Jeffrey David Ringold

Life | Leadership | CoaChing and Consulting

Jeffrey David Ringold is a speaker, author, and life and leadership coach and consultant. He fosters personal and organizational excellence by awakening his clients’ innate resourcefulness and helping them apply it to multiple dimensions of their work and lives. Ringold is founder of the Multi-dimensional Leadership System ™ — a dynamic “mindfulness-in-motion” system that integrates key dimensions of human experience and action to bring about lasting, positive change.

A Few Notes on The Work I Love

I thrive at the interface between inward personal development and outward leadership, and I’ve developed specific methods to integrate and catalyze the two. I delight in helping my clients awaken inner resources of joy, ease, resilience, creativity and care. These awakenings naturally impact physical and emotional health, personal relationships and professional performance. I also help clients learn to speak, move, lead and take action with greater empathy, effectiveness and precision. These outward shifts not only enhance performance but also powerfully transform the inner landscape of felt experience.

So there is often a dynamic oscillation between inward exploration and outward expression, between insight and action. This oscillation reveals a kind of paradox of human fulfillment: We discover fulfillment by effectively serving others, and we serve others by embodying authentic joy and equanimity.

Focus Points of the Multi-Dimensional Leadership System™:

  • Stress-Free Productivity
     
  • Core-level Fulfillment
     
  • Physical and Emotional Healing and Limbic Regulation
     
  • Effective Communication and Presentation: Posture, Rhythm, Cadence, Messaging, Congruence and sixty-one other distinct, identified factors
     
  • Eight Domain Synergy: How mind, body, emotions, spirit, physical environment, social environment, action, and awareness mutually impact and define each other, and how they can be systematically engaged to bring about radical change.
     
  • From mindfulness, empathy and emotional intelligence to true relational embodiment (i.e. radical full-on living).

My Background

Half of my work has been in public policy, half in personal development.

I’m the author of two books — Living Joy and The Gift of Love — and several online courses related to productivity, effective self-care, conscious communication, intimacy in relationship, and core level human fulfillment. I’m deeply steeped in several personal growth modalities, have spent several years in silent meditation retreats in various traditions, and have trained in life coaching and leadership. I studied in small groups with Zen luminary Thich Nhat Hanh, and founded the Heart Sangha in Santa Cruz, California, which has been meeting regularly for nearly thirty years.

Formative experiences of my youth included marching under the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee banner and crossing racial lines during race riots at my high school to bring about greater understanding and reconciliation.

My policy work has primarily been focused on land use, environmental policy, mediation and advocacy. I was pleased to help preserve some of the rarest, most scenic wildlife habitat in the United States, to secure approvals for affordable housing in one of the nation’s least affordable housing markets, and to help establish incentives for ecologically sustainable local economic development. I also assisted in fundraising for the nation’s largest park and wildlife bond. As the youngest member of the Santa Cruz City Planning Commission, I chaired the Commission through the critical time of rebuilding after the Loma Prieta Earthquake and update of the City’s General Plan.

My fascination with various dimensions of leadership came from two directions. On the one hand, I saw how organizational health in the public, private, and non-profit sectors is powerfully shaped by people’s internal processes. Having sane, effective organizations requires sanity and effectiveness among its participants. It requires cultivation of authentic leadership not only among identified leaders, but across all levels of the organization.

Conversely, the entire field of personal development can only come to true fruition when it focuses on community dynamics, tangible action and commitment to service as well as individual introspection.

Lastly, my work is informed by my own ongoing health challenges and sensitivities, and the lessons I continue to learn about healing, grace, and the enduring beauty of life in the midst of change.

How I developed the Multi-Dimensional Leadership System

The Multi-Dimensional Leadership System (MDLS) first emerged in crisis. Over a period of roughly five years, my mother, sister, stepmother, stepfather, stepbrother, and four cousins passed away, my romantic relationship of several years ended, a major business venture failed, I was met with a number of deep personal disappointments with remaining family members and a formerly trusted mentor, and I faced debilitating health issues. Though my spiritual training served me well in maintaining a kind of equanimity, there was little spark left.

The spark returned after a series of epiphanies related to awareness, action, and the other six domains of experience outlined above. The heart of these epiphanies immediately began to express itself in my work, and my clients started lighting up and transforming before my eyes in ways that were frankly tremendously surprising. So the core of the MDLS essentially seemed like a gift that I was given that restored a sense of delight and enchantment to my life where there had at best been static acceptance, and at worst deep depression. As I started to systematize these insights and practices, it became a compelling calling and mission: to use these approaches to help my clients spark what’s deepest, truest and most effective in their work and in their lives. I’m especially inspired to work with leaders and creative people who feel the painful edges of the world and long to make a positive difference.

More specifically, who I work with:

  • Businesses with strong records of social responsibility
     
  • Policymakers motivated by a strong call to serve
     
  • Other dedicated social changemakers
     
  • Conscious entrepreneurs and “cultural creatives”

Who I don’t work with:

Clients involved in the tobacco industry, fossil fuel extraction, weapons manufacturing.

To inquire about speaking, coaching or consulting for your organization, please write to jdringold@ringoldconsulting.com and write “Consultation” in the subject line.

Make it a great day.