1. No category

A Field Guide to
Ethical Leadership
Part One: Tilling
the Soil
A global network of young social innovators working at
the intersection of justice, peace and ecology
2015-2016
Version 4.0
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“The problems we face today, violent conflicts,
destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on, are
human-created problems which can be resolved through
human effort, understanding and the development of
a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to
cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the
planet we share.”
– His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love
without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its
best is love implementing the demands of justice, and
justice at its best is power correcting everything that
stands against love.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The struggle has always been inner, and is played out
in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come
before inner changes, which in turn come before changes
in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it
first happens in the images in our heads.”
–Gloria E. Anzaldua
Photo: Joseph Byonanebye (2011 Fellow). Conservation
Through Public Health. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
5
Exercise 1 | From the Dalai Lama’s Heart to Yours
9
Exercise 5 | Draft Your Compassion-in-Action Board Part Two:
Project Mission, Motivations, Timeline, Obstacles,
Reinforcements, Small Victories
34
Reading 1 | Excerpt from Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World
by The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
10
Reading 5 | Throw Away Your Vision Board by Dr. Neil Farber & The
Way of Vision by Vivienne Walz
35
Exercise 2 | Assess Your Own Competencies
13
Exercise 6 | Create an Anti-Portfolio
37
Reading 2 | Self-Mastery, Collaborating Across Differences,
and Designing Ethical Systems. The Three Core
Competencies of our Heart, Head, and Hands
Curriculum
14
Exercise 7 | Create a Blueprint of We or a Blueprint of Me
38
Exercise 3 | Take the VIA Character Strengths Test
23
Reading 7 | From Hero to Host by Deborah Frieze and Margaret
Wheatley
39
Reading 3 | Martin Seligman Talk on Flourishing
24
Exercise 8 | Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations That Matter 41
Exercise 4 | Draft Your Compassion-in-Action Board Part One:
Determine Your Values, Core Beliefs, and Ethical
Leadership Vision Statement
25
Reading 8 | The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter Workbook
41
Exercise 9 | Determining What Enhancing Well-Being While Working
Across Differences at the Intersection of Justice, Peace,
and Ecology Means To You
42
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Table of Contents
(Continued)
Reading 9 | Story of Stuff Video
42
Reading 15 | Design Thinking for Social Innovation by Tim Brown and 54
Jocelyn Wyatt
Exercise 10 | Determining Community Assets and Using Your Budget
to Generate Assets.
43
Exercise 16 | “I’m Nobody, Who Are You?”
61
Reading 10 | Identifying Community Assets and Resources by
University of Kansas Community Toolbox
43
Exercise 17 | Time Travel
62
Exercise 11 | Stakeholder Analysis
44
Exercise 18 | Discerning Project Impact
63
Exercise 12 | Behavior Over Time Graph
45
Reading 18 | Girl-Centered Program Design (section on Monitoring
and Evaluation) by The Population Council
63
Reading 12 | Race to Incarcerate Excerpt
46
Exercise 19 | Bring a Heart-Made Gift to the ELA
64
Exercise 13 | Mindsets and Root Causes
47
Optional Exercise
65
Exercise 14 | Revisiing Your Timeline
51
Optional Readings
69
Exercise 15 | Empathetic Interviewing (At Your Convenience)
52
Appendices
72
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INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE
If you are reading this, you are a creative,
compassionate, and practical idealist who is
passionate about enhancing wellbeing while
working across differences at the intersection of
justice, peace, and ecology.
The Dalai Lama Fellows’ Field Guide to Ethical
Leadership will support you through a yearlong
journey that will challenge you to answer the
following questions with your heart, head, and
heads:
∙∙ What is the world asking of us?
∙∙ Who do we need to become?
∙∙ How can we generate inner and outer
transformation?
As you work on your compassion-in-action
project during the upcoming year, your
journey will push you to deepen your ability
to balance power and love via the three core
competencies of our curriculum. We are
inspired by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s life-long
cultivation of:
∙∙ Self-mastery
∙∙ Collaborating across differences
∙∙ Co-Designing ethical systems
During the year, we will challenge you
continuously to strengthen these competencies
by applying the engage-reflect-practice-storytell
approach to your compassion-in-action project:
∙∙ Engage deeply with your own selfmastery. Reflect on its evolution. Practice
strengthening it. Share ongoing stories of
your journey with our global community.
∙∙ Engage deeply with your own ability to
collaborate across differences. Reflect
on its evolution. Practice strengthening it.
Share ongoing stories of your journey with
our global community.
∙∙ Engage deeply with how you can codesign ethical systems that will support
a thriving planet. Reflect on the already
existing assets, needs, complexities, and
community structures you encounter.
Practice applying a flexible approach
that is grounded in powerful questions,
observation, empathy, listening to key
stakeholders, experimenting with various
approaches, getting community feedback,
and reiterating. Share ongoing stories with
our global community.
DELIVERY
Our Field Guide to Ethical Leadership is divided
into four parts. And guess what the best part
is—you will be helping to write it!
PART 1 | APRIL - JUNE 2015
Tilling the Soil is the first part. You will complete:
∙∙ A set of reflective exercises and readings
that will lay the foundations for the Dalai
Lama Fellows’ Ethical Leadership Assembly
(ELA). It’s a time for deepening, nourishing,
and watering the roots of your commitment
to inner and outer transformation.
∙∙ A series of three conversations with your
staff mentor to clarify and refine your
understanding of the three competencies,
and the support you need to activate your
ethical leadership vision.
PART 2 | JUNE 2015
The weeklong Ethical Leadership Assembly in
California.
∙∙ We will co-create a global learning
community that builds skills and plants and
nourishes seeds of life-long commitment
to social innovation and ethical and
compassionate leadership. You will be
invited to share your vulnerability, your
courage, your hopes, your visions,
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and to support our global community. Here,
you will take steps towards designing a selfguided learning journey.
∙∙ You will also take much of the material you
generate and refine during the Tilling the
Soil process to create a compassion-inaction board--a physical board showcasing
your ethical leadership vision, your
project mission, your timeline, anticipated
obstacles, sources of support, etc.
PART 3 | JULY ‘15- MAY 2016
This is the part you will help to write! As you
carry out your compassion-in-action project,
you will share the trials and transformations of
your journey via:
∙∙ Capture what you are learning as you
engage, reflect, practice, and story-tell via
your self-guided learning journey as you
deepen your practice of the three core
competencies.
∙∙ Program coaching calls 3 x / year
mandatory, every other month opt in.
∙∙ Peer mentoring touch points at least 3 x /
year.
∙∙ Opt-in engagement with Life-long Fellow
mentors and content created for LLF
community, like Seasonal Elder calls.
∙∙ A public offering to your home community
that helps you build mastery in the three
core competencies.
PART 4 | JUNE 2016 +
ELA, Portfolio, and life-long commitment
∙∙ You will return to the Ethical Leadership
Assembly and share your wisdom with new
Fellows.
∙∙ You will complete a physical and virtual
portfolio intended to inspire your home
community, our global network, and the
Dalai Lama with reflections about your
yearlong journey.
∙∙ You will deepen your lifelong commitment to
social innovation grounded in self-mastery,
collaborating across differences, and codesigning ethical systems.
“I don’t think that my project was “a failure” but by far the most important lessons I
learned this year have been when something went unexpectedly or outside of the
parameters I set. I think a year ago I would be very afraid to talk with my funders about
these frustrations but I think if I don’t, I am leaving out some of the most important
aspects of the year. I think Fellows should be encouraged to analyze and criticize their
roles in these upsets as well as the outside circumstances. It will make us more resilient
and creative.”
– Colleen Creegan, NYU Fellow, Handmade Peace, Rwanda.
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“Emerson has said that consistency is a virtue of an
ass. No thinking human being can be tied down to
a view once expressed in the name of consistency.
More important than consistency is responsibility. A
responsible person must learn to unlearn what he has
learned. A responsible person must have the courage
to rethink and change his thoughts. Of course there
must be good and sufficient reason for unlearning
what he has learned and for recasting his thoughts.
There can be no finality in rethinking.”
– B.R. Ambedkar
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa
and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down
doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you
out the door, because it will take everything you have
to steer the future away from endless war, from the
annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding
down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give
yourself to the future - and that commitment to the
future is what makes the present inhabitable.”
– Rebecca Solnit
Photo: Sameer Ujwala Vishram Mohite (2012 Fellow). A Critical Thinking Curriculum On Gender, Caste, and Superstition in rural Konkan District, Maharashtra,
India.
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SCOPE + SCALE
Deepening, nourishing, and watering the seeds
of your commitment to ethical leadership will
require you to be extremely intentional.
Pause.
∙∙ Your responses will be private between
yourself and the program coach. However,
we may ask your permission to quote
excerpts on the DLF blog, and you may
choose to share these materials later on as
part of your peer-coaching commitment.
You will be expected to print out a version
of these materials at the end of the year
and include them in a virtual and physical
portfolio.
Take three deep breaths.
Stretch.
∙∙ Take some time now to calendarize about
16-20 hours to complete the readings and
exercises below.
∙∙ By April 21, schedule 3 Skype calls with
your program coach to discuss your
responses to Tilling the Soil prior to the ELA.
Wisdom from a past Fellow: you may
find it helpful to complete this 10 minute
questionnaire to better understand how you
learn best—what combination of moving
physical objects around, drawing pictures or
diagrams, listening, and reading works best for
you? Then, immerse yourself in the following
material using the methods that work best for
you. For example, you may want to:
∙∙ These exercises and Skype calls must be
completed by June 7th in order for you
to be eligible to receive your Dalai Lama
Fellows’ seed-funding.
∙∙ Print out a copy of this document and write
on it.
∙∙ Format: Please download this Google
doc template, and fill in your responses
in a word document, and share it with
your program coach 24 hours before
your scheduled Skype call. For one of
the exercises, you will need to make a
powerpoint.
∙∙ Make mind-maps.
∙∙ Take notes using post-its or note-cards.
∙∙ Draw pictures or diagrams; collect photos.
∙∙ Use play-dough to build models of your
vision.
∙∙ Pay attention to how you are feeling in your
body. Do you have yummy snacks nearby?
Did you get enough sleep? Are you taking
breaks? Are you planning ahead for the time
you’ll need to complete these exercises?
∙∙ Talk with your friends and family about what
you’re learning and act out key concepts
with your body. Warning: the number of
smiles and hugs you share might go off the
charts!
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EXERCISE 1
From the Dalai
Lama’s Heart to
Yours
INSTRUCTIONS +
PURPOSE
∙∙ How has the Dalai Lama’s life journey
influenced his understanding of ethics?
Engage with the Dalai Lama’s vision for
ethical leadership and relate it to your own
understanding.
After completing the reading, respond to each
question by writing a one-sentence response.
Remember, the Dalai Lama may read your
response some day—and he would encourage
you to challenge, test, and relate to what he is
saying on your own terms.
∙∙ Why does he think it’s time for us to go
“beyond religion”?
∙∙ What is his perspective on ‘designing
ethical systems’?
∙∙ What, if anything, about his perspective
on ethical leadership, surprised, inspired,
challenged, or deeply moved you?
∙∙ What does he mean by ‘inner values’? Why
are they important to him?
READING
Excerpt from Beyond Religion: Ethics for a
Whole World by The Dalai Lama.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 minutes
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama takes a group photo with program staff,
representative Fellows, and close supporters and advisors after our private audience with him.
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READING 1
‘Beyond
Religion’: The
Dalai Lama’s
Secular Ethics
(Excerpted in the Huffington Post)
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from
“Beyond Religion” by His Holiness the Dalai
Lama. Reproduced by permission of Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
I am an old man now. I was born in 1935 in a
small village in northeastern Tibet. For reasons
beyond my control, I have lived most of my
adult life as a stateless refugee in India, which
has been my second home for over 50 years.
I often joke that I am India’s longest-staying
guest. In common with other people of my
age, I have witnessed many of the dramatic
events that have shaped the world we live in.
Since the late 1960s, I have also traveled a
great deal, and have had the honor to meet
people from many different backgrounds: not
just presidents and prime ministers, kings and
queens, and leaders from all the world’s great
religious traditions, but also a great number of
ordinary people from all walks of life.
Looking back over the past decades, I find
many reasons to rejoice. Through advances
in medical science, deadly diseases have
been eradicated. Millions of people have been
lifted from poverty and have gained access to
modern education and health care. We have
a universal declaration of human rights, and
awareness of the importance of such rights has
grown tremendously. As a result, the ideals of
freedom and democracy have spread around
the world, and there is increasing recognition of
the oneness of humanity. There is also growing
awareness of the importance of a healthy
environment. In very many ways, the last halfcentury or so has been one of progress and
positive change.
At the same time, despite tremendous
advances in so many fields, there is still great
suffering, and humanity continues to face
enormous difficulties and problems. While in the
more affluent parts of the world people enjoy
lifestyles of high consumption, there remain
countless millions whose basic needs are not
met. With the end of the Cold War, the threat
of global nuclear destruction has receded, but
many continue to endure the sufferings and
tragedy of armed conflict. In many areas, too,
people are having to deal with environmental
problems and, with these, threats to their
livelihood and worse. At the same time, many
others are struggling to get by in the face of
inequality, corruption and injustice.
These problems are not limited to the
developing world. In the richer countries, too,
there are many difficulties, including widespread
social problems: alcoholism, drug abuse,
domestic violence, family breakdown. People
are worried about their children, about their
education and what the world holds in store
for them. Now, too, we have to recognize the
possibility that human activity is damaging our
planet beyond a point of no return, a threat
which creates further fear. And all the pressures
of modern life bring with them stress, anxiety,
depression, and, increasingly, loneliness.
As a result, everywhere I go, people are
complaining. Even I find myself complaining
from time to time!
It is clear that something is seriously lacking in
the way we humans are going about things.
But what is it that we lack? The fundamental
problem, I believe, is that at every level we
are giving too much attention to the external
material aspects of life while neglecting moral
ethics and inner values.
By inner values I mean the qualities that we
all appreciate in others, and toward which
we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by
our biological nature as animals that survive
and thrive only in an environment of concern,
affection and warmheartedness -- or in a
single word, compassion. The essence of
compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering
of others and to promote their well-being.
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This is the spiritual principle from which all other
positive inner values emerge. We all appreciate
in others the inner qualities of kindness,
patience, tolerance, forgiveness and generosity,
and in the same way we are all averse to
displays of greed, malice, hatred and bigotry.
So actively promoting the positive inner qualities
of the human heart that arise from our core
disposition toward compassion, and learning to
combat our more destructive propensities, will
be appreciated by all. And the first beneficiaries
of such a strengthening of our inner values
will, no doubt, be ourselves. Our inner lives
are something we ignore at our own peril, and
many of the greatest problems we face in
today’s world are the result of such neglect.
Not long ago I visited Orissa, a region in
eastern India. The poverty in this part of the
country, especially among tribal people, has
recently led to growing conflict and insurgency.
I met with a member of parliament from the
region and discussed these issues. From
him I gathered that there are a number legal
mechanisms and well-funded government
projects already in place aimed at protecting
the rights of tribal people and even giving them
material assistance. The problem, he said, was
that the funds provided by the government
were not reaching those they were intended
to help. When such projects are subverted by
corruption, inefficiency and irresponsibility on
the part of those charged with implementing
them, they become worthless.
This example shows very clearly that even
when a system is sound, its effectiveness
depends on the way it is used. Ultimately,
any system, any set of laws or procedures,
can only be as effective as the individuals
responsible for its implementation. If, owing to
failures of personal integrity, a good system
is misused, it can easily become a source of
harm rather than a source of benefit. This is
a general truth which applies to all fields of
human activity, even religion. Though religion
certainly has the potential to help people
lead meaningful and happy lives, it too, when
misused, can become a source of conflict and
division. Similarly, in the fields of commerce
and finance, the systems themselves may
be sound, but if the people using them are
unscrupulous and driven by self-serving
greed, the benefits of those systems will
be undermined. Unfortunately, we see this
happening in many kinds of human activities:
even in international sports, where corruption
threatens the very notion of fair play.
Of course, many discerning people are aware
of these problems and are working sincerely
to redress them from within their own areas of
expertise. Politicians, civil servants, lawyers,
educators, environmentalists, activists and so
on -- people from all sides are already engaged
in this effort. This is very good so far as it goes,
but the fact is, we will never solve our problems
simply by instituting new laws and regulations.
Ultimately, the source of our problems lies
at the level of the individual. If people lack
moral values and integrity, no system of laws
and regulations will be adequate. So long as
people give priority to material values, then
injustice, inequity, intolerance and greed -- all
the outward manifestations of neglect of inner
values -- will persist.
