Short talk (YouTube) by Dave Kashen arguing that sexual feelings are one of five core feelings leaders must recognize and manage. Kashen says sexual feelings are often legislated out of workplaces because people lack guidance; he frames sexual feelings as having two components—attraction (polarity/life force) and creativity (source of creative energy)—and asserts mature handling preserves creativity, innovation, and effective leadership.
Chapters
You okay? Let's discuss the undiscussable sexual feelings in the workplace. At the Conscious Leadership Group, we teach that there are five core feelings. And learning to know when you feel these feelings, to be with these feelings, to experience and express these feelings in healthy ways, is key to being a great leader, to being a collaborative team member, to having breakthroughs, innovations, and quite frankly, to living life fully. Those five key feelings are anger, fear, sadness, joy. So far those are okay. But the fifth is sexual feelings. Sexual feelings are the one that we have the hardest time with in the workplace. And the reason is that many, most of us were never, ever taught, we were never mentored in how to have sexual feelings and how to have them in a healthy, responsible way. In fact, when the whole subject of sexual feelings comes up, most of us regress to about seventh or eighth grade. We start giggling, we get giddy, we become very adolescent, and we do that in our own self. And then we act out those sexual feelings in adolescent ways with other people. We hit on each other, we seduce each other, we all of a sudden break our agreements with other people in our lives and it's all gone upside down because we simply don't know how to be with sexual feelings. So as a result, we legislate them out of the workplace. Makes perfect sense. Since we don't know as a collective how to be with them in a mature way, we better create laws to get rid of them. The issue is this. Sexual feelings have two components. One, sexual feelings are the feelings of attraction. Now they involve attraction to our polarity in relationship. The masculine to the feminine, the feminine to the masculine. But they also involve attraction to life, attraction to the creation, attraction to just the full verve of the life force. If you kink your sexual feelings, your attraction goes down, your zest for life gets limited. The second part of sexual feelings, in addition to attraction is creativity. Sexual feelings are the source of creative energy. Procreation is the act of creating. Well, if we don't find a way to be with our sexual feelings in a healthy and respectful way, then what's going to go out of the workplace is creativity. We hear leaders all the time saying to their people, be more creative, be more innovative, be more creative. But whatever you do, don't feel sexual feelings, friends. It doesn't work. So what does it look like in a healthy, mature, non adolescent workplace? What it means is every individual learns that they can feel sexual feelings. They can feel attraction, they can feel creative flow coming through their body. And they can be with that in a way that's incredibly respectful to themselves and to other people. In most cases, it doesn't mean that they even express this to anybody, but they feel alive all throughout their body, and they use that full aliveness to empower their contribution to their purpose in the workforce. If we don't come to grips with sexual feelings and how to have them experience and express them in mature adult ways, in ways that bring the team to greater places, not destroy the teams, if we don't learn to do that, we're never going to reach our full potential of creativity and impactful living and leading. What are you doing with your sexual feelings?
