#027 Work with Love with Chris Baer

Life at work can feel dull, transactional, and exhausting. Fortunately, it does not have to be that way. In fact, our work can be turned into a vehicle for transforming how we relate and connect with others, while making other areas of our lives feel bright, inspired and nourishing. 

For this minisode I’m bringing back innovation and leadership development expert, Chris Baer, to discuss “working with love,” a key foundation of his leadership development work through his Mandala Institute. Chris’ work focuses on helping leaders develop more relational skills so their organizations can have better culture, more wellbeing, higher performance and growth. 

In this conversation we unpack how “love” is not soft or about little pink hearts, but a powerful and demanding force that helps us grow and engage more deeply with our teams and other people in our lives. Developing the inner skill of working with love will transform your life at work and elsewhere.  

If you are looking for inspiration to reimagine approaching a process of transformation to make work and other areas of your life feel bright, inspired and connected, this conversation is for you. 

If you want to hear more about Chris’ backstory and thoughts about developing “inner skills for outer results,” check out our conversation in episode 14. You can find Mandala Institute online at mandala.institute. 

 

ABOUT OUR GUEST 

Chris Baer is the founder of the Mandala Institute, an organization that helps leaders create humanistic and innovation culture in teams and companies. He is an expert on innovation strategy, engaging and growing talent through coaching, as well as design methodologies.

Chris is also a co-founder of Sunstone Therapies, an early-stage medical company dedicated to alleviating emotional distress in patients through trial psychedelic therapies. Chris also played a key role in the creation of the Bill Richard’s Center for Healing, a state of the art facility designed expressly for psychedelic therapy in the medical setting.

Prior to Mandala and Sunstone, Chris served as Vice President of Global Leadership Development and Learning Experience at Marriott International overseeing talent and executive development. In other Marriott roles, Chris led customer experience initiatives encompassing brand and digital consumer product development. Contributions included brand creation (Moxy), brand revitalization (Marriott Hotels), and customer experience strategy and execution (the Ritz-Carlton), as well as the development of Marriott’s enterprise innovation framework.

Prior to Marriott, Chris led an international marketing firm, and consulted to Fortune 100’s on digital strategy, product management and user experience.

Formally trained as an industrial designer at RISD, Chris employs design methodologies to business challenges and has brought design thinking to executives and their product teams globally.

Chris holds a leadership coaching certification from Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership (cohort 45), and coaches top executives seeking to bring forth transformation within themselves, their enterprises and beyond.

An internationally acclaimed artist, Chris is also a contemporary abstract painter and creates works in glass and m