Ginny Whitelaw
on Zen Leadership
Zen and leadership belong together: “Only through Zen can leaders fully express their true selves. Only through leadership can the transformative benefits of Zen be brought to the world.”
Ginny Whitelaw’s question for leaders is: “How do you want to use your precious life?”
As a child, she dreamt of being an astronaut. At just 13, she wrote to NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration asking how to prepare for it. Their response motivated her to study biophysics and develop a lifelong interest in energy and the human body. She also took up martial arts, was ordained as a Zen priest, and is an 86th-generation Zen master in the Rinzai tradition. Ginny became the Deputy Manager for the Space Station Program at NASA, being awarded the Exceptional Service Medal, but soon she realized her true calling: exploring the inner space.
Today, she integrates leadership development with the embodied practices of Zen and the dojo. Always passionate about a holistic approach to leadership, Ginny believes that conventional “mind-only” approaches are incomplete. The body is where true, enduring change happens. As a speaker, author and founder of the Institute for Zen Leadership, she is developing “whole leaders", and helping them lead without separation. A simple concept but difficult to fully manifest: “A key concept in Zen leadership is samadhi, a deep, visceral state that arises from persistent work with breath and posture. When mind and body are experienced as one, we can begin to see through the illusion of separation, between ourselves and others, between ourselves and nature.” Zen leadership is cultivated through a series of "flips" or shifts in perspective that take us out of unproductive patterns from coping to transforming.
Resonance is a key ingredient in Ginny's teachings. A resonant leader is aligned with life, bringing resilience and healing to others and the planet. In her award-winning books, Resonate and The Zen Leader, Ginny reflects on the three core steps: “Center: Ground yourself and calm your mind; Enter: Move toward the difficulty, accepting it fully, join with the relationships and become one with the situation; Add Value: Extend your energy, intent, skills, and voice to positively affect the situation.”
While we rarely control outcomes, we can control the quality of our care, the sincerity of our intent, and the integrity of our efforts. Acting from a state of connection we allow beauty and kindness to emerge. The Zen Leader opens up an entirely different possibility: to use the pressure, rather than be used by it. To reveal the Zen leader within who can propel breakthroughs and elevate our consciousness.
Read Ginny Whitelaw’s answers for Inspirators and discover your Zen Leader within, the one who “leads beyond the egos and attracts the future with joy and enthusiasm!”
Thank you, Ginny, for being a Zen Leader!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Ginny Whitelaw
Company / Institution: Institute for Zen Leadership
Title: Founder, CEO
Website: https://zenleader.global
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginny-whitelaw-7089599/
Country of origin: US
Country you currently live in: US
Your definition of Regeneration: Being and doing as life.
Main business challenge you face: Reaching all who could resonate with, benefit from, and help others through Zen leadership.
Main driver that keeps you going: This is my purpose; I’m doing what I’m here to do.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: No pride in it, but my ability to manifest things is useful!
The trait you most value in others: A loving, healing presence. An orientation to serve others.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: The sunrise, the bird who sits on the rail, fluorescent chrysanthemums announcing fall, putting my feet up at the end of the day, Beethoven.
The Inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:
I am deeply inspired by:
Gordon Greene Roshi
Sam Greene (his son)
Ilarion Merculieff
A starting point for companies or professionals that are beginning the regeneration journey:
Andres Roberts and the beautiful Bio-leadership project!
Our work at the Institute for Zen Leadership helps people viscerally experience their interconnection; Andres’ work complements that with a community dedicated to regeneration.
Most used and abused clichés in sustainability that bother you:
“If everyone does a little bit…” No way.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope: It’s no accident that you’re here. One could even say this is where you chose to take your stand. How do you want to use your precious life?
Books that had a great impact on you / Must-Reads for any regenerative professional:
Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein
Anything by Bill McKibben
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again: The Great Simplification
Websites / Podcasts you visit frequently: Peter Zeihan
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: Beethoven, Enya, anything I can dance to!
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: Lake Superior – the first place to welcome me home.
Global Regenerative Voices you recommend us to follow:
Andres Roberts (Bio-Leadership Project)
John Jones (World Systems Solutions)
Tom Mansfield (Cards for Life)
Trends in Regeneration we should keep an eye on: Where advances in human consciousness can better apply the tools of our age (e.g., technology/AI).
Impactful and relevant Sustainable Development or Regeneration courses or certifications: Bio-leadership Project.
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030: I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic about our future. A rebalancing is underway and it will be painful. It is both a natural outcome of the development of human consciousness and we as human beings can transcend it and heal ourselves, our relationships with one another and nature.
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: The ability to feel, to actually experience one’s interconnectedness. This requires getting out of our heads and into the felt sense of our bodies.
Zen further opens us to an experience of being the whole picture: the great cosmic dance unfolding within us. When we feel that, we intrinsically sense how to harmonize with others and nature, just as we might catch the beat of a song.
The quote that inspires you:
“You are not a drop in the ocean, but rather the entire ocean in a drop.” (Rumi)
Your quote that will inspire us:
