hane Tawrie L

Thane Lawrie is an award-winning CEO in Scotland. A graduate of the University of Aberdeen and the University of Glasgow, he has had a diverse career, winning numerous prestigious business awards locally and nationally. He has been published in academic, peer-reviewed journals and his company featured in the Sunday Times' Top 100 Companies to Work for in the UK.

Thane's new book is The Buddhist CEO.

You like to contribute and keep busy?–need a question ark here – after busy?

Yes writing the book has kept me busy and I have been surprised by the level of interest in the book. Doing interviews and podcasts has definitely kept me busy but I have enjoyed the whole process of promoting the book.

I've read the book. It's a great read. Did you come from a spiritual family? What attracted you to Buddhism?

I didn't come from a spiritual family. My family was very outdoors-oriented. We spent a lot of time in the Highlands of Scotland. Being outside in nature was their religion. That rubbed off on me. I was drawn toward Buddhism in my late teens. I found a local group that practiced Buddhism. There was a monk there who had a big effect on me. The Buddhist philosophy of trying to live a peaceful life intrigued me.

I've read in different places that you call yourself the Accidental CEO. What does that mean?

In many ways, I never set out to be a CEO. I took a job at a not-for-profit organization in Scotland. I was one of the senior managers. There were five of us. The CEO tragically died suddenly. That resulted in me being asked to become the CEO. I was the accidental CEO because I didn't join the company intending to become the CEO.

There is a significant story in the book about Elaine. It involves betrayal, deception, personal attacks, and lengthy legal entanglement. However, fictional, it represents a view most of us don't consider.

Most CEOs have experienced similar situations. One of the points of writing the book was that monks write many of the Buddhist books out there. I'm a great admirer of monks. but most Buddhists in the West are people who put on a shirt and tie and go to work. I practice in the modern work environment and wanted to write from this perspective. I got to know quite a few CEOs in Scotland and very senior CEOs. I found that they were all inspirational in their way, but they all had struggles.

Quite often, it was around how they dealt with difficult people. I wanted to include that story with Elaine. CEOs come across that struggle frequently. They feel quite alone. I tried to describe how that felt and give some insight into it.

You must occasionally dismiss people from their posts or discipline them for certain things. I recognized it and had to be done well to create a world-class culture. As a Buddhist, I often asked myself if that was the right thing to do. Sometimes I needed clarification. I wanted to describe the moral and ethical dilemmas leaders face.

This is the crux of the book. How does a Buddhist navigate these environments? As you reflect, how do you feel about the choices you have made?

I've always lived by my values. Knowing who you are and what you're about makes it easier to make decisions or at least know where to go with the decisions.

At one point the main character became acquainted with a CEO group That chapter talks about the fellowship of the CEOs, where the main character on the face of it is very successful. The company is thriving. He's turned it around. But internally, he's struggling with some of the decisions he's had to make. As a Buddhist, he's thinking, is it reasonable to live under this amount of stress? It takes him away from a peaceful life. Hamish, the main character in the book, reaches out to other CEOs, and he finds a lot of support and relief from speaking to them. He finds that they have the same struggles as he does.

There's a part in the book that references FND (functional neurological disorder). Did this happen to you? You thought you had cancer or tumors; for you, it's a stress-related disorder.

Yes this happened to me and I was diagnosed with FND in 2020. Doctors think it is very likely that the cause of my FND is workplace stress. It was scary to have this happen to me, but Buddhist practice helped me to deal with it. It was a scary process, but I never got down or felt depressed. I still managed to meditate every day. I took every day as it came. When I first became unwell it took a while for me to accept it and I had to be persuaded to stay off work by my family and doctor.

Eventually I had to accept like the main character in the book that I was too unwell to continue as a

CEO. Life goes on and I have found ways to keep busy through writing and other ventures I am involved with. I have had to adapt to FND and although I haven’t fully recovered I am at peace with it and despite it I enjoy my life.

Do you mind sharing a couple of the key tenets of Buddhism for people who may not be familiar with it at all?

There are different schools of Buddhism, and I follow the Soto Zen School. I suppose one of the central messages is we don't need much to be happy. There's nothing wrong with having a lot, either. But the Buddhist approach is that enlightenment can be found anywhere here and now. It's not something to be found in the future. The founder of the Soto Zen tradition tells us it can be found in daily life, even in mundane tasks like cooking food and cleaning your house. There is an emphasis on working meditation as well as sitting meditation. You try and do everything mindfully if you're cooking in the kitchen or cleaning toilets.

A lot of people think meditation is all about clearing your mind, which is actually very difficult to do. A lot of people get frustrated with meditation because they try and clear their mind and then get frustrated when they can’t. Buddhists take the approach that minds think, it’s just what they do.

Rather than clearing our minds we accept that minds think but we try and relate to our mind differently. When we are meditating and we realize that we are thinking we just gently bring our attention back to just sitting. There is something about this continual practice of not getting attached to our thoughts that helps bring peace into our lives.

In the book you wrote about wanting to be a monk. Is that true?

The monk's life has appealed to me, and it still appeals to me. I'm happily married. I'm never going to be a monk. The role that monastics could play in modern life is underestimated. Even if you never think about becoming a monk, just spending a week in a monastery is useful. It breaks you away from looking at your phone. There's no television. If more people, particularly those in stressful jobs, went on retreats like that, they would get a lot from it.

Do Buddhists believe in reincarnation?

What Buddhism has convinced me of is that we are connected to all things. In Buddhism, there's even a term - "are you ever born? Do you ever die? Did I exist in some form before I was born? And will I exist after I die? Even if it's just going back into the soil, into the air. I think that's true. But who knows? Maybe I was a monk in a past life, but I have no certain feelings about that.

The crux of the book is the conflict between ambition and being a CEO versus spiritual reality. But is it a workbook? Is it a memoir? What specifically did you hope people would come away with when they finished this book?

The book is a fictional memoir. I felt it was a story worth telling. I believe there are so many peoplev out there in the modern world trying to deeply practice their chosen religion or spiritual practice.

Everyday people with jobs and a family and are trying to bal- ance modern day pressure with their deep commitment to practice their religion or spirituality. Often stories about people practising their religion comes from the perspective of a monk or spiritual leader. But I wanted to write from the point of view of an everyday person who happened to have a difficult stressful job. I hoped it would resonate with many people’s experiences of modern life and let them know they are notalone. I also hope that it would resonate with people of any faith or spiritual practice as they face the same dilemmas trying to balance their own faith with the demands of the modern world.

I thought it was captivating. You've done a great job implementing your vision. What's next for you? Tell us the best place to get the book. I have always seen the story of The Buddhist CEO as being in two parts and I am working on the second book now. I hope to offer some online classes for leaders interested in a spiritual approach to leadership sometime later in the year. When that happens people can find out about it on my website thanelawrie.com. People can get the book on my website or at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Book stores can order itto. There are links to my social media channels on my website where I write a daily zen poem andalso blog about twice a month.

Wonderful. Well, the book is The Buddhist CEO by Thane Lawrie. Thank you so much for being here today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.