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This chapter brings the ancient dichotomy between vita activa and vita contemplativa – a traditional separation between lay life and religious life – to the realm of different states of mind that form the experience of self in contemporary times. Instead of seeing the above dichotomy necessarily within the secular-religious spectrum, I explore it as two pulls within self and, in particular, within a teacher's life. One pull concerns the gravity of day-to-day that William James described as a habitual, half-awake state, very much shaped by external conditions, such as schooling systems in contemporary times. In this half-awake state, self experiences a lack of agency, and is defined by external expectations and standards. The other pull is the elevation toward what Viktor Frankl called meaning and Paul Tillich viewed as ultimate concerns. This pull need not necessarily be conceptualized as religious. It can be secular and/or grounded in agnosticism and merely reflect a sincere wish to lead an agentic, authentic, and meaningful life. This pull can appear in the most prosaic situations within a teacher's life, calling her/him to resist the gravity of half-asleep functioning and survival. Self is, essentially, a site of struggle and reconciliation between these two pulls, experienced as fluctuating states of the embodied mind. This chapter comprises mostly of an existential-phenomenological description of “what it is like to be a self” in the world, exemplified in the case of being a teacher in contemporary times. After describing the two pulls, I will make some suggestions as to the need for teacher education that explicitly caters to the contemplative self through contemplative practices.

In this chapter, I will draw upon East-Asian wisdom traditions, quantum, transpersonal, and integral theory to posit consciousness as fundamental. In doing so, the relationship between Self and reality will be articulated as nondual. I will argue that knowledge about the nature of Self is both an educational entitlement and learning process. Such understanding is generally thwarted by the impact of scientific materialism and behaviorism on educational orthodoxy, which instead promulgate a separate sense of self with destructive individual and collective consequences. Moving from philosophical theorization to application to teacher education, I will argue that a massive program of deconditioning and unlearning is necessary within education and show how a module I teach, “Responding Mindfully to Challenging Behavior,” attempts to do some of this work via a focus on “discipline.” The focus of the module invites us to question the nature of Self when difficulties arise. As explored, this is often a conditioned self with automatic reactions that can shift toward a “witnessing consciousness” when experiential learning and contemplative practices are integrated with theories of human flourishing.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to develop responsible leaders through developing their response-ability within the context of their day-to-day lives that addresses the existing disconnect between the knowledge about responsible leadership and its practice.

The responsible leadership development methodology begins by helping individuals increase their awareness of their impact on others based on how they are relating and responding to them. This is facilitated through individuals engaging in self-reflexivity and reflection on relationships for which they want to be responsible. Then individuals experiment with and take responsibility for how they are relating and responding within the relationships. Finally, they engage in self-reflexivity and reflection to make sense of the experience to develop practical wisdom and the response-ability that will allow them to become more responsible leaders.

Students that completed an MBA leadership course that employed the responsible leadership development methodology overwhelmingly reported that their response-ability improved in ways that allowed them to become more responsible for their actions, impact on others, relationships and the reality they co-construct with others, as well as becoming a more responsible person.

The research is based on an MBA class of 24 students, only a few of whom currently occupied organizational leadership positions.

The presented leadership development methodology facilitates the development of responsible leaders through developing their ability and commitment to act responsibly within the context of their day-to-day lives.

Organizations are sites where identities are constructed and maintained and a substantial literature points at identity work as being of central importance for managerial practice. Identities are often fragile and contingent constructs, shifting over time and as the actor moves between assignments, being bound up with professional and occupational ideologies, norm and beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how construction workers build their occupational identities on the basis of a combination of identification with their work and the quality they deliver benefitting the end‐user and what Elsbach and Bhattacharya call disidentification, i.e. a critique of the construction industry.

A study of identity work in the construction industry suggests that identities are based on three interrelated processes, the enactment of normative beliefs of ideal selves, the recognition of the accomplishments in the present construction project work, and the disidentification with the construction industry articulated in storytelling practices.

Construction workers’ identities are thus a patchwork, stitching together a variety of heterogeneous resources. This makes identity work an ongoing social process influenced by both the material conditions of the actual work and norms, beliefs, and aspirations.

The paper contributes to the identity literature by emphasizing that identities are irreducible to either material conditions, norm and beliefs, or narrative accounts but are simultaneously drawing on all these resources.

