Beauty Unveiled: The Power of Beauty to Thrive in Business, People, and Life - Featuring Prof. Peter Hawkins

Pity Party Over

Our guest is Prof. Peter Hawkins, a well-known figure recognized for his work in systemic coaching and developing coaching cultures in organizations.

Professor Hawkins presents beauty as a transformative force, urging individuals and organizations to align with their core values for a sustainable and harmonious future.

Beauty is found in authentic, vulnerable moments and genuine connections between people, emerging through acts of kindness, compassion, and service.

Advocating for a move away from transactional leadership, Professor Hawkins calls for a model that recognizes each person's inherent beauty, fostering belonging and mutual respect.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You are such a prolific author, how did you end up writing so many books?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I started off by writing chapters for books where people said that, well, I write a chapter on this one, the other. And then since then, each of the books that, that I've written is because a real need for a new approach.

So my first book, which was around supervision, was because, you know, I'd become a supervisor and discovered there was no real guidance for supervisors and that every supervisor did something different. Thought, well, you know, we need something that kind of puts this together.

And then, you know, when I got on to writing about, uh, coaching and systemic team coaching and leadership, it's always because I got to the edge and can't find what I want to learn next. So end up writing it, and by writing I discover what I know, but also I discover what I don't yet know. Writing is a just a lovely practice, as always, discovering. And, and I suppose I've always been an integrationist, wanted to work across disciplines. And so by writing I'm, I'm able to kind of integrate stuff that has come from very different traditions.

Stephen Matini: And it's interesting because you are such a big, big, big name in coaching, but your books are infused with, um, so many different ingredients. So they're not just your typical coaching book. And then, um, I remember last time when we talked about your latest book, which I think is, is still has to come out, right? The beauty in leadership and coaching, the way you explain it to me, it seems to be the last discovery in your journey and somehow it puts together all the ingredients that you have found along the way.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, it kind of tries to set coaching, leadership, organizational development in, in a larger context, where in that larger context is both on the one hand about evolution and about epistemology, and it's another level about spirituality and ecology.

Basically, in that book, I am very much looking at the great challenges that we face as a civilization and saying at root, they are all interconnected and at root, they are all symptoms of the fact that we haven't been able to evolve human consciousness at the speed of which we have changed the earth. So beauty, I am using as energetic force as a guide to help us on the return journey from how we've shrunken our, our consciousness, our way of engaging with the world, from participatory consciousness to collective consciousness.

And then the white European world, we, we, in American world, we've, we treated further into from the embodied consciousness to brain consciousness. And then we've retreated even further into left hemisphere. And I'm seeing beauty as a force that awakens us to that which is beyond us, that which comes knocking our door and takes us by surprise. And so the notion of following beauty is awakening, if you like the taking us out of our left hemisphere into our whole brain and add our brain into our, our hearts and our guts and our embodied knowing and back into relationship.

Stephen Matini: One thing that I often see particularly business people doing, they tend to focus on business. You know, they're just business. And instead of most of my motivation, most of my creativity, I get it from stepping out the whole realm of, uh, business. And my background is in humanities. So for me, humanities, literature, theater, music, steel, is a huge, huge source of inspiration. And I believe that you and I share some people that are really dear to our hearts. You talked to me about William Blake, you talked about Dante, uh, Rumi. Why are these people so important to you?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: First of all, I'm fascinated by you saying about business or busyness. What is business? I'm just interested, what what do we mean by business or what do we mean by organizations? An organization exists because there is a purpose or something that needs doing that requires collaboration. And that collaboration requires organizing. Actually we could say that business is a mode of responding to what's needed and necessary, but it's become an end in itself.

So the purpose of the organization is to feed the organization so it can feed the organization so it can feed the shareholders so it can, so there's something wrong with business. We've all got business to do, but the business should never be an end in itself, which is why I also in my books around teams say we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. The goal is not to be a, a successful organization or a high performing team.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Those are a means to an end. And the end is to create beneficial value for all the people your work serves. So trying to get us away from means to purpose is important. And we don't create our purpose. We discover it. And I think that people, you mentioned Dante Mena Ian, Rumi ha real, William Blake Ridge, Shakespeare, , let's bring in some of the great, uh, w Wang Wei, the Great Tang Chinese per they go to Essence, they go to the heart of purpose, and they go beyond the restrictive separating individualism of the modernist western world. They reconnect us. Nna Jin Rumi says, why in the plenitude of God's universe have you chosen to fall asleep in such a small dark prison? And beauty is, if you like, what are the keys to unlock the prison?

