2021 Year of Emergence

In January of 2021, we declared the year of Emergence. We challenged ourselves to evolve with ever-changing and unpredictable conditions and circumstances. As the continuing pandemic brought new and different challenges, we continued to adapt ourselves and our offerings.

Year Three for the Fourth Cohort of the School had begun in November 2020 with the five-day Foundations of Transformational Leadership held on Zoom for the first time. The focus of Year Three is transferring distinctions to others. So in response to restrictions on travel and our ability to provide in-person programs as practice fields, we introduced a redesigned structure called Three Pathways to Mastering a Distinction.

This new design requires that each participant choose to make one core distinction the heart of their practicum and learning, working with their coach as before. The regional Three-Day or Mid-Year Regional Clinics in the spring of 2021, were also redesigned for Zoom. And there were two Leadership Dialogue Calls during 2021 centered on the distinctions of Forgiveness and Responsibility.

Participants embraced the new design of Year Three and the independent learning that it required and took new ground in their development. As a result, we plan to continue this format in the future, with the third year Five Day as a virtual program, the Three Day as regional and residential, and a final in-person residential gathering at the completion of the three year term of the School.

Because of the pandemic, however, the fifteen members of the Fourth Cohort of the School for Leadership completed their participation in a final Dialogue Call held over Zoom in December. The participants' final declarations were moving expressions of the power of transformational leadership.

Each regional learning community was supported over the three years of the School by a Regional Liaison: Bill Cawley in the US, Tsofit Goren in Israel and Gerard Finnegan in Ireland/Northern Ireland. All three liaisons were graduates of the School for Leadership, one from each of the first three cohorts.

The three Community Elements of the School - Coaching, Faculty & Curriculum Support, and Management & Administration - continued to build and manage the work of the School. New opportunities to be trained and contribute occurred in each of these communities, increasing the stability and sustainability of the School overall.

And our team of more than 50 School Builders, many with more than one accountability inside the School or the Mastery Foundation, worked throughout the year to support the School and the members of the Fourth Cohort. These dedicated volunteers, along with those volunteering in other parts of the Mastery Foundation, contributed thousands of hours of their time in making this a successful year.