The Soul of Corporate Leadership: Guidelines for Value-Centered Governance

by William J. O'Brien

There is a crisis running deep inside the American corporation. It shows up in organizations' missions being diluted by office politics, in euphemistic language masking honestly held viewpoints, and in games-playing that stunts business leaders' authentic personalities. In the Industrial/Technological Age race for the rational, the scientific, and the measurable, we have lost sight of something larger and more organic—a workplace ecology that desperately needs tending if our organizations are to navigate the transition to the coming era.

In this booklet, Bill O'Brien submits that it is time for us to heal this ecology—this relationship between human beings and their work environment—so that work serves people not only as a means for earning a living, but also as a way for us to develop our talents and express our best selves. This volume describes a philosophy and a set of four core values that can guide the tending of this ecology. These ideas can pay vital dividends, for they release the potential that has been trapped within us by the traditional command-and-control approach to leadership. In a workplace shaped by values-centered leadership, the organization's goals and values come into alignment with the goals and values of the people who work there. Most important, the atmosphere invites and stimulates people to express their highest attributes—their desire to help others, their eagerness to contribute to something larger than themselves, and their courage to stand up for what's right.

Values-centered leadership concerns not just mundane day-to-day matters, but matters of the bottom line; not just matters of the head, but matters of the heart; not just matters of profit, but matters of soul-in short, it concerns the very essence of our humanity.

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