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Why Poetry In Business Matters.

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Through exercises, rehearsals and seminars The Corporate theatre draws on the combined power of Performing Arts, Philosophy, Psychology and business acumen to develop new ways to reconnect leaders with their inspirational powers, something we consider vital in the relationship economy. In this post, our resident poet suggests that by developing our ability to sense and communicate inspiration through poetry, we can deepen the impact of our leadership and open up new opportunities for inspired growth. In this rapidly changing world, we tend to rely on surface data to make sense of our environment. In the short term, this tried and tested approach may work. However, it usually only results in incremental, uncompetitive improvements. For truly paradigmatic change, we must modify  how  we work out what something means. ‘But  poetry!?’  you ask. Well, poetry engages both our rational mind and our intuition to bring about a radical shift in cognition. We...
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Infinite Empathy

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The thinker Charles Eisenstein posted last November that 'the dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify.' And he suggests that this is both a huge danger and a wonderful opportunity. Let's not assume, though, that he is right about the dissolution of anything. It might be truer to say that discontinuity is speeding up in line with the increasing speed of communication. There is perhaps more reliability to be found in his assertion that 'we are entering a space between stories', and that in this place of unknowing the one thing we can rely on is Empathy. Can we, he asks, take Empathy into the political world and 'create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex?' My question is: can it come from the corporate world so as to infuse the political one? Our work in The Corporate Theatre has...
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Thoughts on Empathy

I am re-reading Iain McGilchrist's great book  The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western World.  It's a huge work, and repays every minute of every hour in the reading. And it stimulated me to share a few thoughts about Empathy, which is one of its main themes. Empathy is sometimes called 'the ability to stand in someone else's shoes', and this has always seemed to me to be an inadequate description. If we read Martin Buber's  I and Thou , we find that he gives a lot of attention to letting other people and the world 'come to fetch us.' This is, for Buber, a state of Empathy, because it does without ego and the control that goes with it. If I choose to be without will, then others and the world I experience can come to 'fetch' me without me controlling their...
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Inspirational Leadership Workshop GSK CEE in Warsaw - Poems featuring transformational moments





We shared transformational moments from our past and visualised moments from our future which were then fused together in a rich session when we realised that every one of us is a poet  
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Inspirational leadership workshop with GSK- CEE in Warsaw







Once again, for the fifth time in CEE, we gathered together a cohort of leaders for the Inspirational Leadership workshop run by our partners The Corporate Theatre. Twenty leaders representing eleven different nationalities from across CEE and an invited guest from the US spent two and a half days learning the principles and techniques of becoming even more inspiring leaders. For those unfamiliar with this programme we started by sitting around a campfire and sharing our feelings about how we are and what we are leaving behind. We invented stories showing how we naturally bring together elements of people, places and actions in order to create more vivid and memorable images, a process strengthened by an exercise in inspirational observation contemplating a street scene which our collective imaginations filled with rich stories. We learned about the importance of posture, breathing and clear pronounciation, shared stories about the people who have...
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The Poet's Eye

At The Corporate Theatre we believe that the iron grip of jargon on the business community—and on all organizations—is the greatest weight that individuals choose to bear. It appeals to the desire for comfort, familiarity and risk-aversion, and it kills thought, feeling and the true sense of personal purpose. The foundation of all that we do is the re-shaping and re-directing of language from corporate jargon to the creation of realities.

Our founder Martin Best talks about how embracing the 'Poets Eye' can help leaders unleash their creativity and imagination.

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I-Thou: A Personal Connection

Here at The Corporate Theatre we have been deeply influenced by the philosophy of Martin Buber. His approach to analysing human relations is baked into everything we do, helping leaders to connect with each other and the world around them in more truly meaningful, powerful, and human ways. We know, and our clients tell us, that this allows leaders to be more authentic, empathetic and creative—qualities which, when combined, make leaders more inspirational. The guiding lights of Buber’s philosophy are: “I” only exists in relationship to everybody and everything else. We can’t build relationships; they already exist. We can choose what kind of relationship we want, by choosing our mindset to things and people. Buber shows us that there are two mindsets to choose from in all situations: “I-It” - which is transactional, authoritarian, distancing “I-Thou” - which is reciprocal, equal, close. At The Corporate Theatre we show leaders how...
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5249 Hits