On the 141st episode of What is a Good Life?, I’m delighted to welcome Professor Megan Reitz. Megan is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University, and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She is a leading thinker on leadership and dialogue, featured in the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers, and the author of Dialogue in Organizations, Mind Time, and, most recently, Speak Out, Listen Up. Her work explores how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work, and her latest research examines how we can foster spaciousness — the capacity to innovate, reflect, and build relationships in workplaces addicted to busyness.
In this conversation, we explore the impact of space, silence, attention, and an outward focus on our relationships and our experience of life.
This episode serves as an invitation to pause, question the busyness we’ve become entangled in, and reconsider the status quo of how we relate.
For more of Megan's work:
Website: https://www.meganreitz.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganreitz/
Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, my 5-week group courses, or to discuss team coaching to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams.
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00:00 How do I encounter the world?
04:00 Flow amongst people
07:00 How our gestures affect others
11:45 The labels, assumptions, and roles that create distance
17:13 The energy drain of societal expectations
23:00 Allowing, inquiry, and meta awareness
26:20 Creating the space we require
33:45 How do we see the world?
37:00 Navigating pauses and big questions
44:00 How strange it has become to pause
47:30 Our focus moving from ourselves
53:30 Experiencing periods without an agenda
57:00 Summary and what is a good life for Megan?