The aim of this paper is to give an account of a self‐evaluation process in a change programme within the US Coast Guard.

This is an autoethnographical account as form of reflection on a leadership in position facilitating change within the organization.

Adaptive organizational change is a human endeavor, not a scientific application of techniques and skills.

The authoethnography points mainly only to a change process of the writer and is therefore hardly an abstract model for others.

Meaningful organizational transformation does not occur without a corresponding self‐transformation, most importantly of the individual leading the change.

Changing oneself by managing change process as a leader, one has to become the change process in order to be successful.

An algorithmic approach to managing self-harm has been introduced within a women's enhanced medium secure. This paper explores the experiences and perspectives of nursing staff using the model.

Purposive sampling was used to gather the experiences of a cross-section of nursing staff of different grades. Semi-structured interviews collected data relating to their experiences using the model as well as their satisfaction with the model in terms of its effectiveness and safety for staff and patients.

Nursing staff described themselves as being confident with the model and were clearly implementing it safely and effectively. They described the model as addressing the challenge of managing self-harm alongside the risk of violence, and also described the importance of effectively marrying individualised assessment and planning with the algorithmic approach. The difficulty for staff new to the ward was also described and this is a useful focus for further development and evaluation.

Nursing staff describe the algorithmic approach to managing self-harm in use on this ward as safe and effective and it could usefully be trialled in other areas which manage difficult and potentially high-lethality self-harm.

The algorithmic model is a new approach to dealing with the challenging levels of self-harm within the service, and there is a clear need to ensure that the end-users of model are confident that they are using it safely and effectively. This paper describes this work as well as expanding on some of the complexities of managing self-harm day-to-day in this challenging environment.

In this chapter, the authors explore the “hidden curriculum” that is enacted when the teaching-self transmits to the learning-self, the being aspects of the teacher. It is proposed that these aspects are communicated through discursive and nondiscursive materials. The latter includes energetic, emotional, and gestural “languages.” An argument is made that the current, modernist conceptions and practices of education that predominantly focus on covering and downloading curriculum materials do not create openings for exploring the being aspects of teachers and learners. Moreover, acknowledging Avraham Cohen's thesis, “We teach who we are, and that's the problem,” the authors explore the hurtful and damaging influence of the teachers' “Shadow materials.” An argument is made for the moral imperative of teachers' (or anyone who is in a position of influencing others) self-study to minimize or prevent hurtful and damaging influences that could have a long-lasting impact on the students' or learners' self-formation. The authors propose the method of inner work, integrated with contemplative inquiry and practices, as a way for educators to work with the materials of consciousness. Inner work largely involves working through psychological projections, introjections, and entanglements that permeate one's inner world. Some details of inner work are offered, including how to facilitate a dialogue between the parts or subselves in one's inner world that are in tension and conflict. It has been further proposed that this kind of inner work would lay the necessary foundation for becoming kinder, caring, and more compassionate human beings.

This case is based on 30 interviews with participants in a seven-year sustainability project at a leading North American manufacturer. The project enhanced financial value and positively impacted the natural and organizational environments. The case draws attention to innovative methods to increase non-executive employee engagement in technical innovation for sustainability. In particular, many interviewees noted how eco-action learning had motivated them to persevere. However, their intense commitment also exacted a cost, most significantly in time away from family. The process by which these results were achieved is discussed as an example of “appreciative intelligence” to suggest how leaders and employees can reframe business, connect elevated personal purpose to day-to-day business tasks, and consequently create a more sustainable future.

Despite extensive research into psychologically‐based issues in the workplace, in practice there remain a confusion and lack of knowledge about psychology and psychological issues in manager/organisation development. This article explores areas in which psychological processes affect the day‐to‐day lives of people in organisations, such as the use of psychological knowledge to understand and deal with people issues in the workplace, manager development as psychological development, creating a psychologically healthy work environment, and finally, exploration of a psychological process that is associated with personal/professional change and development. It is proposed that the psychodynamic process of mirroring as an essential component in children’s personality development remains essential in the maintenance and development of an adult’s identity. While this process occurs naturally, it can be acknowledged and used by organisations in a conscious way to provide developmental experiences and opportunities for their employees.