The Interview: Meg Wheatley

Her work with the US Army forced the world to take her seriously. Now she is fighting to protect the human spirit.

Margaret Wheatley is a writer, a lifelong activist focused on changing leadership in large systems, and a spiritual teacher. Her book Who Do We Choose To Be?, first published in 2017, made a huge impact on me—here’s the intro, which I recommend reading for context. — Steph

“I never had a choice but to speak truthfully.”— Meg Wheatley

Tell us about yourself.

I recently turned 80, so I've given a lot of thought to my life. I was born just outside of New York City. My father was an English immigrant; my mother came from a very well-founded German-Jewish family that had been in the US since the 1830s, so my family did not suffer during the Holocaust. But my grandmother, Irma Lindheim, was the formative influence in my life. She was working for the State of Israel in the 1920s—she would be crushed at this point for what’s happened—but she was a fundraiser, activist, the first woman lieutenant in the Army Motor Corps during World War I, and a writer. She lived in Israel from the 30s on but always traveled back and forth. She was my role model, always telling me the value of a life of service. There was never doubt in my mind that I would be of service. And she also told me at the age of 6 or 7, "Maggie, you need to be a writer." So that was set in motion then as well.

I grew up in a working-class family in the 40s, as did a lot of women my age who have been college presidents and who have really made it. Family trips were camping trips, and we didn’t notice class. It didn’t mean anything back then. But we had the right mentors and the right women, and maybe men, to say, "No, you’ve got a future here." We were always going against the tide. I was the only woman "guru" out there, aside from retired CEOs who were women.

My work was often accused of being too soft and fuzzy. When I published Leadership and the New Science in 1992, which put me on the map, I remember an interviewer from the Washington Review focused on the word "love," which I used only once in the whole book. The writer didn’t pick up on quantum physics or any of the science. The title of his article was "All You Need is Love," quoting both a management guru from the mountains of Utah and John Lennon. But people's impressions of me were altered when I became an advisor to the head of the US Army for several years. Nobody could argue with the fact that I was serious. That was truly pivotal.

In Who Do We Choose to Be, you even dive into some frameworks that you learned from the Army, and that piqued my interest, too.

Yes, it was just a seminal, pivotal turning point. I’m going to use all those words to express how significant it was.

Can you talk about the term “dwelling?”

Dwelling is about how you live your life. We all live at a very superficial, somewhat rational level—making decisions instantaneously, thinking adaptation means changing things the minute something goes wrong. We are not a learning population any longer. It’s gotten beyond terrible.

I was just listening to an interview with Yuval Noah Harari. His new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, is about information. He said, and I wrote this in 2012, that we are destroying ourselves when we aren't able to take in information, process it, compare it, and see where it leads us. When we stop using information to organize our lives, we have what we have now—a world of conflict and strange positions, not even competing ideas. Dwelling mind is about settling, reflecting, and contemplating fully to engage all the magnificent capacities of the human mind. We have to learn how to be more thoughtful, caring, and compassionate. That's how we act more intelligently.

One thing that makes my head spin is the commodification of rituals and spirituality. It’s a sense of self for show—virtue signaling.

I think we all have to individually assess where we're spending our time, and then we're the ones who have to take back control. We have to re-seize control of finding spaces where we can just be, or finding rituals that take us deeply into the wholeness of who we are, and also build community. But if we don’t actively seek them out, what you’ve identified is truly what is driving us crazy and close to the destruction of what it means to be human.

What are your own rituals and practices?

Well, I have a decades-old practice of meditation, and I don’t think anyone can get through this time or develop the qualities of a dwelling mind without really learning how to settle. Not just to become peaceful, but to watch thoughts rather than react to them. I have spent years meditating and I now teach it as part of my Warriors for the Human Spirit training. There’s no other way to truly shift from reactivity to thoughtful responsiveness. You have to learn how to settle—not to have no thoughts, that’s almost impossible—but to watch the thoughts instead of being captured by them. Over time, you develop awareness of how you think. Then, when you're out in the world, you're watching yourself. You notice when you're getting triggered, angry, or withdrawn. And then you learn the discipline to step away and ground yourself. I don't know of any other way.

What is your writing process like? Where do your ideas come from, and how do you develop them?

