# Richard Barrett (author)

Richard Barrett (born 7 March 1945) is a British author, coach, and artist who writes about ego-soul dynamics, leadership, leadership development, values, consciousness, and cultural evolution in business and society. He founded the Barrett Values Centre in 1997 and is currently the managing director of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values, which he founded in 2018.

## Early life and education

Richard Barrett was born on 7 March 1945, in Kingston upon Hull, United Kingdom. In 1966, he graduated from Manchester University with a First Class Honors degree in Civil Engineering. He received a postgraduate engineering degree in highway and transportation engineering from Newcastle University.

## Career

Barrett was initially trained at the University of Manchester as a civil engineer and subsequently at the University of Newcastle as a transport engineer. After spending two years working for the City of Leicester (1969-1971) he joined Freeman Fox & Partners in London and set up their Paris office in 1973 where he worked until 1977.
He set up his own consulting practice in 1977 and consulted for the World Bank from 1979 to 1985, officially joining the Bank as a staff member in 1986. In 1992, he became the Assistant to the Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development and started the World Bank Spiritual Unfoldment Society. From 1995 to 1997, he investigated the World Bank's organisational values.
Throughout this period (from 1967 to 1997), Barrett spent most of his spare time studying psychology, spirituality, physics, and personal transformation. He left the World Bank in 1997 to create the international management consulting firm of Richard Barrett & Associates (which became the Barrett Values Centre in 2007).
The purpose of this organisation was to "provide consultants, change agents, and human resource professionals with tools and techniques for assessing the values of their organisations and implementing cultural transformation."

## Works overview

In 1995, he published A Guide to Liberating Your Soul. In 1998, he published Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organisation, in which he described the Seven Levels of Consciousness model and the values mapping instruments known as the Cultural Transformation Tools. He also introduced the concept of the Seven Levels of Leadership Consciousness.
From 2005 to 2007, he spearheaded an inquiry into Whole System Change in organisations.The results of this inquiry are presented in Building a Values-driven Organisation: A Whole System Approach to Cultural Transformation, published in 2006. In this book, he shows how the cultural transformation tools based on the seven levels of consciousness model have been used to transform the cultures of organisations in Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the USA. He also introduced the concepts of cultural and personal entropy, showing how they could be measured.
Barrett wrote, "... organisational transformation begins with the personal transformation of the leaders. Organisations don’t transform; people do.” “Making money and making a difference are mutually supportive goals. When companies care about their employees, the local community and society, their employees, the local community and society care about them. In other words, the quality of the energy you put into the world is the energy you get back."
From 2006 to 2024, Barrett wrote fourteen books. In The New Leadership Paradigm, published in 2011, he developed a program for leading the self, leading a team, leading an organisation, and leading society. Other concepts introduced in this book include the Seven Levels of Motivation, The Seven Levels of Identity, the Seven Levels of Happiness, and the Six Modes of Decision-Making.
In Love, Fear and the Destiny of Nations, published in 2010, he discussed the impact of the evolution of worldviews on world affairs. In What My Soul Told Me, published in 2011, he described the five steps to soul activation. In Evolutionary Coaching, published in 2014, he introduced a coaching process based on the Seven Stages of Psychological Development. In A New Psychology of Human Well-Being, published in 2015, he introduced the concept of ego-soul dynamics as an approach to mental health. In The Values-Driven Organization, published in 2017, he showed how cultural health and employee well-being were the pathways to sustainable performance.
In The Evolutionary Human, published in 2018, he introduced the concept of evolutionary intelligence and the three universal stages of evolution. In Everything I Have Learned About Values, also published in 2018, he provided a detailed overview of the importance of values in decision-making. In Worldview Dynamics and the Consciousness of Nations, published in 2019, he showed examples of how the seven levels of consciousness model could be used to map the values of nations. In many of these nations, the results of the values assessments have been used to begin nationwide dialogues on values. In Latvia and Iceland, the results of the values assessments have been instrumental in helping to form public policies. In Soul-Centred Living, published in 2014, a year before his 80th birthday, he presented a deeply personal exploration of the journey to living a soul-centred life.

## Published works

* Soul-Centred Living: From Survival to Service (2024)
* Worldview Dynamics and the Well-Being of Nations (2020); ISBN 978-1684716005
* Everything I Have Learned About Values (2018); ISBN 978-1483479415
* The Values-Driven Organization: Cultural Health and Employee Well-Being as a Pathway to Sustainable Performance (2017); ISBN 978-1138679153
* A New Psychology of Human Well-Being: An Exploration of the Influence of Ego-Soul Dynamics on Mental and Physical Health (2016); ISBN 978-1326591458
* The Metrics of Human Consciousness (2015); ISBN 978-1291987966
* Evolutionary Coaching: A Values-Based Approach to Unleashing Human Potential (2014); ISBN 978-1483411781
* The Values-Driven Organization: Unleashing Human Potential for Performance and Profit (2013); ISBN 978-0415815024
* What My Soul Told Me: A Practical Guide Soul Activation (2012); ISBN 978-1471770166
* Love, Fear and the Destiny of Nations: The Impact of the Evolution of Human Consciousness on World Affairs (2012)
* The New Leadership Paradigm: Leading in Society Journal & Workbook (2011); ISBN 978-1445716725
* The New Leadership Paradigm: Leading an organisation Journal & Workbook (2011); ISBN 978-1445716725
* The New Leadership Paradigm: Leading a Team Journal & Workbook (2011); ISBN 978-1445716725
* The New Leadership Paradigm (9 January 2010);ISBN 978-1445716725
* Building a Values Driven Organization: A Whole System Approach to Cultural Transformation Butterworth-Heinemann; 1 edition (2006)ISBN 978-0750679749
* Building a Values-Driven Organization: A Whole System Approach to Cultural Transformation (2006)
* Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organization Butterworth-Heinemann; 1 edition (5 November 1998)
* A Guide to Liberating Your Soul Fulfilling Books (1995);ISBN 978-0964322639