Bio
Rolf Winters - leadership guide, public speaker, change maker
Born and raised in The Netherlands, I studied business economics and enjoyed an international corporate career until the age of 30. Working in London at our corporate HQ at the time allowed me to see the opposite ends of company culture - from a thriving to a toxic one - and that within the same organisation. My fascination with leadership was born. I left my job and set up my own leadership development firm. The unorthodox approach we took, stepping away from all formula’s and with a focus on nurturing intuitive and authentic leadership, led me to work for leading edge corporations. For many years I travelled Europe as a boardroom consultant and coach. Through my in-depth experiences of decision-making at the pinnacle of the corporate world, I gained insight into the ways our system is holding organisations and their leaders in the grip of its spinning wheel, its linear transactional mold. Witnessing the damaging impact of the short-term focus and lack of a holistic vision, I started searching for a different perspective and a key to renewal.
When I encountered the leadership principles and way-of-life of the Anishnabe (first Native Americans), I knew I had found that key. Besides their teachings on leadership, their way-of-being resonated so strongly with me and my wife that we decided to make a radical move: We sold everything, took our young children out of school and exchanged our cosmopolitan life for a life in the woods of Upper Michigan. We felt that stepping out of the system was the only way to truly develop a fresh and untainted perspective on life and the world we live in. We started from scratch, built a house and a small school in the woods and lived without a plan, other than to learn - learn from a life close to nature and learn from Native American ways.
All we wanted was to find a new perspective and a natural way for our children to grow up, but we found more than that. We were fascinated about the wealth of wisdom and profound connectedness that still remained with some of the elders. Three years into our journey we realised that this treasure of wisdom we found somehow had to be documented, as we sensed this to be the missing link in our unsustainable society . Our search for wisdom led us to travel around the world to meet and listen to other wisdom keepers. For one year we lived with remote tribal communities around the world. Our journey and our encounters evolved into the award-winning film DOWN to EARTH, which premiered in 2015 at the pivotal Global Climate Summit in Paris.
The experiences of our five-year journey and the teachings I received led me to explore how these teachings would translate into the corporate world that I know so well. It has been astounding to see how powerful and relevant the ancient teachings are in our current modern world. In my forthcoming book In search of Wisdom-based Leadership (publication due later in 2020) I explore how ancient Seven Teachings the Native Americans hand us the keys to transform the way we lead and the way we nurture leadership fit for a post-Covid world.
Links:
www.downtoearthfilm.com
TED talk Rolf on Leadership