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Leading by Being ^®: A Personal Leadership Training
Beginning September 2008

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How do you live a life that is fully engaged while also deeply reflective?

How can you express your wholeness – all you love and value – in the context of your daily work?

How do you balance your personal need for fulfillment with service to the well being of the world around you?

What does it mean to lead by being?

Personal Leadership: the intentional process of identifying and bringing what is missing – through action, insight, or stillness.

The times we live in are complex. Radical change is happening on so many levels – global and local – and with that change comes a need for new definitions and capacities of leadership. Whether leading an organization, teaching children, facilitating groups, creating a business, managing projects, or raising a family, we must bring our awareness and influence to the wellbeing of a world that is increasingly unsustainable. In particular we need leaders who, through example, cultivate stillness and reflection as the pressure to create change intensifies. Without this capacity, we run the terrible risk of perpetuating the very forces that we are trying to change.

The powerful and increasing evidence of our interconnectedness – the ‘inescapable web of mutuality’ as Martin Luther King called it – is a call to each of us to embody new expressions of humanity and more wisely compassionate, intimate, and spiritual patterns of human relationship. If nothing else, this embodied capacity is what must be sustainable.

This form of leadership is what we call Leading by Being®. It is rooted in a practice and path of learning, and forms a foundation that supports and sustains the ongoing process of life and transformative change for each participant.

Who is this program for?

This course is for people who long to:

• Engage with the world in a way that is discerning and integral – loving and wise.
• Express their aliveness and humanity through their work.
• Be of service as a participant rather than an expert.
• Embody the change they want to see in the world.

Leading by Being® has been conducted in North America and Europe for the past eight years. This will be the seventh iteration of the program which is designed to attract a diverse, multi generational group of people whose work is with individuals, groups, or organizations to effect transformational change. Former participants include consultants, organizational leaders and managers, trainers, parents, teachers, artists and artist/educators, as well as those who are entering or changing career. We invite aspiring leaders as well as established leaders with the understanding that we all have much to learn from one another. We welcome participants who are seeking their place in the world in a way that balances self-fulfillment with service. And we also invite participants who have established a place in the world but are longing for a greater depth and soul connection in the work that they are already doing.

How we work:
Personal Leadership is grounded in a depth of being: the presence, self-understanding, and compassion as well as the ability to engage with a wide range of human experience that an individual brings to any situation. Personal Leadership is, literally, being the change that we want to see in the world. It grows out of our knowledge of who we are, our awareness of self and other, and recognition of the relative and illusory nature of individual ‘self’. As it integrates, this understanding allows us to activate, model and sustain a dynamic and spacious field of connection within groups, whether formal organization, community, classroom, or family.

This field, which can be experienced at intra-personal, inter-personal and transpersonal levels, is what we call a Learning Field. The Academy’s transformative learning model, Learning Field Inquiry, guides the Leading by Being® program as well as our other trainings and advisory services both in the US and Europe.

Leading by Being® is an exploratory inquiry into the experience of being both participant and catalyst in the process of learning and change. The exploration takes place within the individual self – through contemplation, self-reflection, and inquiry – and also through active engagement in the evolving group learning field. The tension between individual need and expression and the needs and expression of the larger group, is a critical point of investigation in relation to personal leadership.

In addition, although Leading by Being® is a training, in that it transmits specific information and cultivates specific capacities and outcomes, it is equally a joint exploration into unknown territory for us all - facilitators and participants alike.

Out of this exploration of ourselves – our individuality and our connectedness we invite our selves, each other, and our world at large, into deeper levels of humanity as we exercise our personal authority in our lives and work - whether as leaders or followers.

PROGRAM CONTENT
The program content draws from a broad spectrum of disciplines and resources including learning theory and psychology (combining psychodynamic, behavioral, gestalt, humanistic and transpersonal); contemplative practices; shamanic practices; ritual forms; movement; music and other forms of creative expression; and our relationship to the natural world.

OUR path of exploration:
The program is divided into three modules each containing a foundational intensive lasting six days, and two shorter follow-up intensives designed to build on the initial foundation. Between intensives, small groups or learning sets form to explore specific questions or lines of inquiry, building on the group work and infusing it into daily life.

The overall movement of the training is one from inner (Modules 1 and 2) to outer (Module 3). By first inquiring into our selves, from a range of perspectives, we gain the insight and skills to serve our own learning and growth and that of others. Through this process the group Learning Field is activated, providing a fertile ground for personal and group transformation. The final module is directed towards theory and application and cultivating each participant’s distinct ‘flavor’ in relation to their chosen work in the world.

