Authenticity - As much as anything, our souls are crying for authenticity, with it we can build relationships and inspire each other and our customers and suppliers. The implications for increased revenues are obvious. What a gift - a technique for inspiring the soul and gratifying the personality. Before we can communicate effectively, we must communicate authentically.

Beauty - If our workplaces were sacred, would we be more likely to love and respect them? If these were beautiful places and we loved them, how might the human performance within them be transformed? The soul flourishes in beauty.

Balance - It is time for us to redesign work so that we can balance our material and spiritual aspirations and integrate them into the larger and longer term picture - our lives and souls depend on it.

Business - Business is more than a vehicle to provide jobs and profits. It is one of the most elegant forms ever designed for all of us to make a sacred contribution to each other and the planet.

Courage - Inviting spirit to the workplace begins with courage the role of the leader who wishes to inspire the souls of others - the missionary - is to model the behavior desired, which is done by going first.

Customers - We are on the customer's payroll: the organization is just a convenient way for the customer to get the money to us.

Customer service - We have a sacred responsibility to provide quality and customer service to others - both inside and outside our organizations. This is not a mater of discretion, but a sacred trust. We have made a promise to meet an agreed performance standard. We have given our word, our bond, if we live up to our responsibilities in the first place, we will not need a - program -.

Delivery - Delivery means: identifying the needs of others and meeting them. Delivery honors meeting the needs of customers over mere profit making. Delivery is founded on -win/win- deals and relationships that treat customers, employees and suppliers as partners rather than adversaries. In short, delivery is being of service to others.

Encouragement - The soul seeks encouragement. We all know that things are not as we would like them to be and we yearn to change them but we lack the encouragement necessary to become actively involved in creating that change. Our soul see the need but not the support. Our role, therefore is to supply that encouragement - moral and financial. And even more important, spiritual.

Freedom - Rules describe what cannot be done. But the soul yearns to be enabled, to know what can be done. Rules are limiting: values are liberating.

Flow - If our work produces flow, we are on purpose and our work may develop so that it becomes as great as our soul.

Harmony - Try not to match anger with any of your own anger - aggression is dependent on the laws of mechanics: it is unrewarding when it has nothing to push against, as every bully knows. Seek harmony.

Chemistry - Chemistry means: relating so well with others that they actively seek to associate themselves with you. People with chemistry possess characteristics and attitudes that favor building strong relationships. Truth-telling and promise-keeping are keystones of chemistry and result in the establishment of emotional bonds with others built on trust.

Congruence - Trust and integrity are good examples of words that are more widely used than practiced. This causes a sense of incongruity in peoples hearts. If we ask people to tell the truth, we need to be sure we are doing the same. The best teaching is not achieved through talking but by modeling.

Commitment - What are you prepared to risk in order to make your life more soulful? To what are you willing to commit your life in service to this planet and all its creatures? Is your work greater than your soul?

Contribution - The joy of giving is the natural path of the soul when climbing into bed at night, there are few things as gratifying to the personality, as well as the soul, than knowing that the day's efforts contributed positively to customers, employees, suppliers - and the larger community.

Greatness - Building greatness is achieved one human being at a time. The difference between whether an organization is mediocre or superb is determined by whether all its individual members are mediocre or superb.

Inspiration - People come to work each day for more than just the money. They come to create friendships, to learn, to have fun - in short, they yearn for an uplifting experience. Corporate leaders today therefore, are being called upon to be the new custodians of the human spirit.

Intimacy - Appearing distant, cold and mechanical to others alienates their souls. Being human, not mechanical, is crucial to opening our souls at work, and permitting the whole person to be present and contribute. Avoiding these and other issues of the heart, issues that are at the core of what it means to be human, starves the soul of its most essential requirements and blocks our creative energy and productivity.

Intuition - Where the personality doesn't take intuition seriously, the soul threats it as the most useful of its senses. The soul works primarily on hunches, emotions, premonitions and funny feelings. If we can learn to become comfortable with the notion that not everything must be quantified and value the unknowable as a legitimate source of information, then emancipation of the soul is possible, from which will follow a release in creative thinking.

Investment - If we are prepared to invest 10% annually in the maintenance of physical plant and equipment surely we should be willing to do the same for the most valuable and important assets in our businesses - the people who make it work.