So what are we to do? Where are we to turn for
help? Science, for all the benefits it has brought
to our external world, has not yet provided
scientific grounding for the development of
the foundations of personal integrity -- the
basic inner human values that we appreciate
in others and would do well to promote in
ourselves. Perhaps we should seek inner
values from religion, as people have done for
millennia?
Certainly religion has helped millions of
people in the past, helps millions today and
will continue to help millions in the future. But
for all its benefits in offering moral guidance
and meaning in life, in today’s secular world
religion alone is no longer adequate as a
basis for ethics. One reason for this is that
many people in the world no longer follow any
particular religion. Another reason is that, as the
peoples of the world become ever more closely
interconnected in an age of globalization and
in multicultural societies, ethics based in any
one religion would only appeal to some of us;
it would not be meaningful for all. In the past,
when peoples lived in relative isolation from one
another -- as we Tibetans lived quite happily for
many centuries behind our wall of mountains
-- the fact that groups pursued their own
religiously based approaches to ethics posed
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no difficulties. Today, however, any religionbased answer to the problem of our neglect
of inner values can never be universal, and so
will be inadequate. What we need today is an
approach to ethics which makes no recourse
to religion and can be equally acceptable to
those with faith and those without: a secular
ethics.
This statement may seem strange coming from
someone who from a very early age has lived
as a monk in robes. Yet I see no contradiction
here. My faith enjoins me to strive for the
welfare and benefit of all sentient beings, and
reaching out beyond my own tradition, to those
of other religions and those of none, is entirely
in keeping with this.
I am confident that it is both possible and
worthwhile to attempt a new secular approach
to universal ethics. My confidence comes from
my conviction that all of us, all human beings,
are basically inclined or disposed toward what
we perceive to be good. Whatever we do,
we do because we think it will be of some
benefit. At the same time, we all appreciate
the kindness of others. We are all, by nature,
oriented toward the basic human values of
love and compassion. We all prefer the love
of others to their hatred. We all prefer others’
generosity to their meanness. And who among
us does not prefer tolerance, respect and
forgiveness of our failings to bigotry, disrespect
and resentment?
In view of this, I am of the firm opinion that we
have within our grasp a way, and a means,
to ground inner values without contradicting
any religion and yet, crucially, without
depending on religion. The development and
practice of this new system of ethics is what
I propose to elaborate in the course of this
book. It is my hope that doing so will help to
promote understanding of the need for ethical
awareness and inner values in this age of
excessive materialism.
At the outset I should make it clear that my
intention is not to dictate moral values. Doing
that would be of no benefit. To try to impose
moral principles from outside, to impose
them, as it were, by command, can never be
effective. Instead, I call for each of us to come
to our own understanding of the importance
of inner values. For it is these inner values
which are the source of both an ethically
harmonious world and the individual peace of
mind, confidence and happiness we all seek.
Of course, all the world’s major religions, with
their emphasis on love, compassion, patience,
tolerance and forgiveness, can and do promote
inner values. But the reality of the world today
is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer
adequate. This is why I believe the time has
come to find a way of thinking about spirituality
and ethics that is beyond religion.
Photo: Titus Chirchir (2012 Fellow), Project for Environmental and Agricultural Sensitization (PEAS). Timboiywo
in Rift Valley Kenya
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EXERCISE 2
Assess Your Own
Competencies
PURPOSE
Understand the philosophical underpinnings
of the 3 core competencies of a Dalai
Lama Fellow and begin thinking about what
competencies you will develop within yourself
during the Fellowship year.
READING
Self-Mastery, Collaborating Across Differences,
and Designing Ethical Systems. The Three
Core Competencies of our Heart, Head, and
Hands Curriculum
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
45 minutes
On a scale of 1-3 how adept are you at
embodying this capacity in your daily life?
1: not very adept in this capacity and it is
something I would like to develop more;
2: somewhat adept in this capacity, I am
able to enlist this capacity when
needed but it is not a part of my
everyday life;
3: this is one of my strongest
capacities and I pull on this
capacity every day of my
life, I have a very thorough
understanding and embodiment
of this capacity and I could mentor
others in developing this capacity
as well).
∙∙ What capacities most call you to develop
them in order for you to accomplish your
work in the world?
Write 4 sentences responding to
the following questions: Choosing
which capacities to focus upon:
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE∙∙
As you read through detailed descriptions of
the three core competencies, and their related
capacities, please respond to the following
question:
∙∙ What capacities could you mentor others
in, while refining your development in this
capacity through teaching others?
What scores did you give
yourself for each capacity?
∙∙ What capacities do you feel
needs the most attention?
http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree
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READING 2
Self-Mastery,
Collaborating
Across
Differences,
and Designing
Ethical Systems.
The Three Core
Competencies
of our Heart,
Head, and Hands
Curriculum
Our Heart, Head, and Hands curriculum
focuses on 3 core competencies inspired by
the Dalai Lama’s life-long cultivation of them.
sometimes it can feel like a roller coaster.
∙∙ Can exercise good judgment about what
aspects of a situation should be prioritized.
They are:
1. Self-Mastery
2. Working Across Differences
3. Designing Ethical Systems
Advanced
∙∙ Has addressed many challenges and can
troubleshoot effectively
∙∙ Has accumulated knowledge from lots of
experience and can teach others
∙∙ Regularly practices and has a community of
support to keep developing
∙∙ Has the ability and willingness to take risks
∙∙ Actively looks for mistakes to keep
improving
Mastering these competencies and sharing
them with others will help you realize Dalai
Lama Fellows’ vision of a world that works for
the whole as well as the individual. Mastery is
a life-long process in which the journey is as
important as the destination and there are many
spiraling levels of revisiting the foundations in
order to understand them more fully. For the
purposes of our year-long curriculum:
LEVELS OF MASTERY
Beginner
∙∙ Can define the competency and
understands why it is valuable. Has the
theory.
∙∙ Can begin to apply the knowledge to
specific situations
∙∙ Is risk averse around this competency
Intermediate
∙∙ Has practiced a few times and addressed
some challenge effectively
∙∙ Has a sense of his/her limitations within this
competency.
∙∙ Increasingly has confidence, although
ASSESSMENT
During the peer-coaching workshop and the
Designing Ethical Systems module at the
Ethical Leadership Assembly, you will receive
materials for assessing your personal growth
and your project impact. At the ELA, with the
help of Faculty, you will select a few areas
in which you want consistent support from
your peer-coach and your Program Director.
Also at the ELA, working with other Fellows,
you will have a chance to prototype a miniworkshop focused on teaching one of these
competencies to your home community.
During the Fellowship year, we expect that
you will use the Program Director calls, selfguided learning journey, peer coaching checkins, seasonal elder webinars, innovation
notebook, and portfolio for the Dalai Lama as
15
spaces where you will reflect on your journey
towards greater mastery of the three core
competencies.
By the end of the Fellowship year, we expect
that you will teach/facilitate/host a workshop
in your home community where you will share
your own take on one of these competencies.
We expect that you will collect feedback and
share it with us.
The Three Core Competencies:
Definitions, Principles, Behaviors,
Practices, and Shadow Aspects
The three competencies are not discrete. They
are intimately nested within each other and
we have to move continuously back and forth
between them. They start with the ‘I,’ move
to the ‘we,’ and the ‘we’ becomes the basis
for intervening in ‘it.’ The stronger and more
authentic the I is, the more robust the we can
aspire to become; the more grounded the we
is, the more likely it is that the resulting it will
have an enduring impact for the good of all.
Each of the three competencies has a set
of related capacities which has a definition,
principles, behaviors, practices, and shadow
aspects. As you read, start to see which of
these capacities are the most important for you
to develop.
The shadow aspects are the unconscious
and possibly unhealthy aspects of individuals,
collectives, and systems that we often find
it easy to deny or suppress. Understanding
and lovingly working to transform the shadow
aspects is a fundamental practice in the
journey. (You can learn more about the shadow
self by reading The Long Bag We Drag Behind
Us by Robert Bly).
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
I. Self-Mastery (Heart/I)
Self-mastery is the core of ethical leadership
because it’s about intentionally cultivating inner
values.
The list below is necessarily incomplete. You
have to fill it in with your own understanding,
practice, culture, and traditions.
Definitions adapted from The Lotus: A Practice
Guide for Authentic Sustainability co-authored
by DLF curriculum advisor Dana Pearlman,
whom you will meet at the ELA.
1. Being present
Definition:
Being fully aware and awake in the present
moment-physically, mentally, emotionally and
spiritually. This includes connecting to others,
sensing emotions as they arise in your body,
and being fully aware of the environment
around you and current reality.
Principles:
Pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and
bodily sensations; be mindful and observe this
moment in time with gratitude.
Behaviors: Setting an intention; deeply listening
to others, appreciating our natural environment,
being aware of all that is happening in and
around you. Recognizing the gift of living in this
moment.
Practice:
Use breathing as the bridge between your mind
16
and body in order to connect to this moment in
time. This includes when you are on email, and
when you are completing this exercise. Do it
now. Breathe.
Shadow Aspects:
Unable to appreciate current reality because
solely focusing on the past and future. Absent
to the present moment.
Extend kindness (to yourself and others) in
even the most challenging circumstances.
Behaviors:
Setting an intention; When treated poorly by
others, does not take their behavior personally,
extends kindness and compassion by honoring
oneself and others in all situations, and when
unable to do this, reflects and redirects oneself
to compassion.
2. Compassion
Definition:
Having unconditional acceptance and
kindness toward all the dimensions of oneself
and others, regardless of circumstance.
Compassion involves the ability to reflect upon
oneself and others without judgment, but with
recognition and trust that others are doing the
best they can in any given situation.
Principles:
Patience, gratitude, forgiveness, kindness.
Practice:
Think of anyone that you need to forgive. For
one month, do a daily journaling exercise where
you send this person love and forgiveness.
Shadow Aspects:
Treating yourself and others harshly and
unkindly. Holding a grudge.
3. Suspension & Letting Go
(Holding Complexity)
Definition:
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
The ability actively to experience and observe
a thought, assumption, judgment, habitual
pattern, emotion, or sensation like fear,
confusion, conflict, or desire, and then restrain
from immediately reacting or responding.
Principles:
Equanimity; Understanding that whatever
happens is the only thing that could happen, to
wish it were different is the source of suffering.
Notice your judgments arising and refrain from
reacting. Reflect upon your judgments and
understand they say more about you than they
say about the person you are judging.
Behaviors:
When triggered, is able to step back and
breathe, have ability to not react; can create
space/freedom/sense of possibility in difficult
situations.
Practice:
Make a list of all the fears, beliefs and
judgments you have about yourself. Begin
to extract them from who you are and realize
those are just thoughts, not truths. Start to
question whether these beliefs, fears and
judgments are absolutely true or if they are just
hindering you from becoming the person you
want to be in your life.
Shadow aspects:
Reactive and upset by circumstances. Wishes
circumstances were different than they are.
4. Personal Power
17
Definition:
The ability to use energy and drive to manifest
wise actions in the world for the greater good,
while being aware of one’s influences on a
situation.
Principles:
Know when to step up and lead and when
to let others step up and lead. Acknowledge
your influence in any given situation and act
accordingly for the greater good. Has a theory
of change and is inspired by it.
Behaviors:
Has Vision; Sets and respects boundaries;
Gives space for other perspectives and others’
leadership.
Practice:
Think of the people that have influenced you
in your life and give you courage to effect
change. Call upon these people to support you
when you need courage to step up and lead.
Complete the “Anti-Portfolio” exercise in Tilling
the Soil.
Shadow Aspects:
Using power to manipulate and control others,
abuse of power for purposes other than for the
greater good.
5. Holding Paradoxes, Multiple World views
and Ambiguities
Definition:
The capacity to sit with ambiguity in
collaborative group work, manage polarities and
hold multiple perspectives.
Principles:
Have trust in yourself, others and outcomes,
even if the outcome is uncertain. Be okay with
whatever is occurring, while simultaneously
moving towards a desired outcome.
Behaviors:
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
Breathing in response to uncertainty, being fully
aware of one’s discomfort and not reacting
to situations, inviting in many world views and
perspectives, doing practices that support you
in feeling balanced in uncertainty.
Practice:
Have a conversation with someone with very
different perspectives than yours. Work to
deeply listen to their perspective and try to
understand where they are coming from. Put
your judgments aside. Cultivate a practice of
regularly spending time in silence.
Shadow Aspects:
Trying to control outcomes, making unilateral
decisions, making decisions and conclusions
before the group is ready.
6. Intention Aligned with Higher Purpose
Definition:
“Where your deepest personal passion and
the world’s greatest needs align, there is
opportunity.” –Peter Senge.
Principles: Seek out what moves you are your
core and how you can assist others in the
world.
Behaviors:
Creating your ethical leadership vision as part of
Tilling the Soil.
Practice:
Printing out your ethical leadership vision and
compassion-in-action project plan and keeping
them where they are visible, as part of the
compassion-in-action board or another digital
18
or physical space where you can frequently
use it. Visualizing the processes and practices
you want to dedicate yourself to every day.
Setting aside time to non-verbally repeat a word
that helps you remember your intention (i.e.
“peace,”).
Shadow Aspects:
Forgetting to discern the impact of your
intentions. Neglecting to collect feedback from
other stakeholders. Neglecting to process
feedback that is inconsistent with your
intention.
7. Whole Self Awareness
Definition:
Continual, lifelong process of paying attention
to knowing oneself; it involves consciously
and intentionally observing various dimensions
of the self (including the physical, mental,
shadow, emotional, and spiritual realms). It is
the capacity to observe how one is thinking,
relating, feeling, sensing, and judging. This
includes perceptions beyond the rational mind,
such as intuition.
Principles:
Pay attention to all the dimensions of yourself
(physical, emotional, spiritual, shadow and
mental dimensions). Your body is not a
transporter for your head, you are a whole
system.
Behaviors:
Learn more about yourself by paying attention
to what you admire and are irritated by in
others. Learn more about yourself by paying
attention to how you respond to physical
challenges. Understand what emotions you find
acceptable and unacceptable. How do you feel
physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and
energetically right now?
Shadow Aspects:
Unable to discern between sound/robust
intuition and misguided/inauthentic intuition.
Practice:
Pay attention to what irritates or triggers
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
you. When someone else irritates or triggers
you, if you get angry with them, you are just
shooting the messenger. Try to notice how
you are feeling in your body, write down
what happened, what you felt, and how you
would normally have reacted if you had not
suspended a reaction, and how this situation
might represent a repressed self from long ago.
Seeing irritations as shadows to be explored
helps you gain acceptance, compassion, and
awareness of yourself and others. It teaches
you to suspend judgment when an irritation
occurs.
Personal leadership capacities for co-learning and
co-creation
19
Failing to take the time to understand
counterintuitive truths.
8. Sense of Humor
Definition:
Light-heartedness; the universal experience of
amusement, laughter and joy culminating from
an experience, thought or sensation.
Principles:
Do not take yourself, others, and the world too
seriously.
Behaviors:
In the midst of chaos and difficulty, if you
turned this situation around and saw the irony
or humor, what would you see differently? Are
you taking the process, group, or outcome too
seriously? How can you shift this seriousness
to a sense of light-heartedness?
Practice:
Observe how your mind works with a sense of
humor; remember, you are never too old to play
Shadow Aspects:
Mocking self or others.
II. Collaborating Across Differences
(Hands) (We)
Inspired by several sources, including Outward
Bound and the Art of Hosting and Harvesting
Conversations that Matter.
1. Effective communication
Definition:
Creating engaging environments that enable
people to share wisdom, perspectives and
listen to others in order to co-create change
and solutions to pressing challenges.
Principles:
Deeply listen to what the world is asking of you
and others.
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
Behaviors:
Empathetic and generative listening (learning
to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and to
generate new possibilities).
Storytelling (being comfortable with invoking
values in order to craft a story of self, story of
us, and story of now so that you can inspire
others to co-lead), CFR (Concern; Feeling;
Request), WOMP (What’s up?; Ownership;
Walk a Mile in the other person’s shoes; how
would you feel if you were them? Plan: what
are you doing to do in the future?). Crafting
powerful questions.
Practices:
Creating structures for feedback and reflection
on your ability to listen empathetically and
generatively, and your own ability to craft
powerful questions, requests and offers.
Shadow aspects:
Manipulating others; avoiding conflict; being too
open to others without owning one’s personal
power.