Stephen Matini: Do you find it hard, easy possible when you work with um, clients, let them enter beauty.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I put it the way around that my job isn't to let them into beauty. My job is to discover the beauty and what they are in them and what they're doing to uncover the beauty. This is there rather than believe that I know where I need to take them.

Stephen Matini: It is true when the organization tap into the purpose, the soul, the beauty, that's when magic happens. But in my personal experience, it's not always possible, you know, to unveil it with clients. So when you experience that resistance to change, whichever you want to call it, what do you do?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: If a client says to me, uh, but what matters is the bottom line, I would say, so Steven, what is the bottom line? Tell me about the bottom line. If they say, well, it's the, the amount of profit we make at the bottom of the page, I'd say, and, and what is the purpose of that profit? So we can reinvest and what's the purpose of re well so we can make more? They've stopped. At a full bottom, my job is just to Dr. Open the windows to what is beneath that bottom

Stephen Matini: With this latest book, what do you hope that readers will take away?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I just received an amazing email this morning from a beautiful black woman in, in in America who just talked about how just reading the first chapter, 'cause I'd used it as a handout on the program, had let her whole body shaking and just brought up so much for her and inspired her to write a poem that she sent me. And honestly, it, it brought me to tears. I just thought if more people have that reaction, it just opened up so much for her in terms of what was buried within her that needed to surface.

And if I can help people just open a window to a, to, to a wider perspective, I can help them see beyond our own imprisonment and break out some of the constriction. 'cause if it helps them, then they can help others. If it helps the coaching profession move from being expensive, personal development for the already highly privileged. And it's not about self-improvement, but it's about what is the world knocking on our door asking us to step up to. It can move us from a, a individualistic self-orientation to a service orientation. And not just service of humanity, but service of the more than human world than, than I feel I will have achieved a small part of my business, of the work I'm being asked to do.

Stephen Matini: You will have to stay on this planet forever because , there's a terrible need.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: All, all our job to do is to do what is responsibility of our generation then to pass the torch on. But you know, the reality is that my generation is passing on a much more depleted and challenged world than we inherited. And that weighs quite large. And I wasn't say on my shoulders, it weighs large in front of me.

What is our responsibility in terms of at least doing what we can, what little we can to help the generations that come after us face the bigger challenges that come after us? You know, I spend a lot of time saying to leaders, you know, what are your major jobs as leaders? I I was in South Africa in a very big gathering of MBA alumni from across Southern Africa. And I started my talk 'cause I'd followed a very inspirational South African politician. I just stood up and I said, please stand up.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: All those of you in the audience who are responsible for developing the next generation of leaders across Southern Africa. Of the 400, probably about 50 stood up. They were the HR folk. And I said, I don't think you understood my question. Please stand up if you are responsible for, for supporting the next generation of leadership across Southern Africa. I had to ask it three times.

And eventually everyone stood up, look around the room. These are the people who are gonna help you and you are gonna help them develop the next generation. So please turn to the person next to you and ask them what do they most need to learn this evening to step up to that responsibility. The phrase I often come back to, and I'm also a lover of Michelangelo and the beauty he liberates. Yes. Although as Warren Bennis points out, we have to remember that the Sistine Chapel was not just done by Michelangelo.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: He had a team of 30 people. So he was a great team leader. He was a, a great orchestrator of, of others. It wasn't the work of one genius and he was part of an extraordinary time in community of artists in in Florence. And the line that I often come back to and use with individuals and teams and organizations and communities is what can you uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs? They don't try and be anyone else because all other places are taken.

What is it that can only be done by you? Because nobody occupies the place in the wider interconnected universe that you occupy. There'll never be a another. Stephen, that's one the just things that got me so excited writing this book in the whole billions of years of creation that we know about. That's only what we know about. There's never been a repetition. No, no organism has ever been created the same as a previous one. And when we have children, every child is a surprise. It's not 50% of the father and 50% of the mother is a, it's a unique never having been created being, it's never existed in the whole history of creation. Isn't that a miracle?

Stephen Matini: It's an impossible statistical weird thing that happened somehow.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: The the line that came to me when I was writing the book is that creation is in love with becoming. So I said that, it goes back to your question about why do I write books? I don't write books to tell people what I know. I write books to take myself to my learning edge and to discover between me and what I'm writing about, what is trying to struggle into consciousness at my best. I don't write them.

