Or… how to create the right environment to grow yourself and the people you work with and for…
Don’t worry I won’t try and cover this whole subject in a single post, this is just the introduction but keep coming back and we will add “layer on layer, a little here a little there…” as Isaiah would put it!
You see, someone, (I’ve seen this attributed to various people, including Leo Tolstoy and U2’s Bono) once said “you can only change the world to the degree your willing to be changed yourself”. Actually I just said it… but it sounded like it should be a famous quote and Tolstoy did
say”everybody thinks of changing the World, nobody thinks about changing themselves” and Bono once sang “I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me”… so perhaps we can agree on the connection between the inner life and our worlds we inhabit.
Anyway, some years ago now I connected with a couple, Stephen and Mara Klemich who where developing a business development tool based on the truths of being human they had discovered as part of their journey of Faith with Jesus. Now I’ve met a lot of people with a sense of a big calling from Jesus, some seem to have a desire to have it more than they seem to have the call itself, but Stephen and Mara had all the marks of genuine substance to what they believed Jesus had asked them to do. Stephen had many years of top level executive coaching and Dr Mara Klemich had worked as a top level psychologist in a number of specialist-fields.
So for a while I worked with them as they developed what has become Heartstyles in the corporate world and HeartLife in churches and Christian charities. Click the two titles above to go to their respective home websites.
For information it is definitely worth downloading the online case study of how Heartstyles transformed Pizza Hut in the UK.
In a nut shell, Heartstyles works by starting with a simple measurement of every persons activity and fits it into a simple four spaced grid. The combination of measurement and “indicator” allow the individual to see how their behavior is either effective or ineffective in dealing with(growing) both themselves and others.
From this starting point each individual is taken through a process than can create real heart change, not just managed dysfunction… heart change becomes our natural state for the long term, managed behavior always slips as we get tired or just can’t be bothered…
And as this happens we find ourselves where I started this post, the world in me gets changed… and by that change the world around gets changed too.
Obviously you can explore the Heartstyles and Heartlife sites and over the Autumn of 2015 and 2016 Heartstyles will form a backbone of our teaching programme at Light Lunch and First Friday Breakfast. Or if you want to go a bit deeper with Heartstyles you can join me one Saturday a month in Westminster for the Jesus Centred Life Course where we will take participants through a personal process, or even contact me directly about bringing Heartstyles into your business or church.
I’ll also be posting regular blogs exploring related themes and insights as we work through this process with the West End Wednesday community.
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