Poet and corporate consultant David Whyte tells Sylvia Thompson of the need for creativity and an end to old workplace hierarchies
A poet giving seminars to corporate managers? There must be some mistake. How can someone so preoccupied with word sounds, rhythms and meanings improve company strategies... work productivity... employee morale? Well, Yorkshire-born, Seattle-based, David Whyte is one poet who believes he can.
And in fact his reputation for transforming hardened company policies and stultifying boardroom meetings and genuinely increasing job satisfaction goes before him.
For over 15 years, Whyte has been consulting the corporate world in North America and Europe and arrives in Dublin in two weeks time to spread his message of "leadership through courageous conversation".
Whyte firmly believes companies need a new language and a new approach in this new century where respect for old hierarchical structures is on the wane.
"The inherited language of the corporate workplace is far too small for us now. It has too little poetry, too little humanity and too little good business sense for the world that lies before us," he writes in his most recent book, Crossing the Unknown Sea: work and the shaping of identity (Penguin).
He also believes a new type of business leader (he doesn't like the word manager as it brings up images of domination, command and control) will come to the fore as workers now expect to have adult-adult relationships with their bosses rather than what were often parent-child type relationships.
Drawing on his own artistic prescience, Whyte believes such new leaders will be "the attentive, open-minded, conversationally based, people-minded individuals who has not given up on their intellect and can still act and act quickly when needed".
Perhaps in time, we will find this somewhat optimistic leadership model comes to life as a necessary reaction to the increasing distance we place between each other with email messages, mobile-phone texting and the like.
With such leadership, Whyte says comes opportunities for "real conversations" in the workplace which he describes as the frontier between the self and the world.
"In order to get a real conversation with the world, you have to drop artificial language, you have to drop politics, and you have to drop an environment based on fear and hiding. People must be encouraged not only to know their craft, their products, their work and the people they serve, but to know a little of themselves," he says.
In essence, Whyte's message is simple if difficult to achieve. He is telling us all to be honest in our relationships with those with whom we work (and equally importantly with those with whom we live) while remaining true to what we genuinely want to achieve in life and work.
To confront "the deep wells of loss, bitterness and exploitation" in work, Whyte believes we all have to look beyond the surface personalities to see what really motivates the people we work with and for.
Then, both leaders and workers need to be frank about what strengths and weaknesses they have and how to best work with them.
We need, he claims, most of all to be deeply honest with ourselves and make changes if we discover we are simply following the wrong course.
Whyte has the personal experience of changing career path and work patterns in his own life, about which he writes in his book, Crossing the Unknown Sea. This semi-autobiographical book is in itself lyrical and deeply insightful into the human condition.
Trained as a marine biologist, Whyte found himself working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands before realising that he had a deep and irresistible yearning to become a poet. "Let go of all this effort, and let yourself down, however awkwardly into the waters of the work you want for yourself", were the words of advise of a close friend when Whyte expressed his vulnerability to change.
And so, began a journey which has since seen Whyte publish four volumes of poetry.
In 1987, a management consultant heard him give a talk on creativity and asked him to give seminars to the business community. He initially refused but then realised he could do so while remaining true to his life as a poet. So, in an unusual synergy of his talents, he quotes from more than 200 poems - both his own and those of William Blake, Derek Mahon, Patrick Kavanagh, Stephen Spender and others - in his corporate workshops to explore creativity, power and the soul at work.
Now, dividing his time between writing poetry, writing books (his previous book, The Heart Aroused: poetry and the preservation of the soul in corporate America sold more than 100,000 copies) and giving workshops and seminars, he lives with his wife, a Canadian psychiatrist, his 18-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter on Whidbey Island, one mile off the coast of Seattle in Washington State.
His next book, will look at the three relationships we have to sustain in life "It's called the Three Marriages referring to the long-term emotional relationship with another person, the 'marriage to work' and the marriage to yourself with all its changing desires and ambitions as you go through life," says Whyte, whose aim is to explore the balanced dynamic energy between each three interconnected spheres which will allow us to live out our life plans.
Life at the Frontier - leadership through courageous conversation, a one-day seminar led by poet, David Whyte is on Tuesday, June 1st in the IMI Conference Centre, Sandyford, Dublin. Booking details from Cathedral Books on Tel:01 8745284 - For email enquiries contact: aedeen@cathedralbooks.com