Stephen Matini: Have you ever felt in your entire life as you were trying to discover something could have been the brand of a book or whichever something you want to achieve. Have you ever felt, God, what if I don't get there? You know, kinda self-doubt. So maybe you didn't feel that the beauty within yourself or somehow at some point you felt, God, I'm lost. I don't know if you ever felt it that way, but if you did, how did you overcome it.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: At the end of writing this book? I thought, but I haven't got to what's needed. And then I remind myself that if I stayed with that, I'd never put the book out. I've had my book on leadership team coaching and my book on supervision going to fifth editions, fourth editions.

And, and I end up apologizing for what I've written in the earlier editions. You know, because at some point we have to say, well, it's not enough, but is it good enough? Because who said all, all the way to heaven is heaven. And at some level we just have to, to stop trying to be perfect and put out share where we've got to, uh, in the hope that will help other people on the path behind us, but also people alongside us to go further on the path. A lot of our doubts are just ego contortions.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, they just take us back into, am I good enough? Or all the internal chat. And I think somewhere to do what we need to do, we just have to say that doesn't really, all that doesn't really matter. Yeah, we, we have to have doubts because that's what leads us into furthering inquiry. And I think certainty is more dangerous than doubt, but doubt can be a interruption when it starts to catches an internal hesitancy and self-doubt. And rather than to say, well actually I need to get on and do what is showing up in front of me is necessary to do

Stephen Matini: For me. Probably the one thing that I guess I've learned only later on in my life is the fact that simply because the process is sometimes is not pleasant or doesn't feel pleasant, does not mean it's wrong. Whereas before, you know, when I was much younger, I was all, oh, I should not be feeling this way. You know, if I were really, really good at this, I should not be going down this route. And now I really believe it is a process. And in the process there's space for everything. There's space for moments in which I feel great for, for great, great doubts for sure.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You see, I think the thing that helps me in the moments of doubt weigh down, depressed, is at that moment you can either go into grumble or into gratitude. And if you can, and I can't, I didn't say I can, but if I, I can hold to the path of treating everything that happens, absolutely everything that happens, however awful as a generous lesson from life, I may not like it. I may feel burdened by it, I may feel inadequate to respond. But if it's a generous lesson from life, then it is a gift as well as a burden.

Stephen Matini: I do gratitude it, but I also do a lot or feeding myself.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think it's a deep trust, not my trust in life. Constantly becoming my trust in that is greater than the trust in my own emotional reactiveness. So I always believe life knows better than I do. I think this shouldn't have happened to me, but that's not I gonna achieve anything. Life's decided. That's the next thing I have to deal with. And it's a generous lesson. So the choice I have is do I see it as a generous lesson and learn from it or I do. I see it as some awful thing I'm a victim of. But, but I do have a choice saver.

Stephen Matini: Last time when we talked, I asked you what is the opposite of beauty for you? You remember what you said?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think I probably said, well, at one level it's ugliness.

Stephen Matini: Yes. You said, um, it's solipsistic narcissism, you know, dualism you talked about, but ugliness, I think it wraps it up better.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Um, well, well solipsistic narcissism is, is ugly because it fragments us and divides us from that which we are a part of. You know, the the image that came to me just then was, um, Philip Pullman's novels where everybody has an animal Damon that is part of them. And, and they do these experiments to, to s children from their animal being self. It's alongside them, which is what we've all done in the modernist western world. Solipsism is ugly because it is, it's a severing of that which lives in connection and great poetry that we talked about is if you like, sewing us back into connection, it's opening the windows to, to a world beyond.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes it does feel that this ugliness is getting more and more and more. And sometimes I do wonder is this because of the fact that we are so hyper connected? Is so we are constantly exposed to a lot of negative type of information. How do you feel about it? I mean, you know, o over the years being someone who has experienced it so much, do you see this ugliness more prevalent today, more dangerous today than it used to be? Or just simply has always been there?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I feel in myself that it is growing the openness that we're talking about, but we need to balance it with, we live in a world where actually a, a smaller percentage of people are dying from wars and murder than ever probably in human history. Number may be greater, but percentages more. And there are ways in which we have become more, more moral.

But at the same time, I think over the last 500 years, the modernist revolution of science, secularism, individualism, colonization, capitalists, the trying to control the world around us and the human search for control has created enormous ugliness at the moral level and a world which we have greater mental distress and mentally honest than than ever. And yet we are richer, more affluent, more educated, more educated in knowing about the world and far, far less educated in being in and connected within the world.

Stephen Matini: If a young person, let's say someone, a young professionals, you know, 19, 20, 21. So let's say if someone around that age that is kind of trying to figure it out where to go, um, asked you what practical steps can I take, you know, to somehow handle this ugliness, you know, because it is so depressing. What would you say that are steps, you know, some first steps that, that the person can take?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I have people around that age come as wolfers worldwide opportunities on our organic farms and they come and stay with us. And, um, I would say go out and wander through the garden. They wander through the woodlands and just be open to whatever speaks to you. Just listen to the more than human world. Let it be your teacher.