2. Hosting conversations that matter
Definition:
A highly effective way of harnessing the
collective wisdom and self-organizing capacity
of groups of any size. It includes a collection
of methodologies, patterns, frameworks, world
views and principles for convening participatory
spaces that are inclusive and engaging for
systemic transformation. Hosting conversations
20
that matter enables complex living systems to
co-create desirable solutions to our greatest
challenges.
co-creation that benefits the greater good in
order to become a system of influence to effect
change.
Principles:
Diversity, collaboration, presence, letting go of
limiting beliefs, collective wisdom, emergence,
inclusion. Understands others’ theories of
change.
Shadow aspects:
Becoming so process-oriented/conversationoriented that you turn off more action-oriented
folks. Failing to create a structure that balances
individual and collective needs.
Behaviors and Practices:
1. Hosting oneself by doing what is essential to
become present to what is being asked of you,
2. Hosting others in meaningful conversations
that surface our deepest cares and concerns
for the world in order to surface solutions and
nurture relationships,
3. Participating in other people’s deepest cares
to enable them to lead and effect change, and
4. Hosting a community of practice within your
school/team/ organization/DLF’s global network
by enabling shared language, co-learning and
3. Harnessing the gifts of diversity
Definition:
In order to create healthy systems, invite all
voices to participate in co-creating our desired
future. Tap into as many diverse voices within
the system for a wide systemic approach. For
a more resilient outcome, invite and empower
others to offer their gifts, perspectives and
passion to co-create a future we want.
Principles:
“If it’s about us don’t do it without us.” Invite all
the diverse voices into the conversation in order
to create resilient interventions that work for
everyone.
Behaviors and practices:
Use powerful questions and participatory
methodologies to unearth diverse perspectives
and gifts within the community. Include and
invite everyone that is affected by the solutions.
Shadow aspects: Inviting participation from
all voices in a shallow and/or temporary way
without taking time for the deep and prolonged
engagement with conversations about trust,
history, race, class, caste, gender, power and
privilege that may be required.
III. Designing Ethical Systems (Head/
Understanding/It)
Definitions adapted from The Lotus, Linda
Booth Sweeney, David Kelley, and the Stanford
Design School.
1. Whole Systems Awareness
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
Definition:
The capacity to quickly switch between
different perspectives, scales and world views
to see the big picture, interconnections within
the system, and being able to scale down to
small details. Whole System Awareness is not
just cognitive-you ‘sense’ the system. It is the
understanding that everything is interconnected
within a system.
21
Principles:
Sense the system, look for different mental
models and assumptions, pay attention to
patterns and upstream processes, and the
most effective places to intervene. Invite
essential stakeholder input to gain a wider
perspective. Harvest the collective intelligence
surfacing from the group. Look for places
where positive change will build on positive
change; look for habitual patterns where inertia
will stymy efforts towards positive change.
Interview, challenge, and honor many people
within the system using powerful questions
and share patterns emerging through the
collective wisdom. Share your wonder, awe
and reverence about our biosphere and the
non-human creatures on it. Honor land and
steward it well.
Shadow Aspects:
What do you think they are?
2. Design thinking
Behaviors:
Ongoing reflection on the habits of systems
thinkers, ability to connect to others within the
system, making connections and surfacing
patterns and collective wisdom. Observe the
interconnections and desires, opportunities and
challenges within the system. Back cast from
a desired future with stakeholders within the
system.
Practices:
Definition:
“The characteristics of a designer that I
appreciate the most are this thing about having
empathy for people, that you expect to get
your big ideas from talking to people and your
own experiences, that you have a bias towards
action, that you’re not going to sit around and
noodle strategy details for a long time, you’re
going to actually go out and build something
and show it to people and iterate the feedback.
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
Designers are more likely to build something
and then refine it, rather than think they have
the big idea all in one big jump. Then there’s
the notion of doing things with intention.
Designers I know care about every little detail,
they try to really understand the experience
the person’s going to have… So understand,
observe, visualize and iterate. The trick here
is that the big deal is the iteration. Rather than
planning incessantly you quickly come up with
something, you show it to smart people, you
show it to users, and then you do it again and
again.” –David Kelly
Principles:
Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Iterate
Skills:
Dedicate time to talking with experts who
understand the challenge you are trying
to address; see how others have tried to
address the same challenge and succeeded.
With beginners’ mind (i.e. no assumptions
or judgments), observe day-to-day activities
that the users you are interested in engage
in. Build empathy and ask “why” many times.
What would you want and need if you were in
their shoes? Then, visualize several possible
solutions and prototype a solution. This could
be a sketch, a model out of cardboard or paper
clips, a quick video.
Behaviors:
“Focus on human values; craft clarity; show,
don’t tell; be mindful of process; engage
in radical collaboration (i.e. bring together
innovators with varied backgrounds and
22
viewpoints. Enable breakthrough insights and
solutions to emerge from the diversity). Have
a bias towards action (focus on doing and
making rather than thinking and meeting).
Embrace experimentation.”
Practices:
Make mind-maps, empathy maps, journey
maps, and more! Follow the steps of design
thinking in planning out your project.
Shadow Aspects:
Missing the forest for the trees, becoming
enamored with the process or idea of design to
the detriment of the overall goal and project.
3. Discerning project impact
Definition:
An ongoing commitment to continuously
seeking feedback from your community and
your mentor, while applying the ‘habits of mind
of a systems thinker and habits of mind of a
design thinker’ to your compassion-in-action
project.
is using discernment to assess the likely
consequences of our own actions.” --HHDL in
Beyond Religion
Principles:
“An ethic of restraint: Deliberately refraining
from doing actual or potential harm to others.
Before we can contemplate actively benefiting
others, we must first of all ensure that we do
them no harm via our bodies, speech, and
mind. We can cultivate restraint by adopting
an overall stance of caution. Also referred to
as heedfulness and conscientiousness – the
sense of being careful and attentive.
Behaviors:
Ongoing reflection; pro-actively asking yourself
and other key stakeholders about how your
project could do harm; sharing what you did
with the home community and asking for
feedback; Learning how to make a plan (and
have several back-up plans on hand) based
on complexity of actual situations. Planning
to fail rapidly, and to prototype many different
versions of your idea.
An ethic of virtue: Actively cultivating and
enhancing our positive behavior and inner
values (like patience, contentment, restraint,
and generosity)
Practices:
Create a system to track effectiveness of your
requests/offers; and the indicators by which
you will gauge your progress; assess where
you are on an ongoing basis. Revise/rethink
project plan on a regular basis and make sure
it’s in alignment with your ethical leadership
vision and core values along with the feedback
you’re receiving from key stakeholders.
An ethic of altruism: Dedicating our lives,
genuinely and selflessly, to the welfare of
others...An important part of serving others
ASSESSMENT SCALE:
part of my everyday life;
1. Not very adept in this capacity
and it is something I would like
to develop more;
3. This is one of my strongest capacities
and I pull on this capacity
every day of my life, I have
a very thorough understanding
and embodiment of this capacity
and I could mentor others in
developing this capacity as well.
2. Somewhat adept in this capacity,
I am able to enlist this capacity
when needed but it is not a
Shadow aspects:
Getting too caught up in outcomes; not
paying enough attention to process. Failing to
anticipate complexity, road-blocks, delays, redtape.
“Love is the absence of judgment.”
–The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
23
EXERCISE 3
The Good In You
PRE-WORK
View “Flourishing: A New Understanding of
Well-Being” by Martin Seligman (30 mins)
PURPOSE
Refine your understanding of personal and
global flourishing. Discover your character
strengths in service of helping yourself and
others.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
After viewing the video above, take the VIA
character strengths test below.
Then, write a brief reflection to share with Dalai
Lama Fellows’ staff:
∙∙ What if anything did you learn about
yourself?
∙∙ What if anything did you learn about your
compassion-in-action project?
∙∙ How, specifically, can you tap even more
consciously into your strengths during your
Fellowship year?
90 minutes
Photo: Esa Syeed 2011 Fellow
24
Exercise 3
(Continued)
Martin Seligman
Talk on
Flourishing
Our curriculum is influenced by the work
of acclaimed positive psychologist Martin
Seligman, whose work inspired the VIA Institute
on Character.
Character strengths are the psychological
ingredients for displaying human goodness and
they serve as pathways for developing a life of
greater virtue. While personality is the summary
of our entire psychological makeup, character
strengths are the positive components— what’s
best in you. The 24 VIA Character Strengths
are universal across all aspects of life: work,
school, family, friends, and community. The 24
strengths fall under six broad virtues (wisdom,
courage, humanity, justice, temperance
and transcendence) and encompass our
capacities for helping ourselves and others.
Whereas most personality assessments focus
on negative and neutral traits, the VIA Survey
focuses on what is best in you and is at the
center of the science of well-being. Completing
the free VIA Survey will result in your Character
Strengths Profile, detailing a strengths palette of
the real “you.”
OPTIONAL EXERCISE1: Take The Four
Tendencies Quiz by Gretchen Rubin. This 10
minute quiz may help you understand whether
you are an upholder, questioner, obliger, or
rebel. This will help you determine how you
balance expectations others have of you with
expectations you have for yourself. It’s a great
framework for designing better habits, but,
like any personality test, please take it with a
grain of salt. http://www.gretchenrubin.com/
happiness_project/2015/01/ta-da-the-launchof-my-quiz-on-the-four-tendencies-learn-aboutyourself/
OPTIONAL EXERCISE 2: Take the 180
question Enneagram personality test.
The Enneagram helps you determine
your identification with nine archetypes-perfectionist; helper; achiever; romantic;
observer; questioner; adventurer; asserter; and
peacemaker. The archetype(s) you embody
can change over time and most of us are a mix
of several of these archetypes. Learning more
can help you find patterns in your behavior and
identify how you show up in times of security
versus in times of stress. You can access
a brief overview of its interpretation here.
Anamaria Aristizabal, one of our curriculum
advisors and ELA faculty members, will be on
board at the ELA--you can ask her more about
it. This will likely take one to two hours of your
time.
25
EXERCISE 4
Draft Your
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE When the things that you do and the way you
behave match your values, life is usually good
∙∙ Determine and prioritize your top values, using – you’re satisfied and content. But when these
Compassion In
the 6-step process suggested below.
don’t align with your values, that’s when things
wrong. This can be a real source of
Action Board Part ∙∙ Determine the top three core beliefs underlying feel...
unhappiness. This is why making a conscious
your top 3 values, using the process suggested effort to identify your values is so important.
I: Determine Your below.
How Values Help You
∙∙ Create your ethical leadership vision statement.
Values
Values exist, whether you recognize them
PRE-WORK
None.
PURPOSE
Refine your understanding of personal and
global flourishing. Discover your character
strengths in service of helping yourself and
others.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
3 hours
or not. Life can be much easier when you
∙∙ Write two sentences about how your ethical
leadership vision statement connects to your life acknowledge your values – and when you
make plans and decisions that honor them.
and your Dalai Lama Fellowship.
If you value family, but you have to work
Directions: please read through the entire sections 70-hour weeks in your job, will you feel
before completing the exercises. For those of you internal stress and conflict? And if you don’t
value competition, and you work in a highly
that are artistically inclined you could draw your
competitive sales environment, are you likely
responses rather than write them.
to be satisfied with your job?
Section 1 | What Are Your Values? Deciding
what’s most important in life.
In these types of situations, understanding
your values can really help. When you know
your own values, you can use them to make
decisions about how to live your life, and you
can answer questions like these:
How would you define your values? Before you
answer this question, you need to know what, in
general, values are. Your values are the things that
you believe are important in the way you live and
work. They inform your priorities, and, deep down, ∙∙ What area of interest should I pursue?
they’re probably the measures you use to tell if your
∙∙ How should I spend my time? What am I
life is turning out the way you want it to.
doing?
26
∙∙ Should I compromise, or be firm with my
position?
∙∙ Should I follow tradition, or travel down a
new path?
what’s truly important to you. A good way of
starting to do this is to look back on your life –
to identify when you felt really good, and really
confident that you were making good choices.
and satisfied. Again, use school, work and
personal examples.
Step 1: Think of a time when you were happy.
∙∙ How and why did the experience give your
life meaning?
So, take the time to understand the real
priorities in your life, and you’ll be able to
determine the best direction for you and your
life goals!
Find examples from your school, work and
personal life. This will ensure some balance in
your answers.
Tip:
∙∙ What were you doing?
Values are usually fairly stable, yet they don’t
have strict limits or boundaries and sometimes
come into conflict. Also, as you move through
life, your values may change. For example,
when you start your career, success –
measured by money and status – might be a
top priority. But after you have a family, work-life
balance may be what you value more.
∙∙ Were you with other people? Who?
As your definition of success changes, so do
your values. This is why keeping in touch with
your values is a lifelong exercise. You should
continuously revisit this, especially if you start
to feel unbalanced... and you can’t quite figure
out why. As you go through the exercise below,
bear in mind that values that were important in
the past may not be relevant now.
∙∙ What other factors contributed to your
happiness?
Step 2: Identify the times when you were
proud. Use examples from your school, work
and personal life.
∙∙ Why were you proud?
∙∙ Did other people share your pride? Who?
∙∙ What other factors contributed to your
feelings of pride?
Defining Your Values
When you define your values, you discover
Step 3: Identify the times when you
experienced meaning in your life and felt fulfilled
∙∙ What need or desire was fulfilled?
∙∙ What other factors contributed to your
feelings of fulfillment?
Step 4: Determine your top values, based
on your experiences of happiness, pride,
and fulfillment. Why is each experience truly
important and memorable? Use the following
list of common personal values to help you get
started – and aim for about 10 top values.
As you work through, you may find that some
of these naturally combine. For instance, if you
value philanthropy, community, and generosity,
you might say that service to others is one of
your top values.
Step 5: Prioritize your top values
This step is probably the most difficult, because
you’ll have to look deep inside yourself. It’s
also the most important step, because, when
making a decision, you’ll have to choose
between solutions that may satisfy different
values. This is when you must know which
value is more important to you.
27
COMMON
PERSONAL
VALUES
Effectiveness
Health
Patriotism
Stability
Efficiency
Helping Society
Perfection
Strategic
Elegance
Holiness
Piety
Strength
Empathy
Honesty
Positivity
tructure
Enjoyment
Honor
Practicality
Success
Enthusiasm
Humility
Preparedness
Support
Equality
Independence
Professionalism
Teamwork
Excellence
Ingenuity
Prudence
Temperance
Excitement
Inner Harmony
Quality-orientation
Thankfulness
Accountability
Contentment
Accuracy
Achievement
Continuous Improvement
Adventurousness
Contribution
Expertise
Inquisitiveness
Reliability
Thoroughness
Altruism
Control
Exploration
Insightfulness
Resourcefulness
Thoughtfulness
Ambition
Cooperation
Expressiveness
Intelligence
Restraint
Timeliness
Assertiveness
Correctness
Fairness
Intellectual Status
Results-oriented
Tolerance
Balance
Courtesy
Faith
Intuition
Rigor
Traditionalism
Being the best
Creativity
Family-orientedness
Joy
Security
Trustworthiness
Belonging
Curiosity
Fidelity
Justice
Self-actualization
Truth-seeking
Boldness
Decisiveness
Fitness
Leadership
Self-control
Understanding
Calmness
Democraticness
Fluency
Legacy
Selflessness
Uniqueness
Carefulness
Dependability
Focus
Love
Self-reliance
Unity
Challenge
Determination
Freedom
Loyalty
Sensitivity
Usefulness
Cheerfulness
Devoutness
Fun
Making a difference
Serenity
Vision
Clear-mindedness
Diligence
Generosity
Mastery
Service
Vitality
Commitment
Discipline
Goodness
Merit
Shrewdness
Community
Discretion
Grace
Obedience
Simplicity
Compassion
Diversity
Growth
Openness
Soundness
Competitiveness
Dynamism
Happiness
Order
Speed
Consistency
Economy
Hard Work
Originality
Spontaneity
28
∙∙ Write down your top values, not in any
particular order.
∙∙ Look at the first two values and ask yourself,
“If I could satisfy only one of these, which
would I choose?” It might help to visualize a
situation in which you would have to make
that choice. For example, if you compare
the values of service and stability, imagine
that you must decide whether to sell your
house and move to another country to do
valuable foreign aid work, or keep your
house and volunteer to do charity work
closer to home.
∙∙ Keep working through the list, by comparing
each value with each other value, until your
list is in the correct order.
Step 6: Reaffirm your values
Check your top-priority values, and make sure
they fit with your life and your vision for yourself.
∙∙ Do these values make you feel good about
yourself?
∙∙ Are you proud of your top three values?
∙∙ Would you be comfortable and proud to
tell your values to people you respect and
admire?
∙∙ Do these values represent things you would
support, even if your choice isn’t popular,
and it puts you in the minority?
