THE YEAR-LONG PATH OF VERTICAL LEADERSHIP

Building on the work from the Introductory Retreat, The Path of Vertical Leadership is a year-long individual and collective journey. 

 Our intentions in this program are to:

(A)  Partner with and support you to catalyze your own psychological development in whatever direction is meaningful to you.

(B)  Help you ground and integrate positive changes in areas of your everyday life that improve the quality of your life, especially in areas in which you are currently struggling.

While people often experience changes after the first retreat, they generally struggle with integrating what they experienced at that retreat into their everyday life.  In this program you will not only continue your learning journey, you'll also get new ideas, inspiration and support to integrate your on-going psychological development into your everyday life.

Seeing in fresh new ways can happen in the span of a four or five day retreat, but embodied integration of new perspectives takes time, personal discipline, and support from your fellow travelers on the path.

Those of you who have taken our five day foundations retreat have already been introduced to The 3 Competencies (corresponding with physical, emotional and mental - all from the perspective of awareness).   These simple competencies are the building blocks of the challenging and complex work ahead:

(1) By applying the 1st competency to daily life it expands into the practice of Leadership Embodiment (LE).  LE is based on work by Wendy Palmer, but what you will learn in this program is not what she teaches.  In this context, Leadership Embodiment is all of the practical applications of staying in experiential contact with your physical body.  Leadership in this context is defined as actively participating in the creation of the future.  Leadership Embodiment contributes grounding and capacity for impact to the overall journey.

(2) By applying the 2nd competency to daily life it expands into the practice of Integral Engagement (IE).  IE is about cultivating fuller and more fulfilling engagement with Life, including all three aspects of Integral: I, We and It.   For example IE includes: psychological shadow practices to relate more fully to oneself (I), relational and group-level practices to deepen capacity to relate more fully with others (We), and practices from management science to relate more fully and effectively with the world of objects and things (It).  The practical benefit of fuller engagement with all of life is that you will be able to get more traction to move your life in whatever direction you choose.  In addition to its practical benefits, IE contributes fullness of experience and greater intimacy with life.

(3) By applying the 3rd competency to daily life it expands into the practice of Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry (CDAI).  CDAI is a practice created by Bill Torbert to help people create a fertile context within themselves for their own consciousness to grow towards later stages of psychological maturity and effectiveness.  CDAI is about increasing one's capability to adapt and install updates to oneself in real time.  Single, double and triple loop learning (concepts from management theory) are a simplified entry point into the practice of increasingly profound adaptations to one's environment.  CDAI depends upon meta-awareness: awareness of awareness, which grows from the practice of the 3rd competency.  Its practice leads in the direction of more spontaneous and fresh living as one starts to achieve freedom from the tired old thoughts and ways of being that one has accumulated from the past.

Together Leadership Embodiment, Integral Engagement and Action Inquiry are all about building capacity to live in the paradox of simultaneously being better at being with what is - exactly as it is, while also carrying more potential to powerfully and effectively influence the emergence of a new and different future.

The main work of this program happens in your daily life. The retreats, the coaching calls, and group calls are all intended to inspire and support the challenge of bringing more and higher quality attention to your whole life.

Like life itself, the program is an integration of the realm of the known (e.g. developmental theory, Integral theory, management theory) with the realm of the unknown and the unknowable.

Where there is light - we can see and know with our minds.  Where there is no light, darkness reigns - and here  (right here in the core of your being in This very moment) our mental understanding can never get a foothold.  Here, we can only come to know something by feeling into it with our bodies.

As we learn to use our soma to feel into the darkness that we emerge from in each moment, we slowly realize that we are that darkness.  Or rather This darkness.  This darkness that is the womb of the light, or to put it in another way - the womb from which what we call 'the world' continuously emerges.

In summary, this program is born out of the union of practice (specifically of the 3 Competencies) with daily life.  In other words, it is an introduction to (non-sexual) tantra.

In the end, it is about recognizing everything - every moment - every experience, as both:  

(A) a chance to practice to create a more beautiful future, and 

(B) the immediate fruition of this same practice - for which no future is required because it has already fully bloomed in this moment:  The only moment in which the fruit of our practice of love can ever be tasted.

Now.

Foundations of this Work

This personal and professional development program integrates fresh thinking from 21st century psychology, business management studies, and brain science, with ancient wisdom from the past.  It is based on professional experience in the fields of developmental psychology, corporate organizational consulting, performance coaching, business and national security intelligence analysis, and leadership training in several different cultures and countries spanning six continents.

Some of the Most Important Influences on the Content and Design of this Program

• Ken Wilber's Integral philosophy of inclusion and perspective taking
• Bill Torbert's practice of Action Inquiry and work applying the construct of psychological development in executive coaching and organizational development interventions
• Susanne Cook-Greuter's empirical dedication to rigorously studying patterns in the farther reaches of psychological development
• Otto Scharmer's U-Model approach to fostering personal, cultural and systemic innovation
• Bill Isaacs' work applying the discipline of Generative Dialogue to business
• Thomas Huebl's work healing collective trauma and related psychological shadows
• Pema Chodren's transmission of the imperative to love all of the Self
• Reggie Ray's focus on waking up through and as the body
• Unattributed Native American wisdom (perhaps because they don't share our culture's obsession of individuals pretending to own thoughts)
• Brian Swimme's invitation to see ourselves as evolutionary beings living in a developmental context
• Rainer Marie Rilke's exhortation that we each embrace what is most foreign within ourselves
• Harriet Tubeman, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela's commitment to goodness regardless of the consequences to themselves personally
• Wendy Palmer's distinction of Leadership Embodiment and translation of aikido teachings into the context of modern leadership
• Rumi and Hafez's capacity to convey glimpses of awakening through their expressions of beauty
• Parker Palmer's advice around bringing the sacred into learning experiences
• Joseph Jaworksi's Inner Path of Leadership
• Peter Senge's work making system thinking more accessible to business people
• Previous co-facilitators - from whom I've learned far more than I know: Terri O'Fallon, Dana Carman, Geoff Fitch, Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Barrett Brown, Bill Torbert, Leigh Reis, and Adriana Forte

What's Included

• Three five-day fully catered residential retreats
• Monthly individual coaching calls
• Group calls in between retreats
• Support material

Dates of the Retreats and Cost of Joining

Dates for the next offering of this program and the costs involved depends on the country.  Please see the Schedule page for more information.