If you’re looking for a way to learn more about contemplative leadership, the 6-session on-line program is a perfect place to begin. Lead from Stillness will assist leaders to enlarge their capacity for awareness and focus while living with the unknowns of change. Each session will include contemplative practice, as well as presentation and group dialogue on a contemplative leadership topic. A small group learning community provides support and confidentiality with learning edges.
Course Details
Six – 90 minute sessions (one per week on Tuesdays)
Sessions held on Zoom
2023 Dates/time to be announced
1. Waiting for Our Souls to Catch Up
Have you been running from one thing to another for too long? It’s time to check in with yourself and see what is needed. As leaders, we must take responsibility for self care as we serve others. Body, mind, emotions, and spirit are all important for maintaining or building greater resilience. How does contemplative leadership help to connect our inner lives of spirit with our outer lives of service and in the process become more whole?
2. Pausing, Listening, Awareness
It has been said that awareness is the lifeblood of a leader’s lead. Learning to slow down, to listen, to be aware in the present moment are contemplative skills that take practice but are well worth what is gained. This session will introduce leaders to levels of awareness and listening, as well as four territories for developing and focusing attention.
3. Attention and the Blindness of the Familiar
Contemplative leadership recognizes that in order for leaders to effectively work with reality, they must be aware of their own preferences and blind spots. What is the impact of this “blindness”? We can’t impact what we fail to see clearly or what is taken for granted because it has become too familiar. Growing one’s leadership agility is directly connected to deepening levels of focused attention and noticing the power of our thoughts in creating our reality.
4. Paradoxes of Leadership
In a complex world, leaders must enlarge their capacity to bring together worldviews, perspectives and experiences that initially seem incompatible to hold paradox and manage polarities. Contemplative practice assists in creating space to consider how opposites contain complimentary aspects, that when held creatively together, can create something new and better manage complexity.
5. What about Ego?
While useful, the ego can be quite limiting. Learning to stand back and quietly observe the inner dramas that one’s ego self has developed over time leads to greater freedom to learn and grow as a person and leader. Leadership in general has suffered from the illusion that what goes on inside has little impact on outside decisions and behaviors. How does learning to see diminish the power of ego?
6. Loosening the Grip of Emotional Programs and Attachments
The ego self creates limits and drama. Contemplative practice assists in loosening the grip of emotional programs that hide the true or essential Self. This transformational process unfolds over time, but results in an unfolding inner freedom. We engage in the difficult work of transformation because we see that our lives and our leadership have a much bigger purpose than serving our own desires for comfort, safety, esteem, or power.
“What has shifted for me as a result of contemplative leadership is that I’m aware of my need to listen at a deeper level. I am working on being non-judmental.” -Chuck
“Contemplative leadership holds a paradox. In my mind, leaders are supposed to be take-charge kinds of folks. Contemplative for me is about quiet listening. What I’m finding is that CL is about a way of life —not limited to the world of organizations and businesses, not just about our public lives. It’s about taking contemplative practice into all parts of our lives. Its about our relationships with each other…creating safe environments at home, at work, in our churches, schools and organizations where we can be vulnerable—where our hearts matter.” – Julie
“The gatherings served as a unique mix of the best of my professional and personal worlds. I have more tools for reflection; I feel I am better able to select appropriate, timely and life-giving responses to situations rather than automatic or instant reactions that can make a stressful situation even worse.” -Steve
- Sessions will be held on Zoom.
- Registration is limited to 12 persons per session to allow for greater interaction and dialogue.
- A simple homework recommendation for contemplative leadership is given at the conclusion of each session.
Total Program Cost for six 90-minute sessions: $199.00 USD