Section 2 | What are your core beliefs?
Beliefs that guide decision making.
When you consider your values in decision
making, you can be sure to keep your sense
of integrity and what you know is right, and
approach decisions with confidence and clarity.
You’ll also know that what you’re doing is best
for your current and future happiness and
satisfaction. Making value-based choices may
not always be easy. However, making a choice
that you know is right is a lot less difficult in the
long run.
Personal beliefs are convictions. They are
beliefs that we hold and they inform our
actions, many times unconsciously. Now that
you have distilled down your values, it is time
to check in on what core beliefs inform you to
help you better understand what motivates you
and guides you in decision making. This may
also be a time to let go of any core beliefs that
are no longer serving you and what you hope
to do in the world.
Key Points
You are invited to take your top 3 values
surfaced in the previous exercise to inform your
core belief statements.
Identifying and understanding your values is a
challenging and important exercise. Your values
are a central part of who you are – and who
you want to be. By becoming more aware of
these important factors in your life, you can use
them as a guide to make the best choice in
any situation. Some of life’s decisions are really
about determining what you value most. When
many options seem reasonable, it’s helpful and
comforting to rely on your values – and use
them as a strong guiding force to point you in
the right direction.
Resource: Adapted from Mind Tools.com
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/
newTED_85.htm
Here are some examples to help you to help
you.
Value: Community
Core Belief: “Whatever the problem,
community is the answer.” Meg Wheatly
Values: Compassion and Happiness
Core Belief: “I believe compassion to be one
of the few things we can practice that will
bring immediate and long-term happiness
to our lives. I’m not talking about the shortterm gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs
or gambling (though I’m not knocking them),
but something that will bring true and lasting
29
happiness. The kind that sticks.”
-Attributed to Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Value: Independence
Core Belief: “I was brought up to believe that
how I saw I saw myself was more important
than how others saw me.” Anwer el-Sadat
Value: Unconditional Love
Core Belief: “I believe that unarmed truth and
unconditional love will have the final word in
reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated,
is stronger than evil triumphant.” Martin Luther
King, Jr.
be convictions used to guide decision
making in difficult circumstances? For
example, if I highly value compassion and
I am confronted by an angry person, what
core belief statement helps me extend
compassion in even the most challenging of
circumstances?
Value: ________________________________
Core belief: _____________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
Value: Making a difference
Core Belief: “I believe: The choices we make
ultimately define who we are as a person.
We need to make the best choices we can,
because the edges in life can be thin. We need
to engage life as actively as possible, because
it can be short. We need to listen to our inner
spirit and dance synchronously with it. We
need to grab our community and work to leave
it better. We must always try to do the right
things in the right way.”
Now it is your turn, please list your top 3 values
and core beliefs:
∙∙ What values guide you?
∙∙ What core beliefs do you have that may
Value: ________________________________
Core belief: _____________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
Value: ________________________________
Core belief: _____________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
______________________________________
This exercise helps you surface what you
already believe in, but in a conscious manner.
Looking at your newly defined core beliefs,
assess: Did you know what your true
convictions were before this exercise? What
are you finding at the core of your beliefs? What
is core to who you are as a human being?
Now look through these beliefs and see if they
are supporting you in what you want to be in
and for this world or if they are limiting you and
if it would serve you to let go of that belief. Only
you can decide. The one’s you keep will feel
like declarations you can use to speak about
what you stand for and represents who you
are!
Section 3 | What is your ethical leadership
vision statement? A statement to guide you
in the journey of life.
Your values and core beliefs are indicators for
your ethical leadership vision. This will also help
guide you in decision making and give you a
declaration for what you stand for.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one
wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver
Your ethical leadership vision statement is your
30
guiding light, your compass for challenging
times. It helps you gain clarity and remember
what you stand for and increases your ability to
discern in challenging times. In life, things will
get challenging. This statement will help guide
you and remind you WHY you are working on
the relationship, project, job, degree, etc. that
you are working on.
When people think of you, what do you
want them to perceive about you? What is
your legacy of what you stand for, how you
moved through your life and how you treated
other people? This can all go in the mission
statement.
1. If someone were writing an article about
you, what would you want the headline to
say about what you were doing with your
life?
Your Headline: ___________________________
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
6. Biggest heart, compassionate and loving
7. Systems change pioneer
9. to end inequities across the globe in
healthcare
8. Food revolutionary
9. Enhancing health-care in poverty stricken
countries
2. Next, think about why this is your
descriptor, what is your motivation?
Why is this important to you? _______________
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
Examples: (correlated to the examples above):
1. to give as many people the opportunity to
succeed in this world
2. the world needs to support all of life, and I
want to be part of the solution
3. I want to be successful and strategy is
essential to getting things done
4. so that we can get to the root of problems
and create long lasting results
3. Lastly, how will you accomplish this
personal life mission?
How? __________________________________
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
Examples (correlated with the examples above):
1. Get enough rest, exercise and eat wellbalanced meals
2. Meditate every morning before I start my
day so I can be present with my work and coworkers
3. Stay up to date on current trends and be a
lifelong learner
4. Learn and connect to other systems thinkers
so I can see the big picture beyond my own
perspective
5. Always lead by example by embodying the
change I want to see in the world and treating
all others with respect
5. to show others how commitment and
dedication pays off
6. Hold my relationships with others in high
regard and always tending to disconnections in
my relationships
6. the world needs a lot of love in order to heal
and I want to give that
7. Treat others with respect, dignity and care no
matter what
4. Always seeing the big picture
7. to help our world become whole and
interconnected
8. Grow organic, sustainably sourced, local
foods and minimize transportation of products
5. Best athlete
8. to end obesity in America
9. Partnering with leaders on the ground,
Examples:
1. Connected to diverse people and making a
difference through service
2. Changing the world one person at a time
3. Strategic genius
31
building my internal capacity to support these
leaders and being a sounding board for wise
action
∙∙ I shall fear only God.
Now it is time to weave together these three
elements (headline, why and how) to create
your personal mission statement. Use what you
have created so far and get rid of words that do
not fully work.
∙∙ I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
Write your ethical leadership vision
statement:
Examples of other ethical leadership vision
statements:
1. With integrity, my vision is to love, lead and
inspire.
2. My vision is to educate women about breast
cancer. I will inspire women to take control
of their own breast health, by sharing my life
saving message.
3. Mahatma Gandhi’s vision is captured in
a short list of active statements. You can
craft your mission in this style, starting each
sentence with “I shall” or “I will.”
Let the first act of every morning be to make
the following resolve for the day:
∙∙ I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
∙∙ I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
∙∙ I shall conquer untruth by truth.
∙∙ And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with
all suffering.
4. “If I had my life to live over,” written by advice
columnist Erma Bombeck near the end of her
life, details the values Bombeck wished had
guided her daily decisions. If you were nearing
the end of your life and you were writing this,
what would you include? Use those ideas to
craft your mission statement.
If I had my life to live over, I would have talked
less and listened more. I would have invited
friends over to dinner even if the carpet was
stained and the sofa faded. I would have
eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room
and worried much less about the dirt when
someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my
grandfather ramble about his youth. I would
never have insisted the car windows be rolled
up on a summer day because my hair had just
been teased and sprayed. I would have burned
the pink candle sculpted like a rose before
it melted in storage. I would have sat on the
lawn with my children and not worried about
grass stains. I would have cried and laughed
less while watching television - and more while
watching life. I would have shared more of the
responsibility carried by my husband. I would
have gone to bed when I was sick instead of
pretending the earth would go into a holding
pattern if I weren’t there for the day. I would
never have bought anything just because it was
practical, wouldn’t show soil or was guaranteed
to last a lifetime. Instead of wishing away nine
months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished every
moment and realized that the wonderment
growing inside me was the only chance in
life to assist God in a miracle. When my kids
kissed me impetuously, I would never have
said, “Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.”
There would have been more “I love you’s”..
More “I’m sorrys” ... But mostly, given another
shot at life, I would seize every minute... look
at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it
back.
5. My vision is to give, for giving is what I do
best and I can learn to do better.
I will seek to learn, for learning is the basis for
growth, and growing is the key to living. I will
seek first to understand, for understanding is
the key to finding value, and value is the basis
for respect, decisions, and action. This should
be my first act with my wife, my family, and my
business.
32
I want to help influence the future
development of people and organizations. I
want to teach my children and others to love
and laugh, to learn and grow beyond their
current bounds.
I will build personal, business, and civic
relationships by giving, in frequent little ways.
For my passions
To accomplish
To do good
To be true to myself
Against apathy
let the boat rock me
Be a rock
Be Remembered
Care
About the world
About life
About people
About myself
Love
Myself
My family
My world
7. To be humble.
To say thanks to God in some way, every day.
To never react to abuse by passing it on.
To find the self within that does and can look at
all sides without loss.
I believe in treating all people with kindness and
respect.
Knowledge
Learning
LIFE
Fight
For my beliefs
Finally, to go through life with a smile on my
face and a twinkle in my eye
Rock
The boat, don’t
6. Here is one that incorporates values as
headers
newness of a child’s love, the sweetness
and joy of young love, and the respect and
reverence of mature love.
I believe by knowing what I value, I truly know
what I want.
To be driven by values and beliefs.
I want to experience life’s passions with the
Resource:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/
stevecooper/2013/05/17/whats-your-personalmission-statement/
Section 4
Write a short paragraph:
How does your ethical leadership vision
statement connect to your project, work and
your commitment to increasing well-being while
working across differences at the intersection of
justice, peace, and ecology? What are some
concrete strategies you will use to discover and
strengthen the values that you and your teammates and community members share?
For example, at Dalai Lama Fellows, we
embrace and advance four core values as
we conduct our work. And we have periodic
conversations where we brainstorm how we
might live our values more fully.
33
∙∙ Interdependence – We are connected and
mutually dependent. We work in the interest
of present and future generations.
∙∙ Integrity – We strive to be wholly honest and
to have consistent alignment between our
values and actions.
∙∙ Resilience – We meet challenges with
optimism, ingenuity, and flexibility. We
bounce back from adversity with grace.
∙∙ Humbition -- We leaven our ambition with
humility, grounding positive social change
in a context of respect for others and
the recognition that to build a world for
all we must live the questions rather than
presuming the answers.
“If one’s motivation is in any way connected to seeking one’s own benefit, this
is not genuine generosity.”
–The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
34
EXERCISE 5
Draft Your
Compassion-inAction Board Part
II: Project Title,
Mission, and
More
PRE-WORK
Print out your ethical leadership vision
statement, project timeline, and budget. Spend
15 minutes re-reading. What do you notice?
Where you do you feel confident or optimistic?
Where do you feel uncertain or worried?
PURPOSE
Refine your compassion-in-action project
through reflection and discussion with your
program director.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Write
1. Create a concise and inspiring title for your
project. It can be in your own language if you wish.
Examples from past projects: Mountain Garden
Initiative, Snow Lion Story-Telling Initiative, Khoyot
(means concentric circles).
2. In one sentence, describe what the logo for
your project would look like, (if it is appropriate), or
visit www.thenounproject.org and extract 3 visual
images that captures the essence of how you want
others to see your project.
3. Create a three-sentence project mission
statement. It should draw on the values in the
“values” exercise, and address how you are
using your unique strengths (which you identified
in the values exercise above or via other means)
to collaboratively work on your compassion-inaction project. In addition, you should address
the specific reason(s) why you are called to do this
work, and how you think your work will help you
achieve your vision. If you’re working on a team,
work with your colleague(s) to discuss the values
you hold in common and create a joint
project mission statement.
35
What is a
Compassion-InAction Board?
OVERVIEW
At our Ethical Leadership Assembly, our Fellows
create a visually inspiring board on which they
include their reflections on the following ten
questions:
1. Your Ethical Leadership Vision Statement
2. Compassion-in-Action Project Mission
Statement. What exactly are you hoping to do?
3. By when? Articulate 1-3 goals/month and
put them on a timeline.
4. Motivation. Why is this important to you?
Derived from your core values, motivators keep
you energized.
5. Commitments. What are you committed to,
no matter what? (Could be a tiny action you do
each day for 10 mins.)
6. Challenges. (If/then thinking—identify
obstacles and how you will respond to each)
7. Strengths. (What are your action-based
strengths that will help you?)
8. Reinforcements. Who are the friends/
mentors who will support you when you
stumble?
9. Next Actions. What simple, elegant next step
you will take right away to move closer to your
goal?
10. How will you celebrate small victories along
the way? (These could include small changes
in yourself and in the world beyond you). You
could celebrate a victory by making a gift for
a stranger or for someone you know who has
helped reinforce your success.
The boards often include photos of beloved/
inspiring family, friends, mentors, and
colleagues. To make one, you need cardboard,
your creativity, and your handwritten reflections.
You could also include mini calendars, and
stickers to celebrate progress. Research
suggests asking yourself gently challenging ‘will
I’ questions rather than making declarations (‘I
will’) is more effective.
WHY USE IT?
Our Dalai Lama Fellows are often juggling an
intention to deepen compassion for self and
others with many other demands. To help
them make their vision a reality, as their coach,
Bidisha got really interested in combining
insights from the psychology of happiness,
achievement and goal-setting with the biasto-action of design thinking. Psychological
research confirms: it’s hard to achieve multiple
challenging goals (finishing school, being fully
present for family and friends, holding down
jobs, applying for future opportunities, satisfying
other commitments) when those goals are in
conflict. Moreover, social innovation is a messy
process. Feeling stuck, and set-backs are
normal. A lot of social innovation work takes
place at the computer, and can be abstract
and highly conceptual. At DLF, we aspire to a
more integrated and embodied approach to
compassion.
Design thinking is a process grounded in
empathy, ideation, rapidly making tangible
prototypes, and reflecting on these prototypes
and learning from them in order to iterate. It’s a
powerful tool for personal innovation. Visualizing
what you desire is a powerful tool. We know
Olympic athletes and world-class musicians use
it. Science suggests that visualizing the process
rather the outcome leads to better results.
In other words, visualize how exactly you will
study for a test, rather than getting an A on the
test. If you just see yourself getting an A in your
mind’s eye, your brain will trick you into thinking
you’ve already achieved that result. Visualizing a
process, combining it with an action plan, and
using if-then thinking to identify challenges and
responses can help you close the gap between
vision and reality.
36
EXERCISE 5 | Part II
Draft Your
Compassion-InAction Board
PRE-WORK
(OPTIONAL) Read: Throw Away Your Vision
Board by Dr. Neil Farber & The Value of Vision
(blog post by 2014 Fellow Vivienne Walz about
the process of creating her compassion-inaction board)
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Please reflect on the 10 questions we ask you to
answer in your compassion-in-action board.
Please respond to as many of the 10 questions as
possible in a Google Doc and share them with your
Dalai Lama Fellows coach ahead of time. Please
discuss them during a call.
At the ELA, you will have a limited amount of time
to create your board and to supplement it with
an innovation journal. Please bring photos, maps,
or anything else you’d like to put on your board,
and a journal you’d like to use. We will have some
supplies on hand.
Zach Speir from The Point Foundation
training others in SF, Boston, and D.C.
after being trained to create a Dalai Lama
Fellows’ Compassion-in-Action Board.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
2 hours
PURPOSE
Create a tangible visual reminder of all your
noble intentions, goals, and the process that
you will follow to embody practices that will
enable you to live your values.
Vivienne Walsh’s Compassion-in-Action Board
Another Compassion-in-Action Board
from Chris Garcia of The Point Foundation
37
EXERCISE 6
Create an AntiPortfolio
PRE-WORK
None.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
1 hour
PURPOSE
While websites and social media often portray
the achievements of social innovation, do not
be misled. This year will also be hard work.
There will be setbacks… for everyone.
In this context, we encourage you to reframe
failure. In fact, we want you to “fail rapidly.”
What does this mean?
Failing rapidly means having the courage to
experiment and try things out, monitor for when
things don’t work as planned or are ineffective,
and then to reflect on these to distill lessons
learned you will apply right away back to your
project work. Taking small intentional risks and
learning quickly will help accelerate the benefit your
project can have.
In this light, failure is not something to avoid but
rather it’s an accountability measure. If everything
runs smoothly all the time, you are likely not
exploring the margins of your personal capacity and
the possibilities for your project work.
The catch is you must commit to constant learning
and to sharing your evolving understanding with our
global community. It is not ok to “fail” and throw your
hands up. We expect you to test out plans B, C, D,
E, F, and G if your original plan doesn’t work out or
suffers from unexpected delays.
failure.
•
• Add one sentence describing what you
learned about yourself and your values.
