When Everything Is a Risk
When guarantees fade and change becomes constant, presence becomes the most reliable investment.
Don’t Force. Feel.
Michael Basil
Zensei
Authorship Cultivator
Leadership 🌱 Culture ☯ Technology
I never expected taming parrots and navigating soccer scrums to lead me to coaching leaders—but looking back, it makes perfect sense.
Growing up in my mom’s parrot shop, I learned early to read patterns of tension and trust by calming unruly macaws as I relaxed into edge zones. On the soccer pitch, I found rhythm in motion—shifting fluidly between opportunistic striker and lockdown defender. Later, I trained for elegant simplicity with a computer engineering degree from the University of Illinois and spent my early career driving Agile and technology-driven transformation initiatives across complex organizations.
Through a series of deeply challenging personal and professional lessons, I came to see that trying to control everything—inside or out—was itself the obstacle. What once felt like strength revealed itself to be deeply limiting. Letting go—and simultaneously allowing for connection—became the real discipline. In that space, I began to understand the human factor: the invisible networks of emotion, energy, and attention that shape how we relate, decide, and lead.
Mindset Dojo and MetaShift Method emerged from that awareness—centered on cultivating Conversational Presence when it matters most and meeting people at the level of depth that aligns to bring real value.
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Offering
Presence Training
Immersive sessions exploring the human factor of leadership through the Mindset Dojo approach—MetaShift Method, Zen Leadership, and Conversational Presence—integrated with Agile flow.
Strategic Mentorship
Multi-dimensional mentorship for established, emerging, and aspiring leaders navigating complexity and change.
Blending Zen Leadership, Agile transformation, and human systems design—this engagement integrates deep personal practice with strategic collaboration.
Resident Expertise
Medium-term in-residence support during periods of scaling or reinvention, combining technical depth with human-factor leadership.
Connect
Insights
Recent writing and reflection
Feedback Fields: Learning to Ride Together
As Mindset Dojo moves from late-alpha toward beta, feedback becomes our training ground — a way to find balance, alignment, and presence in motion.
From Explorer to Cultivator
In Mindset Dojo, every pull request tests a threshold — transforming exploration into cultivation, and curiosity into coherence.
The Technology of Self-Authorship
In Mindset Dojo, we integrate presence through language — weaving body, breath, system, and story into a living practice of awareness and authorship.
Spiraling with the Shadow in Star Wars
When we turn toward the shadow — fear, anger, ambition, loss — and bring it into awareness, the circle becomes a spiral.
Cultivating a Threshold-Based Authorship Network
In the dojo, we’re not trying to build an audience — we’re cultivating a field of thresholds: experiences that transform presence into trust.
Conversation as Code
Every conversation writes code into the field — tone, timing, and language compile into patterns that shape what becomes possible next.
Unlearning Hierarchy
In the Dojo, leadership is cultivation, not control. Circles replace chains of command. Authorship replaces ownership.
Houston, We Have an Attitude
When tone shifts, awareness follows—revealing the MetaShift from control to connection that transforms every conversation into practice.