Carol S. Pearson

Can we design organizations in a way that creates a space where employees, the organization, and the larger community all thrive? And if so, where can we go for inspiration to help us achieve this goal? In a time of volatile and complex uncertainty, it is time to learn the lessons that nature has compiled from 3.8 billion years of research and development. Nature is an interdependent, dynamic and living system – just like today’s organizations and communities. Kathleen Allen uses nature as a model, mentor, and muse to rethink how leadership is practiced today. Leading from the Roots takes nature as a source of inspiration to help organizations see a new way of leading and designing workplace structure, applying the generous framework found in mature ecologies to human organizations. Kathleen Allen helps shift assumptions, practices, structures, and processes of organizations to become more resilient and nourishing for all, and, along the way, design the way out of workplace dysfunction and drama. “Leading from the Roots provides a powerful new way of thinking about organizations as living systems and delivers practical leadership frameworks for individuals to learn how to unleash the energy and create innovative, effective teams. -Anne Boneparte, CEO Appthority This book is a must read for organizational leaders who are not only committed to their mission, but equally to creating a workplace that attracts and retains the brightest and the best professionals fully enabled to meet that mission. -Caryl Stern, President & CEO UNICEF USA

Now with an updated preface from the author celebrating this groundbreaking and increasingly relevant book. Nautilus Award WinnerThis revelatory manifesto speaks to the heroine in every woman and man, offering potent strategies drawn from ancient Greek wisdom that can help us find happiness even in today's unfinished social revolution. Four archetypal plotlines--two feminine, two masculine--chart this path toward greater life satisfaction.In this empowering work, Carol S. Pearson, the bestselling author of The Hero Within and Awakening the Heroes Within, reveals how the Demeter and Persephone story uncannily mirrors cultural and political dramas being played out today before our very eyes, and then shows how these conflicts could be resolved. In the myth, the earth mother wins a power struggle with a patriarchal god, thereby ending a famine (think climate change) that threatens human survival. As this is occurring, a youthful goddess gains her freedom, asserting gender partnership and equality, and as a result gives birth to joy and celebration.The archetypal figures and narratives that galvanize attention in the public world also activate them within us as individuals. The challenge, then, is to live these stories wisely, shifting their expression within us for our own good and that of our society. The example of the four major mythic characters illustrates how readers can move from feeling powerless to purposeful, disrespected to esteemed, trapped to free, and anxious to joyful.Drawing on her profound understanding of myth's enduring power to catalyze such transformations, Pearson guides readers of Persephone Rising on a journey of self-discovery, teaching us how to apply lessons from Demeter and Persephone, as well as Zeus and Dionysus, in our own lives--examples that reveal unexpected choices and opportunities available to us all.

In this newly revised edition of the bestselling classic The Hero Within, Carol S. Pearson gives us a unique vocabulary to explore the link between ancient archetypes and our contemporary lives. Works like Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces have introduced readers to the significance of myth and archetype in our lives. Carol Pearson's bestselling The Hero Within takes us further by combining literature, anthropology, and psychology to clearly define with insight and understanding, the six heroic archetypes that exists in all of us: the Innocent, the Orphan, the Wanderer, the Warrior, the Martyr, and the Magician. This substantially revised edition features new chapters that illuminate these archetypes, showing how to reach our fullest potential by achieving a balance between work, family, and the self.

This companion to the bestselling THE HERO WITHIN outlines twelve archetypal patterns that can aid inner development and the quest for wholeness.

No organizational leaders can succeed in today's fast evolving and highly connected world on their own. To succeed, today's leaders must not only optimize all their own faculties--mental sharpness, emotional depth, imagination, and creativity--but also utilize the full capacities of those around them in a collaborative and creative manner. The prestigious contributors to this volume draw on psychology, sociology, neuroscience, social networking theory, organizational change theory, myths and traditions, and actual experiences to discover how leaders today achieve transformational results. The Transforming Leader offers an overview of what transformational leadership is, how it works, and how it is evolving. In doing so it reframes the challenge of leading in today's interdependent, unpredictable world.

Based on three years of study into the topic of transformational leadership, this is a definitive guide to becoming a leader for positive change. The best, most original thinking from psychologists, business leaders, religious leaders, organizational experts, and academics are brought together in this life - changing volume.