•
• Add one sentence describing what you
learned about the world.
Share this with your DLF coach and be
prepared to reflect on one of the moments.
The focus for the reflection will be on
identifying an area of improvement you
want support with throughout the year.
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Reflect on five moments in your life when you didn’t
live up to your personal, academic, or professional
expectations. You may find it useful to sketch a
picture that represents each of these moments,
and write a few words down next to each picture.
Then, download the provided PPT template and
represent these 5 moments visually, using photos,
drawings, pictures, icons, etc.
For each moment,
• Add one sentence describing why this was a
Photo: Ty Diringer (2013 Fellow) Kenya Reads
38
EXERCISE 7
Create a
Blueprint of Me/
Blueprint of You
PRE-WORK
None.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
1 hour
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Read about and respond to the five questions
below. If you are working in a team, create this
document with your team member(s), and consider
creating a blueprint of me first, to get familiar
with the process. If you are currently working
alone, create a blueprint of me. If you need more
guidance, check out their website, where a lot
more info is available. Share with DLF staff and
discuss how this activity relates to the concept of
post-heroic leadership.
The Blueprint of WE Document is a living, breathing
document that is created by the individuals involved
in a relationship, be it 2 to 2000+. It is currently
being used in 60+ countries around the world
in both business and personal situations. It was
dreamed up in 1998 by Maureen K. McCarthy and
Zelle Nelson.
The 5 Components of a Blueprint of WE Document
1. The Story of Us
Share what draws you to these people and this
situation.
2. Interaction Styles and Warning Signs
The “blueprint of me,” how I work best, what I look
like on a good day/bad day, and what I might need
that I couldn’t ask for in the moment.
3. Expectations
Core values and non-negotiables, the structure
you need to create and sustain this
relationship.
4. Questions to Return to Peace
A tool to return to peace if the need arises,
makes the difficult times shorter and easier.
5. Short and Long-Term Agreements
How long you’re willing to go before you
make peace. An agreement of no outright
harm, a willingness to keep an open
window if the unimaginable happens.
The authors write, “We all have days when
we screw up, which is exactly why we
created the Blueprint of WE. It’s a tool used
to shorten the frequency and intensity of
the difficult times. Creating a Document
with others, as well as a Document with
yourself — addressing the relationship
you have with that voice in your head that
can spiral you down — enables you to
build trust and resilience both internally
and collectively. We call it Exchanging the
‘Blueprint of ME’ and Building the ‘Blueprint
of WE.’”
39
READING 7
From Hero to
Host: A Story of
Citizenship in
Columbus, Ohio
by Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley,
2010
Something extraordinary is happening in
Columbus, Ohio. Leaders in some of America’s
largest institutions—healthcare, academia,
government—are giving up take-charge, heroic
leadership, and choosing instead to engage
members of their community.
They’re using their positional power and
authority to act as “hosts,” calling together
people from all parts of the system to work
together to solve seemingly intractable
problems. In this mid-size, Middle America
city—a mirror of the U.S.’s mix of race, income,
immigrants, neighborhoods and problems—
citizens are rethinking how to solve hunger
long-term, how to deal with homelessness,
how to transform healthcare from sickness to
wellness, and much, much more. Here, in this
absolutely ordinary city, citizens are discovering
their capacity to engage together to create a
healthier, more resilient community. This is a
story of how small, local efforts move laterally
through a network of relationships to emerge as
large-scale change.
From Hero to Host
America loves a hero. So does the rest of the
world. Perhaps it’s our desire to be saved,
to not have to do the hard work, to rely on
someone else to figure things out. Constantly
we are barraged by politicians presenting
themselves as heroes, the ones who will fix
everything and make our problems go away.
It’s a seductive image, an enticing promise.
And we keep believing it. Somewhere
there’s someone who will make it all better.
Somewhere, there’s someone who’s visionary,
inspiring, brilliant, and we’ll all happily follow him
or her. Somewhere . . .
Well, it is time for all the heroes to go home,
as the poet William Stafford wrote. It is time for
us to give up these hopes and expectations
that only work to make people dependent and
passive. It is time to stop waiting for someone
to save us. It is time to face the truth of our
situation—that we’re all in this together, that
we all have a voice—and figure out how to
mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in
our communities.
Why do we continue to hope for heroes? It
seems we assume certain things:
∙∙ Leaders have the answers. They know what
to do.
∙∙ People do what they’re told. They just have
to be given good plans and instructions.
∙∙ High risk requires high control. As situations
grow more complex and difficult, power
needs to be moved to the top (with the
leaders who know what to do.)
These beliefs give rise to models of command
and control that are revered in organizations
and governments worldwide. Those at the
bottom of the hierarchy submit to the greater
vision and expertise of those above. Leaders
promise to get us out of this mess; we willingly
surrender individual autonomy in exchange for
security.
But the causes of today’s problems are
complex and interconnected. There are no
simple answers, and no single individual
can possibly know what to do. Not even
the strongest of leaders can deliver on the
promise of stability and security. But we seldom
acknowledge these complex realities. Instead,
when things go wrong, we fire the flawed leader
and begin searching for the next (more perfect)
one.
If we want to transform complex systems, we
need to abandon our exclusive reliance on the
leader-as-hero and invite in the leader-as-host.
Can leaders be as welcoming, congenial and
invitational to the people who work with them
as they’d be if they had invited them as guests
40
to a party? Leaders who act as hosts rely on
other people’s creativity and commitment to get
the work done. Leaders-as-hosts see potential
and skills in people that people themselves may
not see. And they know that people will only
support those things they’ve played a part in
creating—that you can’t expect people to “buy
in” to plans and projects developed elsewhere.
Leaders-as-hosts invest in meaningful
conversations among people from many parts
of the system as the most productive way to
engender new insights and possibilities for
action. They trust that people are willing to
contribute, and that most people yearn to find
meaning and possibility in their lives and work.
And these leaders know that hosting others
is the only way to get large-scale, intractable
problems solved.
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
–Henry Ford
41
EXERCISE 8
The Art of
Hosting
Conversations
That Matter
PRE-WORK
Read through The Art of Hosting Workbook.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
90 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Identify 2-5 practices from the reading above that
feel relevant to your work. Write a short paragraph
about how you will incorporate these practices, how
they relate to what you already knew, and what you
still have left to learn.
Credit for the image above: Rushikesh Kirtikar
42
EXERCISE 9
Determining
What Enhancing
Well-Being While
Working Across
Differences at the
Intersection of
Justice, Peace,
and Ecology
Means To You
PRE-WORK
View “The Story of Stuff” video by Annie
Leonard.
PURPOSE
Refine your personal understanding of how
your compassion-in-action project will enhance
well-being while working across differences at
the intersection of justice, peace, and ecology.
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Write a one-page response to the following
questions:
∙∙ How did you feel after watching the Story of
Stuff?
∙∙ What can you learn from the way Annie tells her
story?
∙∙ What’s one take-away that applies to your
project?
∙∙ Based on his internationally-recognized
research, psychology professor Martin Seligman
defines ‘well-being’ as positive emotion,
relationships, meaning, and achievement. How,
specifically, will you enhance these qualities with
your compassion-in-action project? How will
you collect feedback?
∙∙ Dalai Lama Fellows understands
‘working across differences’ as working
with others who may hold different
values than yourself. It might include
working with groups in more than one
location; across lines of race, class,
gender, nationality, faction, religion,
or age; working with groups whose
goals or ideologies are opposed. What
specific challenges do you anticipate,
and how you will approach them? How
will you know you’re making progress?
∙∙ Dalai Lama Fellows understands
‘intersection of justice, peace, and
ecology’ as creating well-being in
ways that simultaneously address
multiple challenges. Components may
include violence, tensions or conflict;
systemic injustice, unequal access to
resources or education, discrimination,
oppression, poverty; ecological or
community conservation, environmental
restoration, sustainability, climate, etc.
How will your project increase equality,
peace, and ecological well-being?
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious
of our treasures.”
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
90 minutes
– Thornton Wilder
43
EXERCISE 10
Determining
Community
Assets and Using
Your Budget to
Generate Assets.
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Set aside about 30 mins during the Skype call with
your DLF coach to discuss the following questions.
∙∙ How did your understanding of community
assets change after reading the article?
∙∙ Why is it important for you to deepen your
understanding of community assets?
∙∙ How will you incorporate the questions
in the article into your revised timeline for
your compassion-in-action project?
∙∙ What are some questions you’ll ask?
∙∙ What methods will you use? (i.e.
interviews, focus groups, mapping)
∙∙ How will you steward your budget wisely
in order to co-create lasting community
assets?
PRE-WORK
Read this article.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
90 minutes
Photo: Alex Pritz (2011 Fellow)
2 women in trees: Alberta Boateng & Shalena Broadnax-Krumm (2012 Fellows).
Photo: Lisa Kimmel.
44
EXERCISE 11
Stakeholder
Analysis
PRE-WORK
None.
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
∙∙ Will you sign any agreements?
Answer the following questions about your
compassion-in-action project. Use a flow-chart/
org-chart if necessary.
∙∙ Who is driving the project/
partnership/decision-making
process?
∙∙ 1. Who is responsible for key decisions?
∙∙ Are there any informal arrangements/
exchanges that you’ve agreed to (i.e.
housing/food)?
∙∙ 2. Who might block what we are trying to do?
∙∙ 3. Who has relevant expertise or information?
∙∙ 4. Who are the implementers of key decisions?
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
20 minutes
∙∙ 5. Who will be affected by what we are trying to
do?
∙∙ 6. Who will need to be informed about our
outcomes?
PURPOSE
Start applying principles of systems thinking to
your project.
∙∙ 7. Will you be working with any institutional
partners?
∙∙ 8. Where do you anticipate challenges
relating to power, love, and ethics?
∙∙ 9. Whom have you left out? Who is
invisible?
∙∙ 10. How could you encourage
collaboration?
∙∙ 11. What next steps present themselves
after doing this exercise?
∙∙ Is there any exchange of money?
“If we don’t know whether [aid is] doing any good, we are not any better than
the medieval doctors and their leeches.”
– Esther Duflo, economist
45
EXERCISE 12
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
PRE-WORK
∙∙ Using pen and paper, sketch a graph that
shows how one key variable that is important
to your project (i.e. literacy rate, income levels,
percentage of women who have an education,
number of cases of domestic violence) has
changed over a relevant period of time. Use
your own judgment when figuring out the period
of time that’s relevant. Mark key historical
milestones (i.e. independence from a colonial
authority; institution of democracy; etc.).
Review the two-page illustrated graph from the
graphic novel Race to Incarcerate that shows
the rise of incarceration in the US over time.
∙∙ Take a photo of your graph and share it with
your DLF coach.
Behavior Over
Time Graph
∙∙ Share 2 sentences with your PD
reflecting on:
∙∙ What, if anything, inspired you?
∙∙ What, if anything, surprised you?
∙∙ What, if anything, challenged, you?
∙∙ What, if anything, deeply moved
you?
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
60 minutes
PURPOSE
Co-create a shared understanding of historical
influences on the need your compassion-inaction project seeks to address.
Student to Student, Andy Steven (2013 Fellow)
46
Race to Incarcerate (Excerpt)
47
EXERCISE 13
Iceberg/Root
Cause Diagram
PRE-WORK
Review the Iceberg/Root Cause diagrams.
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Fill out the iceberg and root cause diagrams.
∙∙ Where did you find strength?
Write one paragraph about:
∙∙ What does this tell you about how you
could change the fundamental mindsets
that are creating the challenge you want
to address?
∙∙ What are the mindsets at the root of the
challenges your compassion-in-action projects
seeks to address?
∙∙ Have you ever successfully changed your own
mindset? Give an example.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 minutes
PURPOSE
Apply principles of whole systems awareness.
∙∙ Have you ever successfully changed someone
else’s mindset? Give an example.
“Genuine patience requires great strength. It is fundamentally the exercise of restraint based
on mental discipline. There are three aspects of patience, or forbearance, to consider:
forbearance toward those who harm us, acceptance of suffering, and acceptance of reality . .
. When people injure us in some way, it is helpful to recall that a vast array of factors will have
contributed to their behavior . . . To be in denial about suffering or to expect life to be easy only
causes a person additional misery . . . The third dimension of the practice of patience involves
focusing on those aspects of reality which we, as individuals, have the most difficulty in
accepting. These may include, for example, aging
and death.”
–The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
ICEBERG DIAGRAM EXAMPLE
Courtesy Beth Sawin, Climate Interactive
Events
Fisherman have low harvests this year and can’t pay
their loans or support their families.
Patterns of
Behavior
Catches have been falling for the past ten years.
Systemic
Structure &
Mindsets
Better technologies and more boats mean that
catches are higher than the regeneration rate of the
fishery.
Individuals have the right to catch as many fish as
possible; we can’t really know the limits.
DIAGRAM YOUR OWN SYSTEM HERE:
Events
Patterns of
Behavior
Systemic
Structure &
Mindsets
48
49
ROOT CAUSE TREE EXAMPLES
(adapted from Movement Strategy Center’s Blueprint for
Social Justice)
RETENTION OF PEOPLE OF
COLOR ON CAMPUS
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
FRUIT: What impacts or problems do you see facing the community?
High dropout rate for students of
color on campus.
High asthma and obesity rates
among African-American kids.
TRUNK: What structures, practices, and policies institutionalize the problems?
Cutting affirmative action programs and POC specific plans
Lack of POC mentorship due to
lack of POC faculty and staff
Dysfunctional K-12 public education not adequately prepping
POC for college
Air pollution and other environmental hazards in black neighborhoods
Broken health system that does
not provide care to poor youth
Families are unable to afford
healthy food
ROOTS: What are the underlying historical, social, political, or economic root causes of these problems? Why do these structures or policies
exist?
Racism: lack of economic and
Racism: lack of educational
political power for black families
access for POC in the past and
currently
Classism: a rigid class system
that keeps people in poverty
Classism: tax cuts for the rich
leads to less money for public
Unsustainable practices: environmental degradation
services for poor people
50
ROOT CAUSE TREE EXERCISE
(adapted from Movement Strategy Center’s Blueprint for
Social Justice)
FRUIT: What impacts or problems do you see facing the community?
TRUNK: What structures, practices, and policies institutionalize the
problems?
ROOTS: What are the underlying historical, social, political, or economic
root causes of these problems? Why do these structures or policies
exist?
51
EXERCISE 14
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Revising Your
Timeline
PRE-WORK
Review the Iceberg/Root Cause diagrams
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 mins
PURPOSE
Apply principles of whole systems
awareness
Print out your timeline with project milestones that
you created when you applied for the Fellowship.
Revise it based on any insights you’ve had while
completing the previous exercises.
Paste it into the Google doc where you are
compiling answers to these exercises and share it
with our program staff.
52
EXERCISE 15
(RECOMMENDED)
Empathetic
Interviewing
PRE-WORK
Read Design Thinking for Social Innovation by
Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
3 hours
PURPOSE
Deepen your competence in collaborating
across differences and designing ethical
systems
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
∙∙ Go and spend at least three hours listening to
a few key stakeholders in your compassionin-action project. If it’s not possible to do this
before the ELA, consider doing it afterwards.
∙∙ Ask them questions that elicit STORIES (as
opposed to single word/sentence responses
or a list of facts/figures). Stories are how
we communicate meaning and emotions.
Meaning and emotions are the key to truly
transformational designs.
∙∙ For example: “Tell me about a time when the
community showed real ownership over a
public amenity.
∙∙ Follow up with: Why did this happen?
What things does the community not
take ownership over? Why? Tell me
about a time when an organization or
project was successful in engaging the
support of community members.”
∙∙ This could then morph into, “Tell me
about a time when you felt proud of your
contributions to the garden” or “Tell me
about a time when you were frustrated
by how others treated/mistreated the
garden.”
∙∙ Asking the interviewee to
imagine alternative scenarios
can also be useful. For example,
“What would it be like if the
garden no longer existed? How
would things be different?”
(“Tell me about a time when...”
is a great way to start a
question because it begs to be
responded to with a story.)
∙∙ It’s very important to ask “why?”
many times. We talk about having
a beginner’s mindset and the most
common question that the “true
beginners” we come in contact with
(i.e. children) ask is “why?” By asking
“why?” 3, 4 or 5 times as a follow-up
to a response, you dig down into the
issue and often uncover interesting and
useful answers that don’t come up as
responses to the initial question.
∙∙ Also ask about people’s feelings. i.e.
“How does this make you feel?”
∙∙ Consider asking the stakeholder about
A Day in his or her Life.