This is where I’m very unique, but there’s a deeper lesson for all of us. Whenever someone says to me, “I want to write a book,” the first question I ask is, "has the book asked you to write it?" Most of our motivation for writing is to be visible, to have something to say, but also this ambition to get famous or noticed. All those rather damaging ego needs. For me, it has always been that the book tells me it’s here—it’s ready. I’m not getting a download of a book, but I’m getting a platform for all my ideas and sensitivities to move onto the page. Each of my books—there are 12 now—is quite different. Even the second edition of Who Do We Choose to Be (2022) is a new book.

I stay in touch with the world. Then, it’s a practice of coming up with the idea of the book, and I’ll find that resources just appear. It’s always working in my dwelling mind. By the time I sit down, I have a very clear sense of the voice, which is different for each book, and I have a clear outline for the chapters.

I write at an incredible speed. The most heavily documented book, Who Do We Choose to Be (2017), was written in five weeks. Other books I’ve written in three weeks. But the important thing is I’m not the sole author—I’m working in close companionship with my guides and protectors, which has been part of my Buddhist practice for decades.

I’ve never talked to anyone else who does it exactly that way, but I have spoken with many creative people who are quite clear, and especially novelists, that when you sit down to write, there’s something else going on because you’re in the flow. Mainly, we use the word "flow," or novelists will tell you their characters come to life and take over.

Did you ever feel a sense of conflict between your spiritual identity and your professional work as a consultant?

In the very beginning, but only then. If you talked to me when I had just published Leadership and the New Science, I knew it was great stuff, but I was hypersensitive to feedback—negative feedback. I didn’t believe the positive. We all go through this. I've always been inherently brave—I could see it when I was 5 years old even—but the feedback and criticism were extremely painful. It was only because I had good friends around me who made sense of it, and I kept putting myself out there.

You have written about identity as the central organizing element of humanity. How has your perspective on identity shifted over the years?

Well, it has shifted dramatically because the key realization in all Asian spiritual teachings is that we make up our identity, and therefore, we can change it. I’m glad you raised this—it’s going to get interesting here. I have been trained and practiced to never say, “well, that’s just how I am.” I don’t accept that from any of my students, either. When someone says, “that’s just the way I am,” I say, “no, that’s who you have created and how you have been created by your culture, your influences, your history, and your interpretations of your experiences.”

Ram Dass, one of the great teachers of our time, said each of us chooses the role that is most useful in any situation: should I be angry? Should I be aggressive? Should I be a good listener? Should I let this one go? Should I be a fierce warrior? You assess what’s needed and then act it with impeccability. But the whole time, you are fully conscious, fully aware of what would best serve the situation. This takes years of practice and awareness, which you get through meditation.

This is the opposite of what Western culture teaches. Western culture, especially now, says “we are who we are.” There’s this notion that we are born the way we are and that our goal is to have other people recognize that identity—which can be healthy, except it’s usually framed in opposition to everyone who’s ignoring or denying us. So, we set up an identity cult—identity politics—that at its very core is conflictual and oppositional. And that’s where we are now.

Over the years, I’ve watched this develop into a culture of trauma—each of us trying to understand what we’ve suffered and each of us being seen as a victim. A victim of life, of circumstances, of others. That’s the contemporary horror of the Western mind, creating a sense of victimhood that needs to be visible to others and that we, personally, will hopefully triumph over. But many don’t. They get lost in the victimhood, lost in trying to find a way out, including through the rise of suicide.

What are you curious about on the horizon?

I’m not curious about what’s next. I only foresee greater war, greater environmental destruction, and more people suffering greatly. It’s happening right now. It doesn’t even take an exponential leap to realize we’re going through a period of massive destruction. That’s why I created Warriors for the Human Spirit—leaders and activists who have stable minds, clear perception, and want to stay to help and build healthy communities. For me now, community is the answer.

How does that community get built? What is the path?

That’s what Restoring Sanity is all about—the practices that bring and keep us together. It’s hard work, very challenging, because we’re so overwhelmed by our own lives. But as conditions in the external world continue to get more destructive and volatile, more people are willing to commit to being together.

What is something you want?

Nothing. There’s nothing I want. The only thing I want is to never ask the question "what do I want?" That’s not where I am now. I see myself as an offering.

Did you ever consider retiring?

No, in fact, one of my commitments, turning 80, was to make the decision that I’m going to die in the saddle. There’s no life of interest for me outside of my work. I have a large family and beautiful grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I know exactly why I’m here at this point. It’s to offer my work, my voice, through teaching and writing about preserving and protecting the human spirit.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. (SB)