2019 Year of Re-creation

2019 was a year of re-creation, by which we mean listening in a way that one can actually create for oneself the world that is being communicated. It is a listening that that provides others with the opportunity to be completely and unconditionally heard. While we may not always succeed, it is a possibility worth striving for.

The participants of the Fourth Cohort attended their first Three Day Clinic in the spring. The Three Day Clinic is an in-person program conducted in participants’ home countries. This program deepens and strengthens the work begun in the previous Five-Day residential program, Foundations of Transformational Leadership. The first Three Day is crucial for reconnecting with the School and with the Regional Learning Communities. It is an opportunity to ground themselves in the School and to reaffirm for themselves that they are in the right place. Participants left the Three Day with a broader grasp of the distinctions and new clarity in their practicums.

By the time of the second Five Day in November, it was clear that the participants had fully embraced their own participation in the School. They are already producing remarkable results in the work and in their lives. New at this Five Day was a more flexible technology for recording the program on video. This was a great advancement that we will continue to explore further.

There were two Leadership Dialogues Calls in 2019. These two-and-a-half-hour international conference calls bring the Cohort together with a few faculty members to discuss and work more deeply on a specific distinction. For their first Dialogue Call the Cohort inquired into the distinction Integrity. The second call was focused on Authenticity.

The Faculty and Curriculum Support Community Element of the School continued their work on writing the primary distinctions of our work so they are available for study in written form. These become the foundation of our Audio Offerings and Dialogue Calls. There are now 23 completed distinction documents.

There were two Distinctions in Leadership Audio Offerings given to the Cohort. The topics of these 1 hour, professionally produced audio programs were Coaching and Silence and Centering.

The new practicum design and its supporting structures were tested and put to use by participants and coaches throughout the year. The resulting insights and clarifications will contribute to deeper more robust practice and coaching in the School.

Our 42 active School Builders are the engine that has the School run efficiently. They logged more than 5600 hours of work throughout the year supporting the School and the cohort. In addition, more than sixty percent of the graduates of the first three cohorts continue to train and develop themselves as coaches and program leaders, supporting the School and local programs. Twelve of these graduates completed the rigorous year-long Apprentice Coaching Program. All of them have chosen to become members of the Coaching Element which now has 32 members, giving us a surplus of trained Coaches.

We use a wiki as our School library, archive, and collaborative workspace. In January the wiki platform we had used for more than 10 years ended operations. So there was a major effort early in the year to transfer our work and materials to a new platform and train everyone in its use with minimal disruption.

The Management and Administration Community Element of the School continued to tend to the administrative pieces, structures, and logistics necessary to run the School for Leadership. Since they also participate in other volunteer capacities, they are key to bringing their concern for and expertise in management and administration to all aspects of the School.

Finally, Nancy Juda, the Steward of the School for the last 10 years, completed turning that accountability over to the incoming Steward of the School, Jim Kenefick. Jim comes to the accountability with years of experience as a School Builder, as a coach, as a community element steward, and as a Mastery Foundation volunteer. For the past year, he has worked to learn what it takes to have the School continue to be a success. And Nancy, in addition to being the diligent and faithful Steward of the School for the past 10 years, has done everything possible to ensure this transition be a success. In the process of their collaboration, the role of overseeing all the elements of the School was newly distinguished in a way that will empower everyone going forward.