Don't try and just master everything. I'd ask 'em about who inspires them and what inspires them. I might ask them. And what do you really love in your life to try and reconnect them to source and away from knowing about? I jokingly say I have wolfers come and stay with us because they fill in the gap between my children and my grandchildren. My children are all in their forties and my grandchildren are between nine and 15. So I just love talking to young people in their twenties. Mind you, I love talking to two year olds, but, uh, or listening to two year olds,

Stephen Matini: I am so grateful that I was born in a moment that did not have all these connectivity, didn't have the internet, you know, so it was very much analog. Not because I don't like it, I use it plenty, but I'm glad that I have the perspective. And so I use it a lot. But then there are always moments, usually it towards, at the end of the day, like it, let's say I'm done with computer phone, I mean bye, you know, and for me it's quite easy because I've always done it, but younger people don't have that. I mean, they, they can do exactly what you said, but they grew up in a world in which everything is filtered through technology and that lack of perspective, it must be a little bit difficult sometimes to overcome.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: You know, like right now, can we find a, a heart connection even with the, the screen between us? We have to be able to, to hold the imaginal in the digitalized world.

Stephen Matini: I agree. It's mostly for me at least, making the effort to drop anything and to really be present with that person and listen, you know, to really to to sense it, to find it, you know? Instead, if I get sidetracked by whatever it might be, you know, I need to get there. I need to reach the goal, I need to do that one. Even now talking to you, I can always make the choice. I'm either, I wanna be feeling grateful of being here with you to enjoy this or be somewhere else, you know? But if I do that, I know that I feel exactly the way you're describing it.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I was looking at, um, the work that Steve March is doing with Athia coaching because I really like the way he talks about the difference between self-improvement and self unfoldment. You know, with young people, we can ask them, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Which is such an unhelpful question.

Stephen Matini: I still don't know.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: But it is playing to like the words you used earlier. Ambition is unfoldment, is, you know, what, what in you is struggling to come into flowering? Where do you see life asking you to become more than you currently are? These are so much ritual ways of engaging, then goal centered.

What do you want to achieve? You know, if I ask my grandchildren when they're nine or 10, if they're boys, they'll say, I wanna, I wanna play in the premiership as a footballer. If they're girls, they'll say, I want to be a pop singer. We can guarantee that uh, 990,000 of a million or whatever will, will be disappointed. , how can we get back to the love of playing? And if you do end up playing professionally or you know, that's fine, but actually the love is for the craft.

Stephen Matini: So it's about discovering and as you are discovering, enjoying the process.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: It's more than that, isn't it? It's about loving the work. It's about loving not just the person you are coaching, but loving all the, all the people that their work serves, their community and the world beyond them. And loving what shows up through all of that, which is beyond the people. It's, that's why I go to beauty. It's about loving what shines through the team, the organization, the which is what, what, what, what's beyond the top level?

Stephen Matini: It just, the beauty is a word that I don't think I've ever heard in the world of, uh, how you say busyness, usually. But it's a beautiful world. I mean, I cannot think of a better word to express what you're saying.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: In one part of the book, I quote Samuel Taylor Ridge's, perm of the Ancient Mariner. And this perhaps ties up a number of things we've talked about because the ugliness of narcissistic solipsism, you know, the ancient mariner, you know, he shoots the albatross. He destroys this beautiful bird that hangs around his neck and one by one all, all the other sailors die of, of plague.

And they, they look at him that his shooting of the bird has caused it. And he is left totally alone and cursed and weighed down in this solipsistic narcissistic world. And then he sees the sea snakes under the boat. He talks about all, all alone from the wide seas. And then he sees the sea snakes and there's this lovely line where he says about their colors and their, the light on them. And, and I blessed them unawares. He didn't choose to see their beauty.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Their beauty suddenly breaks through his aloneness and his, and in that moment, the arbitrages falls from his neck. At that moment, he is kind of released from this small dark prison that he's fallen asleep in. And it's that, can we see beyond our self concern, can we see beyond the bottom line, can we see beyond the goal, the ambition? To what, what does it serve? And, and you may know in another of my books, i I I get very taken by the ful storyful or sur ful who goes to search for the holy grail.

