Do you ever feel that even your pauses have to be justified? Do you make time to fold in, to listen, to wander without going a prescribed route? Do you listen to the trees that call you? Do you give yourself the space to imagine new projects and create anew? What does it look like to “go free”?

Mac is joined by Giles Hutchins as they compare notes on navigating career paths, following a feeling and facing the unknown. Giles leaving his successful corporate career path to do his soul’s work and Mac wrestling with the courage to pursue his dream of creating a valley to grow people.

Giles Hutchins is our second guest on SHED HEAD. He is a provocateur at the leading-edge of next generation transformational leadership and organisational development. He is the Founding Partner of The Natural Business Partnership, Chairman of the Future Fit Leadership Academy, co-founder of BCI: Biomimicry for Creative Innovation, Partner of The Bio-Leadership Project and senior adviser to a number of pioneering institutions. Through his work he has helped transform a wide range of organisations across the corporate, public, third and start-up sectors. He is the former Global Sustainability Director for Atos and also worked as a management consultant with KPMG. He is the author of The Nature of Business, The Illusion of Separation and Future Fit. 
Giles believes these transformational times demand that we become adaptable, creative, innovative and courageous.

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Navigating Uncertainty: Mac Macartney & Giles Hutchins in Conversation

How can we walk in a sacred way? How can we be in alignment with the hazel, the holly and the birch? It is tempting in changing times to gather with likeminded people but what if we beat our drum to engage with all of life? 

In this episode Mac entertains the idea of inviting Trump for tea, the likelihood of never coming to terms with arithmetic and how selling something might not be so bad. There is an invitation to us in the deep beat of the drum. We must listen carefully, ears to our hearts, so as not to miss it.

Beating The Drum Of Life

How does embracing the depth of the magical potent, dreaming, mysterious other world that we sometimes encounter help us face the times we live in? What if we designed our cities thinking about children instead of cars? What if we planted flowers for the sake of beauty or stopped to take in the full moon?

In this podcast episode Mac takes us to Scotland where he is folded into the history of a valley, rescues an elderly couple and contemplates the gauze that separates the real from the imagined in Life’s Real Music Bar…

Dreaming At Life's Real Music Bar

There are times in our lives when something is shared with us that changes everything forever. 

In this episode Mac shares one of the most profound turning points in his life. Recounting a wintry night when the wisdom of the Children's Fire was offered to him, he speaks of the heart-daring it takes to bring this teaching alive in his own life, and extends this challenge to all of us.

Embercombe's Album

The Children's Fire

The stone circle is a prayer. A prayer to stand by sacredness and beauty. A prayer to stand together. 

Sixteen stones forming eight corridors now stand at Embercombe. Mac tells of how they got there, beginning with his own longing to connect with land, air and water.  He shares the stories of summers in the early 1980s spent motorbiking around the UK in search of Native American teachers, the wisdom he gained and the meaning of the circle in this land and every land.

The Stone Circle

Two friends, honing the craft of their ancestors. Practising a tradition that dates back thousands of years, sitting by a fire that burns in the present. Just as the longbow is both powerful and elegant, so too can uncomfortable words like power and leadership be fused with grace. We must aim our arrowheads high in the sky, not to harm, but to lift our gaze to a new horizon.

What we can learn from the longbow

A warming and relatable episode from Mac recorded just before the birth of his son. He reflects on the world he’d like his son to live in, on the struggle, humour and joy during the writing of his first book, Finding Earth, Finding Soul, and how gardening saved his (and Monty Don’s) life.

How Gardening Saved My Life

Welcome to SHED HEAD, a podcast series with Mac Macartney. Grab a cup of tea and join Mac in his shed to talk about the magic of a life well lived, stories of the past and the embers of a hopeful future.

Mac is an international speaker, writer and change-maker. Mentored by indigenous people over many years, he has acquired profound and original insights into questions preoccupying many contemporary leaders. Mac seeks to inspire the emergence of the leader in each of us, the leader who will take courageous action for a better world.

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