Leadership - We mistakenly believe that the fearsome cliches of war, violence and intimidation inspire and motivate. But it doesn't work like that. The qualities of modern leadership are more likely to be found in the wisdom of saints, mystics and gurus than Attila the Hun, and from our feminine as much as from our masculine energy.

Kaizen - Creativity nourishes the soul and there are two ways to be creative: by innovating (finding a different way) and kaizen (finding a better way). It is a solution-based rather than a problem-based philosophy. This subtle difference nourishes the souls of individuals and therefore propels them and their organizations into a unique spiritual plane.

Learning - If mastery is chopping wood, then learning is sharpening the ax. Learning is the fuel of the soul. In order to chop wood (mastery), it is necessary to pause from time to time to sharp the ax (learning).

Life-long learning - Learning means: seeking and practicing knowledge and wisdom. Learning accelerates mastery, but mastery is never perfect. Just as there is no perfect knowledge or wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are always incomplete and so continuous learning - that is, life-long learning - is essential. If continuous mastery is to flourish in all areas of our work and personal lives.

Love - Remember that everyone wants more love -not fear- in their lives. It takes courage to admit this. We all yearn to let our souls fly - we just don't know how to do so safely. We are each responsible for helping others to do so.

Listening - Listening means: hearing and understanding the communications of others. Listening accelerates delivery. We cannot meet the needs of others (delivery) if we do not pause to hear what those needs are. To truly listen, we must shut down our 'mental chatter' and genuinely, and non-judgementally, listen to each other. Then and only then will we be in a position to take the appropriate actions to meet them.

Motivation - Life is not a battleground - it is a playground. War or the fear of losing does not motivate people. Virtuoso performances are romanced from people not beaten out of them.

Non-violence - There is only one standard - non-violence. And even minor acts of violence, like rudeness, bad manners or hurtful behavior, are on the same continuum as the ultimate violence - war.

Promise-keeping - Leaders who inspire the souls of others do not treat promise-keeping or truth-telling lightly. For them, trust is not a subject to be compromised.

Openness - Evolved people respect differing views. Understanding that life's meaning is to be found everywhere. They are open, always learning and growing. An evolved person knows that there is only one truth, but many different ways of seeing it.

Purpose - The primary purpose of an organization is not to make a profit. It is to help human beings grow, express their creativity, contribute their life-source and make the world a better place. The purpose of an organization is to inspire the soul.

Questions - If reengineering was the answer, what was the question? Reengineering is the quintessential prototype of the -answer- that does not deal with the questions of the soul. At our current levels of angst, it is not another answer we need, but the right questions. We no longer need answers for the personality. Instead, we need to sit with the soul and ask the right questions.

Relationships - More than any other, the question the soul most wishes to hear from others is -how can I love you better?- the greatest desire of the soul it the opportunity for partners to listen and be heard by each other on this subject and commit themselves to growing the love on which their relationship is based. Strong relationships, at home or at work, are based on the successful application of kaizen - or continuous improvement - to love.

Recruiting - When we recruit new members to the team, we are adding a new soul as well as a new personality. When adding to the strength and character of a team we need to be clear on the level of soulfulness, as well as personality, that we are inviting to it.

Respect - In order to embrace the concepts of service and quality we must first respect, trust and love our employees, customers, suppliers and our fragile eco-system. We will receive the outer rewards after we do our inner work.

Sacredness - The soul pursues values that respect the sacredness in everything, including humans. The soul reveres the thruth and honors promises. The soul embodies a continuous state of grace, rejecting violence and competition and celebrating harmony, cooperation, sharpening and reverence for life, because it sees the sacredness of things.

Self-esteem - Self-esteem is a gift from the personality to the soul, achieved through learning. Self-esteem is a prerequisite for truth-telling, because if we do not feel self-assured -that is, at ease about expressing our views -we will distort the truth.

Sanctuary - A sanctuary is a condition of serenity, inspiration, love and personal development. It is a condition that beckons to each of us because it speaks directly to the needs of the soul - renewing and refreshing it. A sanctuary is more than a physical location - it is an attitude.

Teamwork - There is a natural law in team sports: a championship team is not a team of champions. Teams are united by a common purpose. They share harmony, trust, truth-telling, respect, support, courage, chemistry, shared vision, goals and values. A high performing championship team epitomizes the concept of the sanctuary.

Winning - Winning is an important life goal for most of us, but we are confused about what -winning- really means. Winning is doing what you do as well as you can -another way of describing mastery. It has nothing to do with competing or with destroying someone else.