53
∙∙ You will walk through the interviewee’s
day focused on a particular topic. In this
case, the topic would be meals and
food. So you would start with, “Can you
walk me through all the different times
you ate today (or yesterday)? When
did you first eat? Is that your normal
routine? Why? Okay, when did you next
eat?” All the way through, you explore
the different things that are said and
ask why multiple times. Done poorly,
this might take 2 minutes. Done well,
you could spend an entire 90-minute
interview just doing a Day in the Life
walkthrough around food. (Done well
in this case means that you are using
the interviewee’s own stories and life
to springboard off into exploring their
values and behaviors around food).
DELIVERABLE
the non-human beings which will benefit
from your project. So, if animals or plants or
bodies of water are part of your plan, show
a photo here.
∙∙ The third, fourth, and fifth slides should
contain brief stories using the guidelines
above.
∙∙ At your convenience, with the DLF
community, discuss:
∙∙ What have you learned? What do
these stories tell you about where to go
next with your projects?
OPTIONAL
Read Transforming the Judgemental Mind
by Donald Rothberg.
∙∙ Create and print out in color a five-slide
Powerpoint.
∙∙ The first slide should show a few pictures
of the people in your project community—
the people and the places whom your
compassion-in-action project will benefit.
Try to show people who will be stakeholders
in the compassion-in-action project.
“We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul, that avoid the
unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other, that evoke our capacity
to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery, never trying to coerce the other into
meeting our own needs.”
–Parker Palmer ∙∙ The second slide should show the land and
54
READING 15
Design Thinking
for Social
Innovation
(Stanford Social
Innovation
Review)
Designers have traditionally focused on
enhancing the look and functionality of
products. Recently, they have begun using
design techniques to tackle more complex
problems, such as finding ways to provide
low-cost healthcare throughout the world.
Businesses were the first to embrace this
new approach—called design thinking—and
nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too.
By Tim Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt
In an area outside Hyderabad, India, between
the suburbs and the countryside, a young
woman—we’ll call her Shanti—fetches water
daily from the always-open local borehole that
is about 300 feet from her home. She uses a
3-gallon plastic container that she can easily
carry on her head. Shanti and her husband
rely on the free water for their drinking and
washing, and though they’ve heard that it’s not
as safe as water from the Naandi Foundationrun community treatment plant, they still use it.
Shanti’s family has been drinking the local water
for generations, and although it periodically
makes her and her family sick, she has no
plans to stop using it.
Shanti has many reasons not to use the water
from the Naandi treatment center, but they’re
not the reasons one might think. The center
is within easy walking distance of her home—
roughly a third of a mile. It is also well known
and affordable (roughly 10 rupees, or 20 cents,
for 5 gallons). Being able to pay the small fee
has even become a status symbol for some
villagers. Habit isn’t a factor, either. Shanti is
forgoing the safer water because of a series of
flaws in the overall design of the system.
Although Shanti can walk to the facility, she
can’t carry the 5-gallon jerrican that the facility
requires her to use. When filled with water,
the plastic rectangular container is simply too
heavy. The container isn’t designed to be held
on the hip or the head, where she likes to carry
heavy objects. Shanti’s husband can’t help
carry it, either. He works in the city and doesn’t
return home until after the water treatment
center is closed. The treatment center also
requires them to buy a monthly punch card
for 5 gallons a day, far more than they need.
“Why would I buy more than I need and waste
money?” asks Shanti, adding she’d be more
likely to purchase the Naandi water if the center
allowed her to buy less.
The community treatment center was designed
to produce clean and potable water, and it
succeeded very well at doing just that. In
fact, it works well for many people living in the
community, particularly families with husbands
or older sons who own bikes and can visit
the treatment plant during working hours. The
designers of the center, however, missed the
opportunity to design an even better system
because they failed to consider the culture
and needs of all of the people living in the
community.
This missed opportunity, although an obvious
omission in hindsight, is all too common. Time
and again, initiatives falter because they are
not based on the client’s or customer’s needs
and have never been prototyped to solicit
feedback. Even when people do go into the
field, they may enter with preconceived notions
of what the needs and solutions are. This
55
flawed approach remains the norm in both the
business and social sectors.
As Shanti’s situation shows, social challenges
require systemic solutions that are grounded in
the client’s or customer’s needs. This is where
many approaches founder, but it is where
design thinking—a new approach to creating
solutions—excels.
Nonprofits are beginning to use design
thinking as well to develop better solutions to
social problems. Design thinking crosses the
traditional boundaries between public, for-profit,
and nonprofit sectors. By working closely with
the clients and consumers, design thinking
allows high-impact solutions to bubble up from
below rather than being imposed from the top.
Design Thinking at Work
Traditionally, designers focused their attention
on improving the look and functionality of
products. Classic examples of this type of
design work are Apple Computer’s iPod and
Herman Miller’s Aeron chair. In recent years
designers have broadened their approach,
creating entire systems to deliver products and
services.
Design thinking incorporates constituent
or consumer insights in depth and rapid
prototyping, all aimed at getting beyond the
assumptions that block effective solutions.
Design thinking—inherently optimistic,
constructive, and experiential—addresses
the needs of the people who will consume a
product or service and the infrastructure that
enables it.
Businesses are embracing design thinking
because it helps them be more innovative,
better differentiate their brands, and bring
their products and services to market faster.
Jerry Sternin, founder of the Positive Deviance
Initiative and an associate professor at Tufts
University until he died last year, was skilled at
identifying what and critical of what he called
outsider solutions to local problems. Sternin’s
preferred approach to social innovation is an
example of design thinking in action.1 In 1990,
Sternin and his wife, Monique, were invited by
the government of Vietnam to develop a model
to decrease in a sustainable manner high
levels of malnutrition among children in 10,000
villages. At the time, 65 percent of Vietnamese
children under age 5 suffered from malnutrition,
and most solutions relied on government
and UN agencies donations of nutritional
supplements. But the supplements—the
outsider solution—never delivered the hopedfor results.2 As an alternative, the Sternins
used an approach called positive deviance,
which looks for existing solutions (hence
sustainable) among individuals and families in
the community who are already doing well.3
The Sternins and colleagues from Save the
Children surveyed four local Quong Xuong
communities in the province of Than Hoa
and asked for examples of “very, very poor”
families whose children were healthy. They then
observed the food preparation, cooking, and
serving behaviors of these six families, called
“positive deviants,” and found a few consistent
yet rare behaviors. Parents of well-nourished
children collected tiny shrimps, crabs, and
snails from rice paddies and added them to
the food, along with the greens from sweet
potatoes. Although these foods were readily
available, they were typically not eaten because
they were considered unsafe for children. The
positive deviants also fed their children multiple
smaller meals, which allowed small stomachs
to hold and digest more food each day.
The Sternins and the rest of their group worked
with the positive deviants to offer cooking
classes to the families of children suffering from
malnutrition. By the end of the program’s first
year, 80 percent of the 1,000 children enrolled
in the program were adequately nourished. In
addition, the effort had been replicated within
14 villages across Vietnam.4
The Sternins’ work is a good example of how
positive deviance and design thinking relies
on local expertise to uncover local solutions.
Design thinkers look for work-arounds and
improvise solutions—like the shrimps, crabs,
and snails—and they find ways to incorporate
56
those into the offerings they create. They
consider what we call the edges, the places
where “extreme” people live differently, think
differently, and consume differently. As Monique
Sternin, now director of the Positive Deviance
Initiative, explains: “Both positive deviance
and design thinking are human-centered
approaches. Their solutions are relevant to a
unique cultural context and will not necessarily
work outside that specific situation.”
One program that might have benefited from
design thinking is mosquito net distribution in
Africa. The nets are well designed and when
used are effective at reducing the incidence
of malaria.5 The World Health Organization
praised the nets, crediting them with significant
drops in malaria deaths in children under age
5: a 51 percent decline in Ethiopia, 34 percent
decline in Ghana, and 66 percent decline in
Rwanda.6 The way that the mosquito nets
have been distributed, however, has had
unintended consequences. In northern Ghana,
for instance, nets are provided free to pregnant
women and mothers with children under age
5. These women can readily pick up free nets
from local public hospitals. For everyone else,
however, the nets are difficult to obtain. When
we asked a well-educated Ghanaian named
Albert, who had recently contracted malaria,
whether he slept under a mosquito net, he told
us no—there was no place in the city of Tamale
to purchase one. Because so many people
can obtain free nets, it is not profitable for shop
owners to sell them. But hospitals are not
equipped to sell additional nets, either.
As Albert’s experience shows, it’s critical that
the people designing a program consider
not only form and function, but distribution
channels as well. One could say that the
free nets were never intended for people like
Albert—that he was simply out of the scope of
the project. But that would be missing a huge
opportunity. Without considering the whole
system, the nets cannot be widely distributed,
which makes the eradication of malaria
impossible.
The Origin of Design Thinking
IDEO was formed in 1991 as a merger
between David Kelley Design, which created
Apple Computer’s first mouse in 1982, and ID
Two, which designed the first laptop computer,
also in 1982. Initially, IDEO focused on
traditional design work for business, designing
products like the Palm V personal digital
assistant, Oral-B toothbrushes, and Steelcase
chairs. These are the types of objects that are
displayed in lifestyle magazines or on pedestals
in modern art museums.
By 2001, IDEO was increasingly being asked
to tackle problems that seemed far afield from
traditional design. A healthcare foundation
asked us to help restructure its organization,
a century-old manufacturing company
wanted to better understand its clients, and a
university hoped to create alternative learning
environments to traditional classrooms.
This type of work took IDEO from designing
consumer products to designing consumer
experiences.
To distinguish this new type of design work, we
began referring to it as “design with a small d.”
But this phrase never seemed fully satisfactory.
David Kelley, also the founder of Stanford
University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
(aka the “d.school”), remarked that every time
someone asked him about design, he found
himself inserting the word “thinking” to explain
what it was that designers do. Eventually, the
term design thinking stuck.7
As an approach, design thinking taps into
capacities we all have but that are overlooked
by more conventional problem-solving
practices. Not only does it focus on creating
products and services that are human
centered, but the process itself is also deeply
human. Design thinking relies on our ability to
be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct
ideas that have emotional meaning as well as
being functional, and to express ourselves in
media other than words or symbols. Nobody
wants to run an organization on feeling,
intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance
on the rational and the analytical can be just as
risky. Design thinking, the integrated approach
at the core of the design process, provides a
57
third way.
The design thinking process is best thought of
as a system of overlapping spaces rather than
a sequence of orderly steps. There are three
spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation,
and implementation. Think of inspiration as
the problem or opportunity that motivates the
search for solutions; ideation as the process of
generating, developing, and testing ideas; and
implementation as the path that leads from the
project stage into people’s lives.
The reason to call these spaces, rather than
steps, is that they are not always undertaken
sequentially. Projects may loop back through
inspiration, ideation, and implementation more
than once as the team refines its ideas and
explores new directions. Not surprisingly,
design thinking can feel chaotic to those
doing it for the first time. But over the life of
a project, participants come to see that the
process makes sense and achieves results,
even though its form differs from the linear,
milestone-based processes that organizations
typically undertake.
Inspiration
Although it is true that designers do not always
proceed through each of the three spaces in
linear fashion, it is generally the case that the
design process begins with the inspiration
space—the problem or opportunity that
motivates people to search for solutions. And
the classic starting point for the inspiration
phase is the brief. The brief is a set of mental
constraints that gives the project team a
framework from which to begin, benchmarks by
which they can measure progress, and a set of
objectives to be realized—such as price point,
available technology, and market segment.
Henry Ford understood this when he said, “If I’d
asked my customers what they wanted, they’d
have said ‘a faster horse.’” 8 Although people
often can’t tell us what their needs are, their
actual behaviors can provide us with invaluable
clues about their range of unmet needs.
But just as a hypothesis is not the same as an
algorithm, the brief is not a set of instructions or
an attempt to answer the question before it has
been posed. Rather, a well-constructed brief
allows for serendipity, unpredictability, and the
capricious whims of fate—the creative realm
from which breakthrough ideas emerge. Too
abstract and the brief risks leaving the project
team wandering; too narrow a set of constraints
almost guarantees that the outcome will be
incremental and, likely, mediocre.
A better starting point is for designers to
go out into the world and observe the
actual experiences of smallholder farmers,
schoolchildren, and community health workers
as they improvise their way through their daily
lives. Working with local partners who serve
as interpreters and cultural guides is also
important, as well as having partners make
introductions to communities, helping build
credibility quickly and ensuring understanding.
Through “homestays” and shadowing locals at
their jobs and in their homes, design thinkers
become embedded in the lives of the people
they are designing for.
Once the brief has been constructed, it is
time for the design team to discover what
people’s needs are. Traditional ways of doing
this, such as focus groups and surveys, rarely
yield important insights. In most cases, these
techniques simply ask people what they want.
Conventional research can be useful in pointing
toward incremental improvements, but those
don’t usually lead to the type of breakthroughs
that leave us scratching our heads and
wondering why nobody ever thought of that
before.
Earlier this year, Kara Pecknold, a student
at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in
Vancouver, British Columbia, took an internship
with a women’s cooperative in Rwanda. Her
task was to develop a Web site to connect
rural Rwandan weavers with the world.
Pecknold soon discovered that the weavers
had little or no access to computers and the
Internet. Rather than ask them to maintain a
Web site, she reframed the brief, broadening
it to ask what services could be provided to
the community to help them improve their
58
livelihoods. Pecknold used various design
thinking techniques, drawing partly from her
training and partly from Ideo’s Human Centered
Design toolkit, to understand the women’s
aspirations.
Because Pecknold didn’t speak the women’s
language, she asked them to document their
lives and aspirations with a camera and draw
pictures that expressed what success looked
like in their community. Through these activities,
the women were able to see for themselves
what was important and valuable, rather than
having an outsider make those assumptions
for them. During the project, Pecknold also
provided each participant with the equivalent
of a day’s wages (500 francs, or roughly $1)
to see what each person did with the money.
Doing this gave her further insight into the
people’s lives and aspirations. Meanwhile, the
women found that a mere 500 francs a day
could be a significant, life-changing sum. This
visualization process helped both Pecknold
and the women prioritize their planning for the
community.9
Ideation
The second space of the design thinking
process is ideation. After spending time in the
field observing and doing design research,
a team goes through a process of synthesis
in which they distill what they saw and heard
into insights that can lead to solutions or
opportunities for change. This approach helps
multiply options to create choices and different
insights about human behavior. These might
be alternative visions of new product offerings,
or choices among various ways of creating
interactive experiences. By testing competing
ideas against one another, the likelihood
that the outcome will be bolder and more
compelling increases.
As Linus Pauling, scientist and two-time Nobel
Prize winner, put it, “To have a good idea you
must first have lots of ideas.” 10 Truly innovative
ideas challenge the status quo and stand out
from the crowd—they’re creatively disruptive.
They provide a wholly new solution to a
problem many people didn’t know they had.
Of course, more choices mean more
complexity, which can make life difficult,
especially for those whose job it is to control
budgets and monitor timelines. The natural
tendency of most organizations is to restrict
choices in favor of the obvious and the
incremental. Although this tendency may be
more efficient in the short run, it tends to make
an organization conservative and inflexible in
the long run. Divergent thinking is the route, not
the obstacle, to innovation.
To achieve divergent thinking, it is important
to have a diverse group of people involved
in the process. Multidisciplinary people—
architects who have studied psychology,
artists with MBAs, or engineers with marketing
experience—often demonstrate this quality.
They’re people with the capacity and the
disposition for collaboration across disciplines.
To operate within an interdisciplinary
environment, an individual needs to have
strengths in two dimensions—the “T-shaped”
person. On the vertical axis, every member of
the team needs to possess a depth of skill that
allows him or her to make tangible contributions
to the outcome. The top of the “T” is where the
design thinker is made. It’s about empathy for
people and for disciplines beyond one’s own. It
tends to be expressed as openness, curiosity,
optimism, a tendency toward learning through
doing, and experimentation. (These are the
same traits that we seek in our new hires at
IDEO.)
Interdisciplinary teams typically move into a
structured brainstorming process. Taking one
provocative question at a time, the group
may generate hundreds of ideas ranging from
the absurd to the obvious. Each idea can be
written on a Post-it note and shared with the
team. Visual representations of concepts are
encouraged, as this generally helps others
understand complex ideas.
