Can business be a path to wholeness?
ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
My guest today is Patrick Andrews, lawyer and co-founder with Erica Neve of Yoak. He is author of The Incomplete Circle - Rethinking Business from the Inside Out, published in 2025.
In our conversation Patrick offers valuable insights into:
Participation - real change only happens when we move from observers to participants.
Wholeness - what it means to lead, organise and make decisions from a sense of interconnectedness rather than separation.
Flow - How individuals and organisations flourish when effort, skill and purpose align.
In our conversation we explore some of the following questions:
Participation: What does it mean to move from being an observer into becoming a participant? What happens when we choose to become a participant? What are some of the steps towards moving from being an observer to a participant in business and organisations?
Wholeness: In Patrick’s wonderful book, The Incomplete Circle he writes about the dance of wholeness, and how leadership is a practice not a position; and that leading involves deep listening, trusting and creating structures that are encouraging of interconnectedness rather than separation. What are some of the challenges to doing this, and how can we as leaders, and people in business develop this practice? What is the impact on decision making when we do this? What do we need to pay attention to that will help us?
Flow: We often talk about ‘going with the flow’ in our lives, and what it feels like to be in the flow when everything feels aligned. What can we learn from our bodies, and from nature about flow? What happens to individuals and organisations when effort, skill and purpose align? How can we get into the flow, and what is the impact on people, on business?
Patrick’s three Key Encouragements to Leaders:
Listening to yourself including and especially to your body.
Listening to others - particularly critics and to the quieter, often unheard, voices.
Listening to the universe. Nature is our first and best teacher.
To connect, follow and find out more about Patrick:
LinkedIn: Patrick Andrews
Website: yoak.uk
Book: The Incomplete Circle. Available on Amazon or here.
Thank you
To listen to other Leaders in Conversation with me Anni Townend go to my website, www.annitownend.com; to listen to Finding Your Collaborative Edge™ with Lucy Kidd and I, do go to our website www.collaborationequation.com.
A big thank you to SHMOGUS Media for the production and marketing of the podcast with Louisa Penny, from Penny Writing.
To contact me Anni Townend do email me on anni@annitownend.com visit my website, subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn.
I look forward to connecting with you, thank you for listening.