On the 141st episode of What is a Good Life?, I’m delighted to welcome Professor Megan Reitz. Megan is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University, and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She is a leading thinker on leadership and dialogue, featured in the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers, and the author of Dialogue in Organizations, Mind Time, and, most recently, Speak Out, Listen Up. Her work explores how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work, and her latest research examines how we can foster spaciousness — the capacity to innovate, reflect, and build relationships in workplaces addicted to busyness.

In this conversation, we explore the impact of space, silence, attention, and an outward focus on our relationships and our experience of life.

This episode serves as an invitation to pause, question the busyness we’ve become entangled in, and reconsider the status quo of how we relate.

For more of Megan's work:
Website: https://www.meganreitz.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganreitz/

Contact me at [email protected] if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, my 5-week group courses, or to discuss team coaching to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams.

- For the What is a Good Life? podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos
- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/
- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/

00:00 How do I encounter the world?

04:00 Flow amongst people

07:00 How our gestures affect others

11:45 The labels, assumptions, and roles that create distance

17:13 The energy drain of societal expectations

23:00 Allowing, inquiry, and meta awareness

26:20 Creating the space we require

33:45 How do we see the world?

37:00 Navigating pauses and big questions

44:00 How strange it has become to pause

47:30 Our focus moving from ourselves

53:30 Experiencing periods without an agenda

57:00 Summary and what is a good life for Megan?