And when he first sees it, this magnificent grail procession, um, he wakes up in the morning in a empty field. 'cause he hasn't asked the question. Years, years later, after much journey, he comes back and he asked the question he has to ask in order to be able to stay there, which is who and what does the grail serve? You see, he's learned to see that the beauty is not in the object. One other story about my oldest son, when he was about seven or eight said, daddy, why, why aren't we born knowing everything? Because then we wouldn't have to go to school. . And I said, but Adam, if you knew everything, why would you bother to get bomb?

Stephen Matini: What did he say?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I think he just looked at me slightly old , he didn't quite know how to respond. So, you know, he went back to school, which is what we all have to do, isn't it? Is it, is it beautiful that we get it wrong? You know, on my courses, I get people to even compete on who has the most quality failures, right? That we can all learn from what a gift that we fail over and over again because our failure takes us to our learning edge. Mea shall Rumi says, leadership is a poison. Unless we have the antidote in our hearts, success is a poison unless we have the antidote. Aren't aren't you blessed to have failed many times?

Stephen Matini: I didn't get it completely wrong. I would say that you are a very precious reminder. So I'm going to listen to this a lot of times . So maybe the, the right word is not success, but, um, it is a good success. What would it be? The definition for you?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Well, a, a good success is one that I I recognize doesn't belong to me. One, one of my blogs, I talk about why we shouldn't talk about high performing teams. And I tell an imaginary story of Zoom in 2021, the top team all celebrating. 'cause they've had their biggest growth in in customers, their biggest growth in revenue and their biggest growth in bottom line in inverted commas. What they think is the bottom line and that they're all drinking champagne and saying hump, we've done well. And, and one of the team members says, but we should do a special call out for the, the team member that's contributed the most. I said, well, who are you talking about? And she says, not only did they contribute the most, but they only joined us last year. I said, well, who are you talking about? She said, isn't it obvious Coronavirus, she is the one who's made the biggest contribution to our success. And I just tell that story on success has always co-created. So good success is to know that my Sufi teacher used to say, make sure that when you die, your candle wax has all been burnt up. And that's how you give light to the world. That's good success when you die, having given yourself away.

Stephen Matini: That's a beautiful thing, what you just said.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: I've been blessed with extraordinary teachers. Do any of us say anything that's original or do we find ways of framing eternal truth just in new forms?

Stephen Matini: There's one question that, uh, came up to mind a bunch of times, but I haven't asked you of all the possible tools, routes that you could have taken, why coaching?

Prof. Peter Hawkins: That's what came knocking on my door. But another way of answering that would be to say, well, you know, I started in a love for literature, which turned into a love of drama, which turned to a love for theater, which turned into a love for what was happening in the whole creative unfoldment of a more in the process and the production. And that took me to mental health and becoming a psychotherapist. And then I started to realize that many mental health organizations were more, uh, disturbed than the people they were treating.

And that took me into a love for how do you heal organizations? And that's taken me into how do we together heal humanity and how do we heal the split between the human and the more than human world? So there's an unfoldment there. And, and, and I suppose my real interest is, is I don't think that either coaching, as we know it, executive coaching or consultancy are fit for the 21st century.

And, and I'm just having been privileged to be involved in leadership development, consultancy, coaching, leading. I'm constantly looking for the what is needed beyond those. You see coaching because I was more interested in not people just sort of themselves out, but helping people make a bigger difference to the world beyond them. That took me from psychotherapy to coaching, to team coaching, to systemic team coaching, to providing partnership to organizations as they try and transform the difference they can make in the world. But it's all one.

Stephen Matini: Well, I have one last question, which is, we have talked about wonderful things. For anyone who's going to listen to this episode, is there anything in particular that you would suggest them to focus on.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Focus on? Well, if there's, as a lot of your audience, uh, in one of my favorite countries, Italy, I am coming to Milan in May, so please do put the de dates, um, on the information about the podcast, I'm running a three day experiential training in systemic team coaching through renewal associates. And I hope some people may be, um, encouraged to at least go and dip into my new book when it's out in the autumn. Beauty and leadership and coaching. I suppose the other encouragement is beyond both of those would be to say, you know, remember we have one shared holy book, which is all around us, which is the more than human world and beyond. You know, what I teach or any of my teachers teach, the more than human world is, is trying to teach us all the time, but we're not very good at listening or paying attention. Please take some time and go and walk to the hills around lakes, through the woods, but walk in a way of humility to and, and let them teach you and see how beauty will surprise you.

Stephen Matini: Maestro Hawkins, thank you so much for this wonderful time, which I will always cherish. Thank you so much.

Prof. Peter Hawkins: Thank you Stephen. And it is the questionnaire that opens the door to what needs to flow.