Restoring Sanity: Practices to Awaken Generosity, Creativity, and Kindness in Ourselves and Our Organizations

We are living in chaotic and contentious times. Every day, at an ever-increasing frequency, we experience disruption, propaganda, slander, lies, blame, denial, and violence. Tensions between people reach dangerously hateful proportions. It is all too easy to sink into despair, depression, and cynicism.

Margaret Wheatley insists that it is the job of leaders not to give in to despair, to create islands of sanity in these seas of delusion. Sane leadership is the unshakable confidence that people can be generous, creative, and kind. The leader's work is to create the conditions for those capacities to manifest in meaningful work.

Pushing back against the prevailing culture of chaos requires both inner and outer work. This book focuses first on leaders themselves, offering practices for calming the mind, avoiding impulsive reactions, taming emotions, communicating honestly and fearlessly, and more. Then shows leaders how they can create islands of sanity through practices like developing their organization's capacity for self-organizing, conducting after-action reviews that replace blaming with learning, and leveraging diversity to provide more perspectives on the critical problem every organization faces today.

Wheatley calls on leaders to become Warriors for the Human Spirit. To create communities that protect people from the destructive dynamics so prevalent today and rediscover and reawaken our common humanity.