the dimension. The text in bold is addressed in the corresponding chapter of the book. The suggestions not in bold are beyond the scope of this book but are offered if you choose to learn more about them on your own.

Mapping Dimensions to Tools, Techniques, and Essential Leadership Qualities