“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
“At its heart, leadership is about understanding human behaviour— what we do, how we do it and why we do it. Effective leaders meet needs; pay careful attention to group processes; calm anxieties, and arouse hopes and aspirations; know how to liberate human energy and inspire people to positive action. They harness and leverage the different and complex forces and dynamics at play in organizational functioning.”
Manfred Kets de Vries. Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organisational Change, INSEAD
Conscious Leadership Program
"Lead Systemic Change: Cultivate Self-Insight, Build Psychological Resilience, Empower Others, and Catalyze Organizational Impact."
Focused on developing depth insights, this empowering program unlocks leadership wisdom often only discovered after navigating inevitable, and often significant, professional or personal pain. The process, which has the potential to catalyze systemic change, is intentionally designed to follow a flow of leading self - to - leading others - to - leading organizations; Put otherwise cultivating personal insight fosters conscious, authentic leadership, resulting in enhanced organizational performance.
At the core of conscious leadership is a deep understanding of human behaviour and self. This becomes especially important when we are dealing with complex organizational dynamics, challenging conversations, implementing change processes, creating an innovative culture, improving performance, or facing personal difficulties – all of which are part of the leadership and human experience.
In our journeys of professional development, we focus much time on how to deliver objectives and strategy, and far too little time understanding who we are, its impact on our leadership, what underpins psychological resilience, group dynamics, how to harness the motivational drivers that underpin human behaviour, and the workings of systems - And yet these are fundamental to achieving our fullest potential, maintaining psychological wellbeing, creating belief within others, and delivering organizational objectives.
Studies demonstrate a direct link between the relationship of leaders and employees to performance. Leadership development programs focused on developing the self, as referenced by McKinsey Health Institute and Taylor and Francis, have shown considerable benefits.
Drawing from thousands of hours with clients, group coaching, retreat facilitation, insights from over 100 books, executive leadership, and personal experiences, this program has being designed to enable you to make informed and sustained changes. The work is not sold as a quick fix, and is presented in a factual and no-nonsense manner.
Holding a conscious leadership, psychodynamic, systems thinking, and holistic wellbeing orientation, it combines three, customizable, elements:
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Classroom sessions, supported with manuals, that provide a theoretical and practical overview of the carefully chosen topics. Explore the modules here.
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Group discussions, within the context of self and the organization, during these sessions.
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One-on-one coaching sessions per delegate.
The outcomes you can expect from your team working through the program are highlighted here. The program has received consistently positive feedback from participants at mid to senior levels across businesses of all sizes, including large corporations, SMEs, and multi-nationals.
Outcomes
Clients who have completed this program report experiencing improvements in:
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Understanding of human behaviour and improved relationships: By understanding their own and core human dynamics, they are better equipped to harness and leverage the different, complex and dynamic forces at play in teams and organizations. They communicate better, and come to cultivate more conscious, connected, and fulfilling relationships with others.
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Understanding of Self and greater self-esteem: Through cultivating a deeper self-understanding, self-acceptance and self-compassion, they increase their self-worth. By bringing attention to and understanding how their life story and their unconscious shapes their behaviour, they are empowered to make conscious choices to lead, and live, with greater intentionality.
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Resilience: Recognizing the inseparable mind-body connection, they develop greater stress resilience, as well as an increased capacity to accept reality as it is, versus how they wish it would be.
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Leadership effectiveness: Through the active application of the learnings, they experienced marked capability upliftment's. Through coming to better understand the drivers of alignment, motivation, trust, culture, and psychological safety, they felt better equipped to lead high-performance teams. By developing heightened awareness and greater presence, they find themselves making better decisions, and better at working through, and navigating challenge.
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Systems thinking: Recognizing that nothing-happens-in isolation, they find that they think and lead differently. This includes understanding, with a systems lens, a deeper appreciation of causality as well as the flow of value within an organisation [a system nested within systems] to meet a customer’s needs, which of consequence thereof delivers organisational objectives.
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Shifts in organizational performance: The collective and compounding impact of the above resulted in outcomes of greater alignment, increased engagement, and improved inter-personal and inter-team dynamics, which together contributed to shifts in organizational performance.
Outcomes will largely depend on two things. Your:
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Level of openness, desire, and engagement during the sessions.
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Subsequent commitment to deeply think about, and then apply that which is learned.
“It is when we act freely, rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.“
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Management.
Known particularly for his work related to "flow", meaning and purpose.
“Emotional agility is the practice of observing our feelings as information, rather than trying to change or control them.
It is the ability to have a full range of emotions and experiences, including more difficult ones, and still choose to make decisions, and act in ways, that are congruent with our values and goals.”
Susan David. Harvard Medical School psychologist, founder of Evidence Based Psychology Management Consultancy and co-founder of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching.
“Research in cognitive science has shown repeatedly that many important things and much behavior is resultant of what goes on outside conscious awareness. This observation is no longer controversial to even the most hard-nosed empiricist. It is not just that we do not fully know our own minds, but there are things we seem not to want to know. These things are threatening, out of harmony, or make us feel vulnerable in some way, so we tend to look away.“
Jonathan Shedler. Psychoanalyst, clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, faculty member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, author, consultant, researcher, supervisor, and lecturer.
Program Content
If these are the only four psychological manuals/ books you work with in your lifetime, you will be more than adequately empowered to navigate that which unfolds.
Module 1:
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The process of personal transformation
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Leadership: Starting point questions
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Leadership style
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How we learn: Where it all starts
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Powerful models to help our growth
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Trust and psychological safety as a cornerstone of performance
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Values
Module 2:
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The foundations of personality
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The self-esteem triad: Self-worth, self-confidence, and self-care.
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Moving outwards from balanced self-esteem and the dark triad
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Authenticity and self-concept
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Building healthy self esteem
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The triangle of affect, cognition and behavior, and why we accept the duality of our emotional and thinking existence.
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Identifying emotions
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Feelings deserving more attention
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Processing our experiences
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Forced Positivity, repression and suppression
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Emotional intelligence, regulation and maturity
Module 3:
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Our double subjection to conscious and unconscious cognition
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Defenses and resistance
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Integrating our shadow
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Attachment theory
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Transactional analysis
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Internal family systems: accessible language
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Perception, biases, thinking errors
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Working within our zones of tolerance
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Conditions for psychological well being
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Proven ways to build psychological and physiological wellbeing
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Effective ways to deal with challenge
Module 4:
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Performance. Culture. Weaving It Together
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Motivation
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Intrinsic Motivation: Performance Rocket Fuel
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Amplifying Motivation
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Communication And Active Listening
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Communication Types We Want To Be Aware Of
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Systems, Performance and Alignment
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Organizational Culture
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Living Consciously
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Weaving It All Together
What is our next step?
If what you have read resonates, or you would like to find out more, lets set up a discovery call. Click here, and let's schedule a conversation.