During each of the nine intensives we explore guiding questions that take us into far-reaching personal and shared inquiry and, potentially, transformation. The inquiry is integral and comprehensive, meaning that we inquire with all aspects of our being; therefore much of it is experiential. From experience, collaboratively, we make meaning, developing a base of knowledge and ways of knowing that are unique to each training group’s learning field.

The whole exploration takes place over a period of 24 months. We have found that it is essential to allow this long stretch of time in order to work through points of inquiry deeply and comprehensively, to integrate insight and experience, and to apply and test what is being learned. We intend this training to constitute a significant journey within the course of each participant’s lifetime.


The structure of the training and the questions we bring:

EXPLORING HUMAN BEINGNESS
Who Am I? In this module we explore: How we reveal and learn from the various aspects of self: constructed or psychological self, free or authentic self, and spiritual or non-self. How these aspects of self “interconnect”. How we invite a process of un-learning at the same time as we open ourselves to learning anew. What ongoing support we need to keep ourselves awake to self discovery and learning. How we engage the fullness of our being to support another in their learning. How we stop all the activity so that we can hear and incorporate the voice that comes from the depths of our soul.

Who are we? In this module, we explore: What we can learn about nourishing individual growth while also serving the ‘waking up’ of the group as a whole. How we are both shaped by and creators of the Learning Field. How we can bring personal leadership to support the group’s aliveness, and its creativity, learning and productivity. How we use silence. What it takes to be truly open to the emergent mystery and transpersonal nature of group.

BEING FULLY HUMAN IN THE WORLD
What is it? In this module, we explore: How we take forward our learnings from the first two modules of the training and find our places in the world as creative, compassionate leaders, embodying the change we want to see. What arts of being, practices, and skillful means are now necessary for us to fulfill our purpose in the big picture – as consultants, managers, facilitators, teachers, artists, parents, or whatever our calling. How we cultivate and sustain active Learning Fields in the groups, organizations and communities of which we are a part. How we embody stillness and reflection in the heat of change.

Training Outcomes
What you will take away:

• A deepening knowledge of your natural and authentic place and voice as a leader, and greater degrees of freedom in bringing forth personal leadership that rests in your fundamental values, integrity, strength, vulnerability, and love.
• An ongoing practice based in learning as a path toward waking up to the fullness of your humanity and the humanity of others
• Practices and capacities – inner and outer – that are clearly aligned with your values and that will serve you in bringing forth a depth of learning and self-inquiry in a variety of group contexts.
• Direct experience of stillness and non-action as a vital aspect of personal leadership.
• Trust in the organic, unfolding nature of human dynamics as a key aspect of leadership.
• Insights and tools for the transformation of personal limitations, and engaging with your gifts.
• Familiarity with group process and the development of a Learning Field. Greater experience and degrees of comfort in working intimately within group contexts towards shared goals..
• Experience working with complex questions with individuals and groups.
• Confidence in thinking ‘outside the box’ for insights and bringing them into action.
• An appreciation of energetic and transpersonal dimensions of being and our connection to the whole.
• A vision and specific plan of action to move you in to a new phase of personal leadership in your life and/or work in the world.
• Certificate of Leading By Being at completion.

Dates for the Leading By Being®:
LBB3-1-1  Sept 14-19, 2008  (Sun-Fri) - 6 days
LBB3-1-2  Dec 3-7, 2008  (Wed-Sun) - 5 days
LBB3-1-3  Mar 5-8, 2009  (Thu-Sun) - 4 days

LBB3-2-1  Jun 9-14, 2009  (Tue-Sun) - 6 days
LBB3-2-2  Sept 10-13, 2009  (Thu-Sun) - 4 days
LBB3-2-3  Dec 3-6, 2009  (Thu-Sun) - 4 days

LBB3-3-1  Mar 2-7, 2010  (Tue-Sun) - 6 days
LBB3-3-2  June 3-6, 2010  (Thu-Sun) - 4 days
LBB3-3-3  Sept 9-12, 2010  (Thu-Sun) - 4 days
 

Most Training sessions are held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There will be a session or two held outside Santa Fe at a residential retreat.

For more information or to obtain an application, contact Melissa at the Academy at melissa[at]aloveoflearning.org or call (505) 995-1860.