One rule during the brainstorming process is
to defer judgment. It is important to discourage
anyone taking on the often obstructive, nongenerative role of devil’s advocate, as Tom
59
Kelley explains in his bookThe Ten Faces
of Innovation.11 Instead, participants are
encouraged to come up with as many ideas
as possible. This lets the group move into a
process of grouping and sorting ideas. Good
ideas naturally rise to the top, whereas the bad
ones drop off early on. InnoCentive provides
a good example of how design thinking can
result in hundreds of ideas. InnoCentive has
created a Web site that allows people to post
solutions to challenges that are defined by
InnoCentive members, a mix of nonprofits and
companies. More than 175,000 people—
including scientists, engineers, and designers
from around the world—have posted solutions.
The Rockefeller Foundation has supported
10 social innovation challenges through
InnoCentive and reports an 80 percent
success rate in delivering effective solutions to
the nonprofits posting challenges. 12The open
innovation approach is effective in producing
lots of new ideas. The responsibility for filtering
through the ideas, field-testing them, iterating,
and taking them to market ultimately falls to the
implementer.
An InnoCentive partnership with the Global
Alliance for TB Drug Development sought a
theoretical solution to simplify the current TB
treatment regimen. “The process is a prime
example of design thinking contributing to
social innovation,” explained Dwayne Spradlin,
InnoCentive’s CEO. “With the TB drug
development, the winning solver was a scientist
by profession, but submitted to the challenge
because his mother—the sole income provider
for the family—developed TB when he was 14.
She had to stop working, and he took on the
responsibility of working and going to school
to provide for the family.” Spradlin finds that
projects within the InnoCentive community
often benefit from such deep and motivating
connections.13
Implementation
The third space of the design thinking
process is implementation, when the best
ideas generated during ideation are turned
into a concrete, fully conceived action plan.
At the core of the implementation process is
prototyping, turning ideas into actual products
and services that are then tested, iterated, and
refined.
Through prototyping, the design thinking
process seeks to uncover unforeseen
implementation challenges and unintended
consequences in order to have more reliable
long-term success. Prototyping is particularly
important for products and services destined
for the developing world, where the lack of
infrastructure, retail chains, communication
networks, literacy, and other essential pieces of
the system often make it difficult to design new
products and services.
Prototyping can validate a component of a
device, the graphics on a screen, or a detail
in the interaction between a blood donor and
a Red Cross volunteer. The prototypes at this
point may be expensive, complex, and even
indistinguishable from the real thing. As the
project nears completion and heads toward
real-world implementation, prototypes will likely
become more complete.
After the prototyping process is finished and the
ultimate product or service has been created,
the design team helps create a communication
strategy. Storytelling, particularly through
multimedia, helps communicate the solution to
a diverse set of stakeholders inside and outside
of the organization, particularly across language
and cultural barriers.
VisionSpring, a low-cost eye care provider
in India, provides a good example of
how prototyping can be a critical step in
implementation. VisionSpring, which had been
selling reading glasses to adults, wanted to
begin providing comprehensive eye care to
children. VisionSpring’s design effort included
everything other than the design of the glasses,
from marketing “eye camps” through selfhelp groups to training teachers about the
importance of eye care and transporting kids to
the local eye care center.
Working with VisionSpring, IDEO designers
prototyped the eyescreening process with
60
a group of 15 children between the ages of
8 and 12. The designers first tried to screen
a young girl’s vision through traditional tests.
Immediately, though, she burst into tears—the
pressure of the experience was too great and
the risk of failure too high. In hopes of diff using
this stressful situation, the designers asked the
children’s teacher to screen the next student.
Again, the child started to cry. The designers
then asked the girl to screen her teacher.
She took the task very seriously, while her
classmates looked on enviously. Finally, the
designers had the children screen each other
and talk about the process. They loved playing
doctor and both respected and complied with
the process.
By prototyping and creating an implementation
plan to pilot and scale the project, IDEO was
able to design a system for the eye screenings
that worked for VisionSpring’s practitioners,
teachers, and children. As of September
2009, VisionSpring had conducted in India
10 eye camps for children, screened 3,000
children, transported 202 children to the local
eye hospital, and provided glasses for the 69
children who needed them.
“Screening and providing glasses to kids
presents many unique problems, so we
turned to design thinking to provide us with
an appropriate structure to develop the most
appropriate marketing and distribution strategy,”
explained Peter Eliassen, vice president of
sales and operations at VisionSpring. Eliassen
added that prototyping let VisionSpring
focus on the approaches that put children
at ease during the screening process. “Now
that we have become a design thinking
organization, we continue to use prototypes
to assess the feedback and viability of new
market approaches from our most important
customers: our vision entrepreneurs [or
salespeople] and end consumers.” 14
Systemic Problems Need Systemic Solutions
Many social enterprises already intuitively use
some aspects of design thinking, but most
stop short of embracing the approach as a way
to move beyond today’s conventional problem
solving. Certainly, there are impediments to
adopting design thinking in an organization.
Perhaps the approach isn’t embraced by the
entire organization. Or maybe the organization
resists taking a human-centered approach
and fails to balance the perspectives of users,
technology, and organizations.
One of the biggest impediments to adopting
design thinking is simply fear of failure.
The notion that there is nothing wrong with
experimentation or failure, as long as they
happen early and act as a source of learning,
can be difficult to accept. But a vibrant design
thinking culture will encourage prototyping—
quick, cheap, and dirty—as part of the creative
process and not just as a way of validating
finished ideas.
As Yasmina Zaidman, director of knowledge
and communications at Acumen Fund, put it,
“The businesses we invest in require constant
creativity and problem solving, so design
thinking is a real success factor for serving
the base of the economic pyramid.” Design
thinking can lead to hundreds of ideas and,
ultimately, real-world solutions that create better
outcomes for organizations and the people they
serve.
Tim Brown is the CEO and president of IDEO,
a global innovation and design fi m. He is
author of Change by Design: How Design
Thinking Transforms Organizations and
Inspires Innovation (HarperBusiness, 2009),
a newly published book about how design
thinking transforms organizations and inspires
innovation.
Jocelyn Wyatt leads IDEO’s Social Innovation
group, which works with enterprises,
foundations, nongovernmental organizations,
and multinationals to build capabilities in design
thinking and design innovative offerings that
meet the needs of local customer
61
EXERCISE 16
“I’m Nobody! Who
are you?”
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 minutes
Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
One of Dalai Lama Fellows’ core values is
humbition--a balance of humility and ambition.
Ambition is “an earnest desire for some type of
achievement or distinction, as power, honor,
fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its
attainment.” --Dictionary.com
“When we are finally ready, after long travail to
admit to our fear, and let go of all our strategies of
avoidance, our anger, distraction, or despair, we
can learn to ask for help. I would call this humility:
admitting who we are without shame or pride, we
can--and we must--finally turn toward another in
love.” --Norman Fischer
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
How public – like a Frog –
Please write a one paragraph reflection on poem
“I’m Nobody” plus the above definitions of humility
and ambition. Being a Dalai Lama Fellow can
sometimes come with the baggage of being
Somebody. How will you address the challenges
and opportunities that this brings with humbition?
How can you carve out time to be nobody?
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
62
EXERCISE 17
Time Travel
PRE-WORK
None.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
30 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Write a five-sentence letter to your DLF coach
dated June 2016.
Respond to each of the following questions in one
sentence.
∙∙ Describe what your Fellowship year has
looked like in terms of personal and collective
transformation towards a world that increases
well-being while working across differences at
the intersection of justice, peace, and ecology.
∙∙ What role did DLF coach calls, seasonal elder
webinars, and peer-coaching play in supporting
you to be a more ethical and contemplative
human being? How did you support others in
our global community?
∙∙ In what ways did you plan to fail rapidly
and often?
∙∙ What specific examples (include how
many people you want to impact and
in what ways) do you want to include in
the physical portfolio you will prepare for
the Dalai Lama?
∙∙ How, specifically, did your DLF coach
support you to make progress in the
3 core competencies (self-mastery,
collaborating across differences, and
designing ethical systems)? Be as
specific as possible.
PURPOSE
Reflect on how you want to synthesize all three
core competencies. Pre-visualize what the
physical and virtual portfolio you will share with
the Dalai Lama and with your home community
will contain. Co-create a mutual understanding
of how your program director can support you.
2013 Fellows at ELA
63
EXERCISE 18
Discerning
Project Impact
PRE-WORK
Read Girl-Centered Program Design by
the Population Council. Use the section on
monitoring and evaluation to sketch or refine
a monitoring and evaluation plan for your
compassion-in-action project.
MINIMUM TIME TO BUDGET
90 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS + DELIVERABLE
Share your plan for monitoring and evaluation with
DLF staff. Be prepared to discuss how the reading
above relates to your plan. If it didn’t seem relevant,
please be prepared to share the frameworks that
you are using and explain their relevance.
Credit for image above: Marley Benshalom and Oscar Medina
64
EXERCISE 19
Bring a Gift to the
ELA
The offering and receiving of gifts takes on
varying meanings across different cultures,
traditions, and faiths. The common thread
that runs through all of them is the shift from
“I” to “we” when giving. When offering a gift to
another person with an intention to give from
your heart, the importance of how you are
giving becomes more than what you are giving.
When you focus on how you are giving, it might
even feel as if you are no longer giving and
instead, you are the one who is receiving.
In this small story from an ancient Indian epic,
the character Krishna illustrates to the character
Arjuna what it means to truly give: Reading: The
Act of Giving is the True Gift
Questions: Is there a story or experience from
your culture or tradition that you can draw
similar lessons from? Is there a time in your
life when the distinction between giving and
received were blurred? If you could create an
intentional gift from your heart space, what
would that gift be?
For the 2015 ELA, we would like to present
heart-made gifts to our guests and faculty.
Each heart-made gift will be added to a circle
of intentional gifts, which will be presented to
guests and faculty at various times throughout
the ELA. Please use this exercise as a process
for creating such a gift.
65
OPTIONAL
EXERCISE
Doppelt’s 5 Ds
How does the diagram to the right apply to
your own project?
In the transcript on the next page, what does
Doeppelt mean by second-order change?
How does this lens influence how you see
your project?
How might you engage your stakeholders
in dialogue to uncover the fundamental
beliefs and assumptions underlying the need
your compassion-in-action project seeks
to address? What are your own beliefs and
assumptions?
66
“First, again, as I said, sustainable thinking
requires a second order change in thinking
and behavior, which is very different from a
first order change. First order change is about
trying to tweak our existing systems to make
them a little more energy efficient or reduce
waste by ten percent, et cetera, et cetera, but
we leave the basic structure and goals of the
systems in place. Therefore, we get, ultimately,
the same result. We might get it slower, but
we get the same result. A good example is,
reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 15
to 20 percent is a very good step, but it is not
gonna prevent catastrophic climate change. It’s
the total amount of emissions, of CO2 that’s in
the atmosphere. We’ll put it up there slowly, but
we’re still gonna be putting more up there.
A second order change is fundamentally
different. It actually adopts different goals and
creates different structures in the systems to
achieve those goals, and therefore you end up
with fundamentally different outcomes. Zero
waste is a second order change. A ten percent
reduction in waste is a first order change.
Often, the only thing we can do is make a
first order change initially. We go after the
low hanging fruit in our change mechanisms.
That makes sense, that’s perfectly okay, as
long as you’re aware that it’s only a first order
change, and you’re using it as a platform to
get to the second order change, not as the
goal itself. You’re helping people learn how to
think differently by going after 10 or 15 percent
emission reduction or waste reduction or
whatever. That’s not the real goal. The goal is to
think differently and aim towards those second
order changes.
Here’s one way to think about it. Think about
change as a pyramid. On the top of the
pyramid are the results we wanna achieve.
They might be financial, they might be social,
they might be ecological—emissions and
waste. They might be psychological—we want
everybody to be happy here, whatever. Below
the results are actions we take that produce
these results. The policies we adopt, the
practices, the behaviors, the technologies, et
cetera. That’s what creates the results, right?
Our common focus is here, right? Think about
your own organizations, your own life. We think
about, what do we wanna achieve and what do
we gotta do to achieve it? That makes sense,
except it’s the top of the pyramid of change.
Below the pyramid of change are the beliefs
we hold about how the world works, our role
in it, about other people, what we think about
other people, is the world a good place, a bad
place, et cetera, that lead us to act in certain
ways, that lead us to create certain kind of
technologies and not others, that lead us to
create certain kind of policies and not others
that create those results. Below our beliefs
are a set of experiences we’ve had that—past
experiences, many of the beliefs you all hold
and I hold, that drive our behavior, were created
in your first six months or two months of life,
and you don’t even remember them. They’re
too young, but they shaped the way you think,
and certainly the ongoing present experiences
you have shape the beliefs you hold, which
shape the actions you take, which determine
the results you achieve, right?
A second order change, you really need to
focus on all four elements of the pyramid of
change, but the bottom two are the most
important if you really wanna make a second
order change. You’ve gotta create different
experiences for yourself or other people, and
therefore help people think differently about
different beliefs and assumptions. Then we’ll
start to adopt the technologies and the policies
that are really needed, and we’ll eventually
get different results. This is a really important
process. One of the ways to get at this is in
your own life or in your organizations, you can
start by—I do this all the time. In fact, we’ll do
this tomorrow with the city of Phoenix. We’ll
start with trying to really quantify, as well as
you can, the current results you’re getting.
Most organizations have no idea what their
real results are. They have a very narrow—we
are expanding that, we’re now doing sort of
carbon footprint analysis and some other sorts
of things, but they’re still pretty narrow focus on
what the results are.
We know if we’re making a profit, et cetera, but
you really gotta get into really do a complete
footprint analysis. What’s the results on the
67
people you’re working on? Again, what are the
results, what are the impacts on the systems
you’re part of? That’s what results about. What
actions are you taking to create those results?
What policies, practices, et cetera? Often, it’s
what you’re not doing that’s important, not just
what you are doing. What are you forgetting, or
deciding not to do? What are the beliefs that
lead people to act in that way, or that led the
administration 30 years ago to adopt a policy
that led you to the conditions you are today, et
cetera? What experiences are people having or
have had in the past?
Again, with city governments, it’s often the case
that they’ve adopted a sustainability policy.
It’s on the wall somewhere. The mayor or city
council members drive off in big SUVs spewing
greenhouse gases everywhere, and the staff
go, “Nobody’s serious about that.” Everything
that happens in an organization, especially, is
an experience that shapes their belief. What
you buy, what your purchasing policies are,
every kind of thing that happens shapes your
belief. It’s an experience that shapes their
actions, et cetera. The first thing is, go through
and list this, for each step. You do this in a
workshop form. You can do it on yourself. Do
it with your family. Sit down at the dining room
table and go through this. Make it fun. Have
some wine, as long as you don’t have kids.
Initially, it can be distressing, cuz you realize, oh
my gosh, look at what we’re doing. Ultimately
what happens, my experience has been, that
it actually is incredibly empowering. If you
realize your beliefs based on your experiences
and your actions are creating the results,
that means we can change it. It’s incredibly
empowering. We can change the way we think
and behave. We first have to become aware
of how we’re thinking and behaving, and what
the consequences are. Then, go through and
do the same process, generally not the same
day. It’s often good to get some distance from
it, but not always. What would a second order
change, a truly sustainable series of results,
be for us? Go through the same kind of thing.
What kind of effects on the systems we’re part
of do we want? What kind of actions do we
need to take to create those results? What
kind of beliefs do we need to hold to produce
those actions? What kind of experiences do we
need to have to begin to produce those and
reinforce those beliefs?
Then you bring those two side by side, and
you have a discussion. Here’s where we’re at,
here’s where we wanna be. How do we begin
to make the transition towards the second
order change? That can be an extremely
powerful proposition. I really encourage you to
think about it. Think about how to use this. Can
anybody think, see a way to use this in your
organizations or in your life? Any thoughts?”
68
“It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that
people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring
down empires, found religions, get locked up or
‘disappeared’ or shot, and have impacts that last for
millennia... in the end, it seems that power has less
to do with pushing leverage points than it has to do
with profoundly, strategically, madly letting go.”
–Donella Meadows
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your
time; but if you are here because your liberation is
bound up with mine, then let us work together.” – Lila Watson, Australian aboriginal woman
Photo: Workers at Project Khoyot, Ain-i-Sera shantytown, Cairo, Egypt. Bassma
Hasan and Samar Soltan (2012 Fellows)
69
OPTIONAL
READINGS
Jay Clark: http://becompassion.weebly.com/
blog
Listen to Basic Mindfulness Instructions by Tara
Brach.
Resources Recommended by 2014
Fellows
Vivienne Walz: http://vivsjourney.wordpress.
com/
Phrases that Marginalize Trans People
Preserving Culture Apart from Land & Schools
Receive the Books: It’s Storytime for Tibetan
Kids by Eléonore Buchet-Deàk
Listen to Krista Tippett interview the Dalai Lama,
a Muslim scholar, a chief rabbi, and a presiding
bishop about the meaning of happiness in
contemporary life.
