The difference between dynamic leaders and everyone else is their ability to make a difference with their presence. This has everything to do with being highly aware.
The place I learned most profoundly to make a difference with my presence is the Gestalt Organizational Systems Development Center, (Gestalt OSD Center). It was there as a student and then as a faculty member that I was set on the path to self-mastery.
My mentor and teacher, the President of the Center, John D. Carter often said, “I want my clients to be able to play with all 52 cards in the deck and the jokers”. This requires a keen sense of awareness.
Awareness of your internal process and experience, awareness of your external environment, and being able to shuttle back and forth and see how your thoughts, words, actions are impacting the environment and how others thoughts, words, actions are impacting you.
The word “Gestalt” means “whole”. Gestalt theory and method have become one of the top 5 approaches to organizational change. For 40 years the Gestalt Organizational Systems Development Center (www.gestaltosd.org) has been using Gestalt concept, theory, method and practice integrated with change theory and organizational development concepts to formulate and teach what has become known at Gestalt Organizational Systems Development, Gestalt OSD.
Change happens when any system becomes aware of something in a new way. Introducing a new experience to an individual or group expands their awareness and potentially their understanding that experience. And it is through awareness that we get back to wholeness one experience at a time in a very iterative way. And the more awareness we have the faster that change becomes.
Being able to make a difference with your presence in any room with any number of people anywhere in the world is the value proposition that the practice of Gestalt can create for its students. It is the self-mastery that allows for you to move authentically and strategically in the world with confidence and intention.
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