Faculty: Professor Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, rhenderson@hbs.edu

Faculty Assistant: Fed Chavez, fchavez@hbs.edu,

Teaching Fellow: Mauro Morabito, mauromorabito@hks.harvard.edu

Introduction

To apply for this course, please complete this application.

What does it mean to be alive and to be human right now? To what should we devote our lives?

This course is designed to support you in holding all that is happening with grace and joy, in
learning to access the deep resources of wisdom, power and compassion that lie at your core and
in building the internal and external support that will help you become the leader you were born
to be long after the course is over.

It has three components.

Diagnosis: We stand at a threshold. Our worlds – physical, social and political – are starting to
unravel. Old ways of behaving seem increasingly beside the point. But this is also a moment of
immense possibility. As old patterns and beliefs break up, they make room for the new.
Something is dying – and something is seeking to be born. What is it? What can we dare to
imagine? What could come through us?

Unpacking “Inner Work”. As Einstein is famously rumored to have said, one cannot solve
deeply rooted problems with the tools that created them. This is a moral, spiritual crisis as much
as it is a technological and political crisis, so in this course we will explore the hypothesis that in
order to become the leaders the world needs now we must complement our focus on analyzing,
acting and achieving with a focus on being, feeling and relating – that it is only through learning
to slow down, center, and access our deepest values that we can access the wisdom and courage
that we need. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology and the thousands of years of practical
wisdom held in the great faith traditions we will explore what it means to “go inside” and to
learn to relate to yourself and to others with skill, courage and compassion.

Integrating Love and Power Inner transformation is a powerful tool for change, but unless and
until we reimagine the deep structure of our society to center the integration of love and power –
from the nature of our accounting systems and the way we govern our firms to how we think
about our political systems and how we educate our children – we are unlikely to see the kinds of
fundamental change we need. What does this kind of change look like in practice? What does it
look like now? We will explore this question both theoretically and practically – inviting a wide
variety of heart centered leaders into the classroom to explore what it means to integrate love and
power on a daily basis.

Course Requirements

1. Attendance at every class is mandatory except in the case of pre-approved absences or
genuine emergencies. Please see the appendix for the formal implications of this
policy and for policies regarding such issues as grading, plagiarism, AI and the use
of technology in class.

2. Six short papers (500 words max) responding to the week’s readings, one due
approximately every other week at 5 pm the Sunday before class. Prompts for these
papers will be posted to Canvas a week in advance.

3. Membership in a small learning circle that will meet for an hour every week. Your goal
will be to support each other’s learning and to explore together how you might implement
what you are learning in your own life.

A Note on Experiential Practice

We will invest a significant amount of time in shared experiential practices. We will, for
example, practice deep listening, holding grief and other difficult emotions, perspective-seeking
and perspective-taking and exploring our reactivity when we are confronted with difficult ideas
and different opinions. Participation in all the exercises will be entirely voluntary, but there will
be challenging moments. I will do my best to support the creation of a “good enough” container
– but I will be relying on your to actively participate in holding whatever emerges in ways that
can support a transformational process for all of us. If at any time you feel unsafe or
uncomfortable please reach out to me or another remember of the teaching team so that we can
find a way to support you going forward.

An Invitation to Personal Practice

For thousands of years humans have relied on some kind of personal practice to regulate their
emotions and connect themselves to their deepest sense of purpose and meaning. In this class I
will invite those of you who already have such a practice to go deeper, and if you don’t already
have such a practice, I will invite you to spend at least ten minutes each day experimenting with
a variety of practices in the service of finding something that will help you learn to relax and
center. Participation on this front is not required and will not be graded, but it is highly
recommended.

Required Books

Please note: you won’t be asked to read these books cover to cover – just to read some selected
chapters.
a) Reimagining Capitalism, Rebecca Henderson
b) Power & Love: A theory and practice of social change, Adam Kahane

Books to consider reading over the Break

a) The Nutmeg’s Curse: Amitav Gosh
b) Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson
c) The Great Transition: Nick Fuller Googins

If you care deeply about climate, these are great books to read whether or not you end up taking
this class. The Nutmeg’s Curse is a hugely well written historical account of the origins the
Western world view - full of great stories and quietly terrifying. Highly recommended.

Both The Ministry of the Future and The Great Transition are sci-fi novels that attempt to paint
reasonably plausible pictures of how we might respond effectively to climate change. They are
very different. Ministry focuses on global geo-politics and finance as a route to survival – The
Great Transition focuses on social revolution at the grass roots. Ministry is harder going but
more specific – many people love it - while Great Transition is a rollicking read.