ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore mana and leadership. Mana, drawn from the wellspring of our ancestors, sacred places, and communities, provides spiritual agency to take up respectful, right, and loving action in the world. Contemporary explanations of mana reverberate with ancient meaning. We can learn much about the role mana plays in leadership, as part of a greater wisdom that views the world, not as a collection of disparate coincidences, but as connected by interlacing principles such as respect, reciprocity, care, family, and guardianship. Mana today is important in a world of escalating environmental degradation and growing economic disparities. The task of leaders and managers is to recognize the various elements of a situation, to pay attention to the unfolding dynamics, cultivate reciprocal relationships of respect, and ultimately to perceive flourishing as a complex of spiritual energies, a revealed state and a process of being.
