Source: Prayer to Mansur Al-Hallaj
Prayer is about listening to the world and is part of an internal conversation. The Sufi prayer is about listening closely. Each stanza of the poem begins with a word that entreats God guide me in sensing the world more deeply, not as something I hear, but as something all my senses are able to engage with.
We think of leadership as action and speech, but it is about sensing the world in a sensitive and mindful manner. Leadership is about a conversation and the questions we ask. It opens up space where there are no preconceived answers and followers can be part of conversation and lead, as well. Leadership and its communication is about community, a gathering of people who do not always agree, but hold something in common.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
beautiful explanation of prayer…and leadership…the Servant Leader…wonderful!
Thank you. Servant-leadership should be a part of all leadership.
This is exactly what good leadership practices when understanding life.
I find we confuse leadership and management. Both are needed and often overlap, but they serve different purposes.
Yes I agree. Great leadership takes a different approach and a higher purpose.
This is a profound bit of wisdom for many who were taught, early on, that prayer is about talking, asking, pleading, even. Listening is vastly underrated in today’s crazy world, but I am a big fan ๐
It is and it is hard work. I find listening to listen and not prepare to answer and defend is difficult.
Ivon, for me it’s more about losing the thought I had during someone’s dialogue! Time of life and all … But I figure if it’s important, it will come back. Yet sometimes it’s still a bit frustrating ๐
I find it interesting how things return to my consciousness later. When it is important, it finds its way back without chasing.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford.
Thank you Jonathan
HAD TO SEARCH FOR ONE!