Yin and Yang - Masculine and feminine energy is not determined by gender but by the balance between yin and yang in each of us. The yang is evident in characteristics such as ambition, drive, competition and power: the yin manifests itself in compassion, love, relationships and nature. Balance in our lives is attained through the equilibrium between yin and yang.

Trust - Greatness is achieved through harmony and great teams succeed through interdependence gained through the certain belief that all members are scrupulously truthful. The magic ingredient in teams is trust, which is earned through consistent truth-telling. We learn to trust someone because they can be consistently relied on to tell the truth.

Wholeness - The soul seeks to be whole. While competition seeks to divide between winners and losers. We will be prevented from healing the pain afflicting the souls of millions in modern organizations until we embrace wholeness in everything we do. Wholeness embodies grace and draws us inevitably to cooperation.

Truthfulness - Why do we expect to reach higher ground from a base of dishonesty? After all, if we can't even trust or tell the truth to each other, what are the grounds for expecting employees, customers or suppliers to do any better? We cannot know each other until we speak truthfully to each other.

Win/win - In a sanctuary, the old fashioned myth of rugged individualism and heroic leadership has been replaced by a more inclusive set of values, emphasizing what is good for you as well as what is good for me.

Bliss - High levels of mastery create a 'rush' that is hard to match in other ways, indulging in activities that inspire us, is a very human way to reward ourselves. We can reach rare moments of bliss through exquisite levels of mastery and this can only come from a dedication to learning.

Creativity - Preparing an environment that will nourish creativity is, in itself, a creative activity. Spontaneity, dynamism, fun, humor, freedom from fear of failure, incentives, sympathetic values and culture, a soulspace and celebration are just a few of the essential ingredients of a creative culture. Leaders who seek to liberate the soul through creativity must establish a sanctuary in which failure is not punished but valued as a learning experience.

Grace - If we have not learned to treat each other with grace, how will we learn to be graceful with our customers? If we live with grace inside our organizations, it will show up in our relationships outside them.

Joy - Enlightened leaders create sanctuaries by removing fear from the workplace. Passion and joy replace fear. When we love what we do, we do it well because it is joyful and fun. This engages the soul.

Communications - Those with grace seek to integrate themselves with those with whom they interact. They guide relationships with a sure hand that seeks to make every soul whole - first with itself, but also with the universe.

Empathizing - Empathizing means: considering the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of others. Empathizing accelerates chemistry. To be a friend, we must walk in the moccasins of others. Because to relate well with them, we must first understand them. So our goal is to be in a continuous state of empathy.

Integrity - Has there been an inherent honesty present in all things: have all our acts been noble and virtuous? Have our profits been generated with honesty? Have they been achieved through noble and virtuous acts?

Legacy - Our work produces nothing lasting save what we contribute to the soul. Even the greatest accomplishments will crumble in the end. Only our souls endure forever. Great corporations, factories and every other material asset will mean nothing if they are not sanctuaries in which the soul can make a lasting contribution.

Mastery - Mastery means: undertaking whatever you do in both your personal and professional life to the highest standards of which you are capable. The mission of all of us is the same: to do what we do so well that others will come to see us do it again.

Recession - There has been no recession. We are not going through one nor are we recovering from one. In fact, there probably never was one and there may never be one. A recession is an attitude.

Soulwork - Isn't the point of our work to inspire the soul? Should we not ask 'how does this task inspire my soul and the souls of others?' each time we embark on a work activity? Is it not just as important to ask 'how can I make this a soulful task?' as it is to ask 'how do I make my budget?'

Work - If we love what we do (mastery), love the people with whom we do it (chemistry), and love the reason for doing it (delivery), would we still call it work? People are inspired to do what they do well by the love they feel for what they do (mastery), by the people with whom they share tasks and relationships (chemistry), and by their commitment to being of service to others (delivery).

Profit - Profit is measured two ways: by calculating the financial returns derived from our efforts, and by measuring how much we have inspired the soul.

Rewards - If we wish to inspire the soul, we must first speak to it. If we reward the personality and ignore the soul, should we be surprised if we are ineffective? For more than a century we have paid attention to rewarding the personality. What magic could we create if we deliberately began to reward the soul?

Vision - The evolved individuals who offer a soaring vision of their organization's purpose on this planet, will create soulful workplaces -sanctuaries- that invite employees to bring their souls to work as well as their minds.