Cultural safety
How to be an Ally to Indigenous Peoples
Documentaries (Trailers only)
A Goat for a New Boundary: Post-violence
Resettlement in Kenya by Agostine Ndungu
A Garden Start by Rachel Manning and Hilary
Neff
I AM
Forgotten Space
Blog Posts by Lifelong Followers
Rushikesh Kirtikar: http://
educationforcreativity.blogspot.in/
Oscar Medina and Marley Benshalom:
http://mindfulgardencollective.wordpress.
com
All Are Staying in the Holy Land: On Moving
from Victimhood to Mutual Dignity by Fadi
Rabieh
From Minyan to Critical Mass: Interfaith
Immersion by David Fisher
SELF MASTERY
Read How to Use Mind Maps to Unleash Your
Brain’s Creativity.
Listen to Teaching Mindfulness to Urban and
At-Risk Youth by DLF Curriculum Advisor Chris
McKenna
Listen to Search Inside Yourself by DLF
Curiculum Advisor Chade-Meng Tan
Sign up for compassion training practices
created by the Center for Investing Healthy
Minds
COLLABORATING ACROSS
DIFFERENCES
Listen to Loving-Kindness Guided Meditation
by Sharon Salzberg.
Read The Art of Crafting Powerful Questions
and How to Host a World Cafe
70
Listen to Embracing the Wisdom of Nature
OPTIONAL
by Angeles Arrien
READINGS, CONT’D Journey of the Universe by Brian Swimme
and DLF curriculum advisor Mary Evelyn
Tucker (video)
Watch The Empathic Civilization.
Common Cause Values and Frames
DESIGNING ETHICAL SYSTEMS
Read Redefining Success Beyond Money
and Power
Stanford Design School’s Bootcamp Bootleg
and guide to their methods.
Lean Start-Up
Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future
Read Values and Ecological Sustainability:
Recent Research and Policy Possibilities by
Tim Kasser.
Read Less: Accomplishing More by Doing
Less by Marc Lesser
Photo: Project Broaden Abilities, Jogyakarta, Indonesia.
(Morgan Duffy, 2012 Fellow).
71
“Compassion reduces our fear, boosts our
confidence, and brings us inner strength. By
reducing our distrust, it opens us up to others and
brings us a sense of connection with them and a
sense of purpose and meaning in life.”
–Dalai Lama
“So many of our problems arise because, in our
naïve untrained state, we confuse our thoughts with
actual reality . . . As we become more accomplished
in our practice, we come more and more to see
the trainability of the mind. We learn to substitute
positive thoughts and feelings for negative ones
and to weaken the hold that afflictive thoughts
and emotions have over our minds. It is important,
however, to be clear that what we are talking about
here is not suppressing negative thoughts and
emotions. Instead, we must learn to recognize
them for what they are and replace them with more
positive states of mind. And we do this not only to
achieve self-mastery but also because attaining this
kind of control over our minds puts us in a much
better position to compassionately benefit others.”
–The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Photo Credit: Crystal Davis. Amanda Rees, 2011 Fellow,
Journaling at our inaugural assembly.
72
APPENDIX A
DALAI LAMA
FELLOWS
GLOSSARY
Please note that this glossary is a work in
progress. Please see the bottom of this
document for sources. Where possible,
we have tried to use the Dalai Lama’s
definitions. In cases where his definition is
less accessible, or an expert or dictionary
has a more concise definition, we have
turned to these sources. We encourage our
Fellows to critically weigh these definitions
against their own understanding of these
terms. We use the acronym HHDL to refer
to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
1. What is contemplative practice and how
does it relate to social change?
We believe that contemplative values
and perspectives have the potential to
transform conflict and heal deep divisions
by encouraging people to choose new
responses to old and familiar questions.
Contemplative facilitators can bring together
people on many sides of an issue and
help them be heard, feel heard, and stay
connected across differences.
In our Heart, Head, and Hands curriculum,
contemplative practices are practices that quiet
the mind and open the heart in order to cultivate a
personal capacity for deep concentration, insight,
discernment, awareness of interdependency
of all beings, love, compassion, forgiveness,
and reconciliation—all of which flourish when
practices have been designed to encourage
them. At Dalai Lama Fellows, we recognize that a
diversity of contemplative practices will resonate
with our Fellows, who bring a world of different
secular and religious perspectives to the group.
We encourage our Fellows to explore practices
that deepen the following qualities: waiting,
empathetic listening, noticing, non-judgmental
beholding, effortlessness, heightened awareness
of mental patterns, emotions, and intuition.
The definition above is indebted to Contemplation
Nation: How Ancient Practices Are Changing the
Way We Live, Mirabai Bush editor.
2. What is mindfulness?
“Mindfulness is gathering awareness of your
own patterns of behavior, including thoughts and
feelings, and learning to let go of those habits,
thoughts, and emotions, which are unhelpful.”
--HHDL in Beyond Religion
“The most important meaning of mindfulness
is recollection. The ability to gather oneself
mentally and thereby recall one’s core values
and motivation. Bringing presence of mind
into everyday activities. With such recollection,
we are less likely to indulge our bad habits
and more likely to refrain from harmful deeds.”
--HHDL in Beyond Religion
Please note that the above definition is
grounded in the Tibetan understanding of
mindfulness, which is a little different from
popular secular understanding of the term. Dr.
Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as, “Paying
attention, on purpose, in the present moment,
as if your life depended on it, non judgmentally.”
At Dalai Lama Fellows, we are interested in
engaging with both definitions.
“In the mainstream, ‘contemplative practice’
is often used in a general sense to denote
various disciplines of practice concerned with
the elevation, expansion, and deepening of
consciousness. Mindfulness is limited by its
reference to the ‘mind.’ In some contemplative
traditions, the ‘heart’ is more central than the
‘mind.’” --Contemplation Nation
3. What is compassion?
“Compassion is the foundation of well-being.
Compassion is central to the ethical teachings
of all the major religious traditions, but in itself it
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is not a religious value.
Whether or not our kindness brings benefit
to others will depend on a great many
factors, some of which will be outside of
our control. But whether we succeed in
bringing benefit to others or not, the first
beneficiary of compassion is always oneself.
When compassion or warm-heartedness
arises in us and shifts our focus away from
our own narrow self-interest, it is as if we
open an inner door. Compassion reduces
our fear, boosts our confidence, and brings
us inner strength. By reducing our distrust,
it opens us up to others and brings us a
sense of connection with them and a sense
of purpose and meaning in life.” --HHDL in
Beyond Religion
4. What is secular ethics and how does it
relate to compassion?
“Ethics consists less of rules to be obeyed
than of our principles for inner self-regulation
to promote those aspects of our nature
which we recognize as conducive to our
own well-being and that of others.
The very notion of ethics makes no sense
without a consideration of motivation. To
describe ethics without reference to a
level of motivation seems very incomplete.
The inner motivational dimension is the
most important aspect of ethics. For when our
motivation is pure, genuinely directed toward
the benefit of others, our actions will naturally
tend to be ethically sound. This is why I consider
compassion to be the core principle on which an
entire ethical approach can be built.” --HHDL in
Beyond Religion
5. What is discernment?
“While intention is the first and most important
factor in guaranteeing that our behavior is ethical,
we also need discernment to ensure that the
choices we make are realistic and that our good
intentions do not go to waste.
Discernment also plays a crucial role in
generating our own personal level of ethical
awareness. Ethical awareness, awareness of
what will benefit both self and others – does
not arise magically, but comes from the use of
reason.
or reflective listening) is a way of listening and
responding to another person that improves
mutual understanding and trust and enables
collaborative problem solving.” (Salem, 2003).
While, strictly speaking, empathetic listening is
a skill, it is steeped in the value of empathy-which the Dalai Lama defines as the instinctive
response to another’s suffering, and the urge to
relieve it (Beyond Religion).
7. What is equanimity?
“With equanimity you can deal with situations
with calm and reason, while keeping your inner
happiness.” (HHDL quoted by wisebrain.org)
Merriam Webster defines it as: “Evenness
of mind especially under stress.” Equanimity
is also related to resilience, which Merriam
Webster defines as “ability to recover from or
adjust easily to misfortune or change.”
8. What is gratitude?
When discernment is combined with a
compassionate motivation, we have the two
key components of a comprehensive approach
to ethics and spiritual well-being in a secular
context.” --HHDL in Beyond Religion
6. What is empathetic listening?
“Empathic listening (also called active listening
“The quality of being thankful; readiness to
show appreciation for and to return kindness.”
(Dictionary.com). We believe that gratitude is
closely related to compassion and empathy.
“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am
fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human
life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to
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use all my energies to develop myself, to
expand my heart out to others; to achieve
enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
I am going to have kind thoughts towards
others, I am not going to get angry or think
badly about others. I am going to benefit
others as much as I can.” --HHDL
9. What is humility?
“A modest or low view of one’s own
importance.” (Dictionary.com)
“Determination, courage, self-confidence are
keys to success. In all circumstances, we
should remain humble, modest and without
pride.” (HHDL on Twitter)
10. What is service?
“Giving for the sake of giving, out of the spirit
of generosity, with no strings attached, and
no money exchanged.” (Servicespace.com)
11. What is courage?
“We must generate courage equal to the
size of the difficulties we face.” (HHDL on
Twitter)
“The root of the word courage is cor -- the
Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms,
the word courage had a very different definition
than it does today. Courage originally meant to
speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.
Over time, this definition has changed, and,
today, courage is more synonymous with being
heroic. Heroics are important and we certainly
need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the
idea that speaking honestly and openly about
who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about
our experiences (good and bad) is the definition
of courage.
Heroics are often about putting our life on the
line. Courage is about putting our vulnerability on
the line. If we want to live and love with our whole
hearts and engage in the world from a place of
worthiness, our first step is practicing the courage
it takes to own our stories and tell the truth about
who we are. It doesn’t get braver than that.” --Dr.
Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
12. What is self-mastery?
“Living ethically requires not only the conscious
adoption of an ethical outlook but also a
commitment to developing and applying inner
values in our daily lives.” (HHDL in Beyond
Religion)
13. What is forgiveness?
For the Dalai Lama, forgiveness has a lot to
do with separating the actor from the act.
He believes it’s possible to judge a negative
act as negative without holding negative
feelings towards the actor. He believes it’s
closely related to the concept of generosity.
To read more, please check out The Wisdom
of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and
Journeys by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan
and 9 Steps to Forgiveness.
14. What is stewardship?
“The conducting, supervising, or managing
of something; especially: the careful and
responsible management of something
entrusted to one’s care.” –Merriam Webster
dictionary
“As people alive today, we must consider future
generations: a clean environment is a human
right like any other. It is therefore part of our
responsibility towards others to ensure that the
world we pass on is as healthy, if not healthier,
than we found it.” HHDL
15. What is interdependence?
“Mutuality: a reciprocal relation between
interdependent entities (objects or individuals or
groups).” (Princeton Wordnetweb)
75
“Now, if we extend this logic of dependence
further—from the family out to the
community and society, to the national
and international levels, and even to the
economy and environment—then we can
see how interconnected we are, how
interdependent the world is. Given this
reality, we cannot escape the necessity for
care toward each other. This has nothing to
do with religion. I’m not talking about God
or Buddha. I’m talking about understanding
and appreciating this highly complex and
interdependent world. Then, even from the
point of view of one’s own personal survival
and well-being, one can argue for an ethical
system based on affection.” HHDL in an
interview on the “Ethics of Interdependence.”
16. What is global responsibility?
“In this age of globalization, the time has
come for us to acknowledge that our lives
are deeply interconnected and to recognize
that our behavior has a global dimension.”
(HHDL in Beyond Religion). HHDL uses
this term interchangeably with “universal
responsibility.”
17. What are afflictive emotions?
“All those thoughts, emotions and mental events
which reflect a negative or uncompassionate
state of mind undermine our experience of inner
peace. They are the source of unethical conduct
and the basis of anxiety, depression, confusion
and stress,all features of our life today.” (HHDL in
Beyond Religion)
Notes
The definitions above are drawn from HHDL’s
Beyond Religion and from Contemplation Nation:
How Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way
We Live (edited by Mirabai Bush).
Additionally, we relied on Richard Salem’s
definition of empathetic listening. You can
find more information on the website Beyond
Intractability.
“Remember that silence is sometimes
the best answer.” “What actually makes people happy is full
engagement. You are most alive when
working at the limit of your abilities.”
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was
another.”
–The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
–Bill McKibben
–Toni Morrison
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APPENDIX B
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bidisha Banerjee is the lead architect of
Dalai Lama Fellows’ Field Guide to Ethical
Leadership. This year, Anamaria Aristizabal,
Dana Pearlman, and Kyle Williams were cocreators and advisors whose nourishment
and support propelled this material to
the next level. Thanks to Bela Shah and
Gretchen Wallace.
Deep gratitude to Andy Ng, Steven Chan,
Elizabeth Koppe, and all the other Fellows whose
feedback has helped make this version an
improvement over the past years’.
Deep gratitude to Dalai Lama Fellows’
colleagues Marty Krasney, Chris Simamora,
Natalie Conneely and Leslie Root for their
perceptive and generous support.
Deep gratitude to our curriculum advisory
committee (Anamaria Aristizabal, Edie
Farwell, Marshall Ganz, Greg Hodge, Chris
McKenna, Claire Reinelt, Dr. Max Klau, Esa
Syeed, Chade-Meng Tan, Mary-Evelyn
Tucker, Mark Valentine).
Deep gratitude to Diana Caplan
(dianacaplan.com), Erik Karpleles
(erikkarpeles.com) and Maceo Montoya
(maceomontoya.com) for sharing their
beautiful artwork.
Photo: Hilary Neff and Rachel Manning (2012 Fellows).
Mountain Garden Initiative in Appalachia, Harlan County, KY
77
APPENDIX C
GRATITUDE
Dalai Lama Fellows would like to
acknowledge and express deep gratitude to
the individuals and organizations that have
generously supported our work, including:
The 11th Hour Project of The Schmidt
Family Foundation
The Angeles Arrien Foundation
Andrew L. and Gayle Shaw Camden Fund
Neukermans Family Fund via the Silicon
Valley Community Foundation
The George Family Foundation
Pamela Krasney
Google
Mr. Owsley Brown III
The Jay & Rose Phillips Family Foundation
Mr. Adam Weiss
Lost and Foundation
Chade-Meng Tan
Marisla Foundation
Lawrence Wilkinson
The Flora Family Foundation (Discretionary
Fund)
The Nancy Farese Family Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
The North Ridge Foundation
Center for Interfaith Relations
Panta Rhea
The Gellert Family Foundation
Tan Teo Charitable Foundation
The Betsy Gordon Foundation
The Branscomb Family Foundation
78
“Standard economics assumes that we are rational...
But... we are far less rational in our decision making... Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor
senseless they are systematic and predictable. We
all make the same types of mistakes over and over,
because of the basic wiring of our brains.” – Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational:
The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
“Leadership is taking responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
– Seasonal Elder Marshall Ganz
Artwork: Erik Karpeles. Between Pole and Tropic (2004)
79
A SAMPLING OF 2014
FELLOWS’ PROJECT LOGOS
Credit for image above: to Karim-Yassin Goessinger
Credit for image above: Jay Byrd
Clark
Credit for image above: Noa Fleischacker
80
“Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity and we lapse into daydreams or
diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we
are, who we might be, and the distance between these two. Hence, positive silence
implies a disciplined choice, and what Paul Tillich called the “courage to be.”... In
silence we face and admit that gap between the depths of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface, which is so often untrue to our own reality. We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet
others, not just with the mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic
love.”
– Thomas Merton.
We are forging a lifelong community of compassionate and courageous
social innovators and deepening their capacity to resolve the most
intractable global challenges by embracing universal values and secular
ethics.
Interdependence • Integrity • Resilience
You are welcome to use, share, or adapt this work on the condition that you give
full attribution to Dalai Lama Fellows (and to our Seasonal Elders or advisors where
appropriate).
81
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ethical, and innovative leadership among a global network of young social
innovators grounded in the values so eloquently practiced by the Dalai
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in the leadership development field, their capacity to take and adapt the
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what they are doing to be ever more effective and impactful.
We need programs like DLF that nurture individual and social transformation,
and give young leaders the tools and practices they need to make a
difference in their communities all over the world.
I’ve been impressed with what DLF has accomplished in such a short
time, the network community they have built, and their willingness to share
their curriculum and learning so others can benefit.”
– Dr. Claire Reinelt,
Director of Research and Evaluation
Leadership Learning Community
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