Written project description
About me
The prototype already crystallized during Ulab 1.x, where Heiko set up a hub on Spirituality, Personal Growth and Leadership. Due to his BIO as a scientist, advisor and meditation teacher he has always aimed at integrating these three aspects in his personal life and in ULab found an appropriate framework for that goal. Heiko’s BIO is found below
Briefly tell us about your project “Spirituality, Personal Growth and Future Leadership”
During the ULab 1.x journey, we experienced how powerful the tools of ULab are. However, we have the feeling that the transfer into working life is not straightforward. While it is easy and safe to act on a spiritual basis in private life, we also want to make spirituality tangible in working life - without creating a religious superstructure.
1. A minimum definition of spirituality is leading our lives with a connectedness of body, heart and soul (hands, heart and mind), and to bring that out into the world, more specifically here: the working place.
2. personal growth: concerns our individual holistic development and that of our team (growth of personnel).
3. Leadership: charismatic leadership means authenticity, fascinating other people and motivating them for a common goal. Charisma here is more a psychological and spiritual than an administrative quality. It means, first of all, acting from the heart.
We aim to drive professional teams and organizations striving to make a difference to connect to Source and tap into their highest future potential and establish a working culture of connectedness through Theory U-based toolkits of Spirituality, Personal Growth and Leadership.
People are hungry for organizational change and evolution. However, it is clear that a gap or divide exists between the need for connectedness, awareness, wholeness on one side and the professional environment paradigm. But in our perspective, it is not an “either/or”. People want to come to work as a whole. Spirituality and the professional paradigm can be (re)connected.
We offer to bridge this gap by developing concrete and consolidated tools with direct applicability and scalable models with a holistic approach to express the power of Theory U and break the standard paradigm of teams and corporations and help leaders to navigate their sense of wholeness.
We aim at creating a working-culture where matter and spirit are combined and deep connections are created:
• A self-to-Self connection
• A self-to-colleagues/team-members connection
• A self-to-working environment (place, work-purpose, …) connection
We want to create spaces where professionals can make decisions moving from head-mind to heart-mind, by tapping into their Source and Work (and not driven by fear, self-interest and disconnection). Thus, creating regenerative, people-centered, and healthy work environments with more responsibility for the people.
We want to develop tools that can be applied easily, help people in the work-environment to be connected and act as a whole. We want to frame and introduce the tools in a way that people can experience the power of spirituality without the prejudices that are associated with spirituality.
The formation of the team and its work is in process and somehow experimental. We aim at an international team, which meets online, in plenum and breakout sessions. Within an initial call in preparation of that proposal we already sensed the connectedness, a co-creation and a strong intention to that prototype that wanted to emerge.
What question or societal need area are you and your colleagues working to address?
We address the following Acupuncture Points:
• Business and entrepreneurship: pioneer new pathways for transforming old extractive business practices into new regenerative practices
• Education & Learning: addressing (intercultural) learning by practice fields to experiment – learning for leaders – not only by courses and materials but with “challenges” they can apply immediately
• Health & Wellbeing: Strengthening the Sources of Human Wellbeing by building healthier working environments and better leadership cultures.
Within this team we believe in the dynamic processes of letting-come, presencing, crystallizing, prototyping, and co-sensing to develop practices to change the working environment by charismatically leading a team with a connectedness of body, heart and soul (hands, heart and mind).
The three components shall be practiced in the team(s) and a toolkit developed. The aspect of charismatic leadership provides a key door opener for engendering change in work teams and the professional world as such. Charisma is a personal skill on the identity level that combines the connectedness of body, heart and soul.
What leverage do you have within your core team to create change in this area?
Our core team and the wider team involves experts from research/science, coaching, psychology/psychotherapy, spirituality/meditation, and enterprise - so we can connect the different fields. We also refer to the Bio section.
How would the u-lab 2x community of changemakers benefit from your team’s participation?
Through us emerged the intention to provide simple tools and nudges, that can be easily integrated in working life, concerning both aspects of charismatic leadership:
• Adapted tools, summarized in a field book or workbook, guiding people through specific challenges in personal growth and charismatic leadership development, making it easier to bring spirituality into teamwork in the work life and experience it.
• Impulses to overcome the obstacles that leaders face to connect to Source to develop charismatic leadership
• Best practice cases. We will document and show cases of how bridging the gap between spirituality and leadership is possible.
We aim at providing a field book and other materials (e.g. video clips) to the u-lab 2x community changemakers of how to implement tools in specific environments.
While we consider the outcomes as a process of ULab 2.x and the team work, some first ideas already emerged among the core group, how we want to develop such tools:
• Meditative / contemplative entry into and exit out of the sessions
• a modified case clinic with practices: presentation of a case; deep listening; mirroring; depending on the team’s expertise, applying a toolset of Ulab 1.x, Ulab 2.x or other tools such as systemic constellation, role play, focus group, etc. which shall be tested in daily (work) life (practice - don’t preach).
If successfully approved, the tools can be taken up in a fieldbook, videos, etc. which will be offered to the larger Ulab 2.x community.
• Exchanging and applying experiences of group participants how to implement Ulab tools and spirituality in their work lives (dialogue with the universe).
• Practicable suggestions on how to bring love, harmony and beauty into the working place (holding space).
About the Core Team: Bio Heiko Schrader: I work as a professor of sociology (Prof.Dr.habil) and economist, do consulting for developmental projects, chair a German fundraising organization, and advise a larger community development NGO in Delhi as a board member. I have also led meditation classes for 40 years now. Teaching and research interest is in the fields of economic sociology, organizational sociology and HRM, system transformation, development, peace and conflict studies, and qualitative research methods. I have proved to create and hold space in larger international conferences and online meetings to bring the three components of spirituality, personal growth and leadership in. I already incorporated ideas of ULab into my research seminars.
I consider myself as a cosmopolitan who works with teams and practitioners in Germany, Central Asia and South Asia. One of my strengths is fascinating other people and lead them through a joint process.
https://www-e.ovgu.de/hschrade/index.htm
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heiko-schrader-717a62256/
BIO Simone Mastroianni
Italian, living in Germany. Husband in love and father of three daughters.
I got a PhD in the R&D field. I am now a systemic experiential trainer and a certified life, business and team coach. I have advanced training in mindfulness and leading with spiritual intelligence.
I pursue connectedness in whatever I do and live.
http://www.mastrocoaching.com/
http://linkedin.com/in/simone-mastroianni-phd-43151633
BIO Denise Bossert
With the goal to bridge the universe and its individual entities Denise is using her personal skills gathered being an educator, practicing Chinese Medicine, using energetic Constellations work as a personal Coach, and communicating as a Trans Medium, thus starting the work of bridging. She spent several years in Asia, studying different forms of Asian spirituality recognizing that in reality they are different aspects of the same energy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-bossert-38735b67/
BIO Sven Haase
Passionate about New Work and regenerative Leadership. Sven has a PhD in Computer Sciences, is experienced in leading cultural change in working environments and moderating large groups. Currently he is working as digital transformation manager in a corporation. He is Hypnosis Coach, Coach for organizational development, and has a long experience as a yoga practitioner.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsvenhaase/