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Program Objectives

The following list represents the Key Program Objectives (KPO) for the Appleton Greene Authentic Leadership corporate training program.

Authentic Leadership – Part 1- Year 1Appleton Greene

  1. Part 1 Month 1 Ecosystem Awareness – Overall, this first year is focused on deepening your experience using principles of transformation to grow your potential as a wise, authentic leader. In this first year, you will be guided to learn and experience the co-creative process to improve your overall effectiveness in creating what you want. Apply the cycles of creating to unleash your extraordinary creative and productive power that will move you to success. Activate all five mindful moves/cycles/seasons for maximum benefits. This first module defines an ecosystem model that demonstrates what exists within and around you. Using this model, you can gain confidence in observing ecosystems and initiating shifts to transform energy for sustained change. Many of us do not realize how powerful we are, that we are in fact, always creating. Often we forget and get mired down by old systems, routines, structures, thoughts, emotions and paradigms that do not empower. Our energy gets stuck. By understanding that individuals, teams, and organizations are all living and breathing ecosystems, you can learn to use this ecosystem awareness repeatedly in a variety of situations. This first module is to provide an overview of the energy, actions, and awareness that make up a whole ecosystem. It sets the foundation and provides a history of the 5 elements creative process. Take an element assessment test to understand how to balance your elements and personal ecosystem. In this module, you begin to understand your natural rhythms and develop an awareness of one’s own creative energy. Understand all the cycles of creating for full manifestation. Understand how that natural creative process works in your life and work and learn practical ways to balance and release energy to consciously create. Our personal ecosystems include thoughts, words, emotions, body, heart. Our body, heart, and mind integrate. It matters how our body feels. There are three centers within to attend to related to the ecological, social and spiritual separations we see in our world. By working from this micro and personal level, we can impact the macro levels including our earth, humanity, and access to higher wisdom. By learning this natural system, you engage your innate wisdom and move more harmoniously and effortlessly through life. By understanding the interconnected nature, you can get unstuck, and respond from peace, rather than react from fear. Begin to move toward a balanced, healthy ecoCreative culture from the inside out. Learn how you can break through obstacles, enhance your creativity, renew your passion and strengthen your presence. Feel your purpose come alive and engage others with more potency. First, we apply the ecosystem understanding at an individual level, then apply it to your business. In the second year of this program, you learn to facilitate your team and influence your organization’s ecosystem culture. The five mindful moves activate the ecosystem by bringing awareness as follows: 1)Presence, 2) Passion, 3) Purpose, 4) Partnership and 5) Practice. The next five modules will focus on each of the five mindful moves. This first year is focused on deepening your experience as a wise, authentic leader to move from the inside out.
  2. Part 1 Month 2 Embody Presence – Often we lose connection and intimacy with our bodies and hearts. This intimacy provides wisdom for how to care for ourselves and the whole. When we lose our rhythm, we can place power outside of ourselves. It becomes easier to distract ourselves and stay busy and operate primarily from our heads. With all the media, we feel compelled to be “on” and are often directed toward thoughts and feelings with an undermining nature to control and gain influence over our opinions. When we do this, we forget our internal power, intuitive wisdom, and higher guidance and lose the joy of creating from our wholesome, interconnected, ecosystem nature. Moving as one requests us to connect and mindfully move from the inside out, and activate wise moves. Authentic, awakened self-care is an honest assessment and observation that can reveal what is really going on and illuminate unrest and dysfunctions that we may otherwise want to ignore. Awaken your presence with the first mindful move by connecting your body, brain, breath with nature. This integrates heart, soul, environment, and our interconnected nature. This mindful move is about being honest and getting off the treadmill of unhealthy, repetitive behaviors. This mindful move brings wisdom and self-knowledge; the true riches in life. Know thyself to enrich your presence; know you are a source of creations. This mindful move utilizes metal energy. This energy is represented in the season of Fall where days are shorter and the air is crisper. Metal energy is cold and contracting. It signifies loss and reduction, the process of refinement, but also the indestructible purity that remains. The season and the energy sheds light and helps us find the value in what has gone before while letting go of that which may impede our progress into the future. In this module, you will learn tools and techniques to apply when you want to balance your energy and become present. Learn practical ways to map where you are, let go, detach, observe and accept. Practice detachment and acceptance: “To be in the world, but not of it.” Rise above external distractions and tune-in to your natural rhythm. Become present in your body and breath and practice mindfulness to balance and manage your energy effectively. Identify thoughts, old paradigms, conditions and clutter that may impede progress, and clear away the old. Reflect and integrate your wisdom to consciously release energy and make room for what is next. As you learn to stop reacting and projecting, you make room for intuition, creativity, and higher guidance. This is a feminine, receptive, YIN energy. By being present to your natural rhythms, you allow new directions and continued growth.
  3. Part 1 Month 3 Renew Passion – This mindful move may be the most important; however, it is easily ignored because it requires you to open. As you stop the momentum of past conditioning, you open to the mystery, that which is not captured by thought. You connect with the space between chaos and order. You sit in-between with questions about your life. This may feel uncomfortable, as our human tendency is to want immediate solutions, to be somewhere, to restore balance and reestablish control. Instead, this phase is for inspiration and renewal of your passion. Renewal is felt as one’s mission and vision begins to reveal itself. As you tap into stillness and emptiness, your creative mind will activate. This is the phase for divergent thinking to explore and imagine new possibilities. It is a highly creative phase in which new ideas and solutions are imagined. Apply this phase when you want generative energy and an increase of flow and people in your life. In this module, you will learn the energy, actions, and awareness to bring this generative phase to life. Also, understand what destroys and separates. Explore how and why you are limiting yourself. Learn how to break thru limitations and open to a creative space, and practice mindful moves to integrate body, mind, and heart. Learn to tap into your natural energy and the power of your heart to awaken passion. Develop a keen sense of your body, mind, and heart as you open and integrate. Ask yourself questions and practice intuitive activities to bring higher guidance and wisdom to your awareness. This mindful move utilizes water energy and is associated with the season of Winter. Water is the energy of things moving downward and coming to rest; the energy of maximum concentration and stillness. Water glistens, roars, cleanses and is still, sometimes frozen. It represents both life and death – a bridge to rebirth. Water’s action is non-action and its form is no-form. Actions in the water cycle include breathing, forgiving, questioning, and receiving higher wisdom. Renewal is felt as one’s mission and vision begins to reveal itself. Apply water’s YIN energy when you want more peace, clarity of mind, and an increase of flow of people and cash in your life. Water brings us inspiration and renews our passion. Using this mindful move, you listen and renew from a generative place. Energize and empower from your heart’s wisdom and expand your capacity for creativity and enhance your awareness of who you are and what you can accomplish. This results in a renewed passion and mission.
  4. Part 1 Month 4 Emerge Purpose – This mindful move is associated with new beginnings. Once you’ve opened yourself to stillness and emptiness, you can choose the energy you want to move. After opening, notice what is emerging. You may notice possibilities around things that felt solid. Identify what is inspiring you now. This mindful move helps you feel young, energetic, clear, purposeful and motivated. By opening to joy, you broaden your purpose. Apply this mindful move when you want to add the energy of growth, expansion, and vitality to your work and life. In this module, you will learn tools and techniques to focus and form what you want to create. We move from the formless into consciously creating form. This is the phase for convergent thinking, to explore all the options then focus and formulate a clear vision and key focus areas to accomplish the results desired. In this phase, the act of visualization activates your right brain and verbalizing this vision helps to integrate your whole brain. Understand how to emerge a vision and create a dynamic and effortless flow of energy toward your vision. Words matter as they help to define and give form. Clear, integrated, and directed energy produces positive results. Ask and you shall receive. This mindful move utilizes wood energy. This energy is associated with the season of Spring and the energy of green and fresh, new buds of plants and plans signals growth. Wood energy is expansive, robust, tenacious and direct. It is movement and action with a firm sense of self. Wood is a catalyst; plans lead to decisions that further a change process. Learn when this is overused and gets out of balance. This energy can be overused if grasping and greed intentions are activated. Forming is a masculine and yang energy. Learn what destroys this phase. This third mindful move brings a sense of purpose and clarity for your emerging future. As an authentic leader, lead change from a holistic perspective. Align your goals with your purpose and make mindful and aware decisions.
  5. Part 1 Month 5 Engage Partnership – In this phase, it is time to activate your visions, engage them, and join with others. This cycle describes a stage of peak power, reaching a maximal stage of activity and co-creation. It helps bring more joy, engagement, and light. Apply this phase when you want to co-create more expansion, more connections and increase your recognition. It brings joy, passion, light, and warmth into your life. This fourth mindful move is one of action when plans are implemented through collaborative efforts. In this module, you will learn tools and techniques to enhance synergy and engage co-creation. In pure synergy, the whole becomes greater than the sum of each separate parts. The sensation of synergy is exciting and engaging. When you align with your visions, the results create synchronicities that feel like magic. This joining is a form of co-creation. This fourth mindful move utilizes fire energy and is associated with the season of Summer. Fire represents warmth, passion, pleasure, connections and relationships, the social aspects of our world. Activities involve increasing your charisma energy, implementing action steps, joining with others, and creating a gratitude vortex. In the Fire cycle, we celebrate that which will become. Also in this module, you will understand what destroys and inhibits engagement and the fire. Test your partnerships – do they have presence, passion, purpose? When there is an equal commitment, co-creating offers synergistic communication. Using this fourth mindful move, you engage others through clear communication and connected movements. Learn to convene right players, and understand and apply activities, communication, and structures to engage co-creation.
  6. Part 1 Month 6 Sustain Practice – This phase provides stability. It balances, centers and grounds especially in times of intense change. This energy hosts, contains, allows and supports living processes and is essential to our overall sense of well-being. Apply this mindful move when you want to slow down, become more centered, be at peace in the world, feel connected and stable. In this module, you will learn tools and techniques to turn new strategies into practice through the creation of ongoing systems, support, and sustainable efforts. Explore the body movements and changes in the environment that will balance this element. This mindful move utilizes earth energy and the harvest season at the end of summer. It balances, centers and grounds and provides stability in our lives, especially in times of intense life changes. Earth is the mother of life; it is a matrix that contains, allows, and supports living processes. Engaging the power of Earth calls us home where we feel at peace with the world. Sustaining earth activities include the ongoing practice of new habits and supportive routines. Connect with a coach or mentor to support your efforts. Clarify fears that may interfere and ways to manage them with clear boundaries that contain and engage the stability of Earth. Improving your physical environment and creating sacred space will help you maintain your practice awareness. How we move around our environment informs our movements. Knowing Feng Shui or the flow of energy within a space is important. The awareness from this fifth mindful move deepens your understanding of how to sustain new habits through practice. Learn to host yourself and others by providing a supportive environment to assist you in making changes. Pull it all together and put embodied principles into action. Forward your action, while deepening your process.
  7. Part 1 Month 7 Balance Business – Each business has its own unique ecosystem that begins from its initial creation. It includes all the aspects of your business including values, mission, product/service, strategic vision, financials, project implementation, teams, client relationships, business systems, and work environment. By understanding your business ecosystem, you are able to apply the five mindful moves to generate organic growth. This dynamic ecosystem operates best from a balanced movement. It is an extension of your inner ecosystem. We begin to balance your business by using the first mindful move to understand the business ecosystem. Learn to apply the energy, actions, and awareness and bring a sense of balance and “presence” to your business. Understand how to balance the yang (masculine) and yin (feminine) energies. This mindful move can release stuck energy, improve communications and stimulate projects. The starting point is assessing the current situation, knowing where your business is now and determining what we would like to be different. Before we can create a plan for moving forward, we must thoroughly understand where your business is now. In this phase, we map the current reality and identify the obstacles, challenges, and opportunities that exist in the current situation. This module provides a framework for creating and sustaining an inspired work life combined with a pragmatic focus on business and financial goals. Take an element assessment test to understand how to further balance your work elements for business symmetry. This provides a way to clearly assess and appreciate your business while redefining and refining your value. Draw upon the natural cycles for energy, support, balance, and wisdom. In particular, we draw upon the refinement energy of this mindful move. This brings wisdom and awareness and helps to open the energy for new directions and continued growth. Listen and attune to the highest wisdom of your business and prepare it to thrive. Focusing question: How is my business doing? Is my business aligned with my values? Where is it out of balance? How can it be strengthened?
  8. Part 1 Month 8 Money Paradigms – In this module, we explore your money paradigms and understand how this applies to your business ecosystem. Explore the relationship between the value of your business and the exchange of money. Understand your limiting money paradigms and map where you are in relation to your business. Money influences what you do, your work, how you conduct business and where you invest your time and money. Then apply the second mindful move to open and renew your business’s passion and mission. Explore and imagine new possibilities in this creative phase and bring forward inspired ideas. This phase provides your business with fresh, creative insights, and opens you to expanded possibilities. What is a paradigm? A paradigm is an assumption or way of thinking about yourself, someone else or circumstances – anything. We view our world based on our paradigms. It reflects our perception. Some of our paradigms are empowering – I’ve always been good with numbers or I’m a fast learner. However, some are limiting, such as I’m not good with money or I’m too busy to take time for. Limiting money paradigms can impact behaviors such as 1) the need to overwork and “get ahead”, 2) feeling like a victim or fear of your circumstances, and making decisions based on other’s authority, 3) longevity – staying with work that doesn’t satisfy you, or feeling captive to your organization (the proverbial “golden handcuffs”), and 4) imbalances and differences in leadership styles. The point is how you invest your time and money is influenced by ingrained paradigms and historical patterns within our collective consciousness. In this module, understand, explore, unpack, and break-through money paradigms to further engage your power. You can find your paradigms by looking at your circumstances, your disappointments over the last year and your feelings. Explore how you limit yourself and then dig deeper into the thoughts you are telling yourself to explain your frustrations or your failures. There is typically a limiting paradigm at work. We can be our own worst enemy. Joel Barker was the first person to popularize the concept of paradigm shifts for the corporate world. He began his work in 1975 after spending a year on fellowship meeting and working with visionary thinkers in both North America and Europe. He discovered that the concept of paradigms, which at that time was sequestered within the scientific discussion, could explain revolutionary change in all areas of human endeavor. By 1985, he had built the case and corporations and nations were seeking his advice. The Paradigm Effect: How paradigms keep you from seeing. Focusing question: What money paradigms can get things stuck? What is the passion of this business?
  9. Part 1 Month 9 Wise Decisions – How do you make wise decisions? The quick answer is to sense it in your gut and know it in your bones. Insights are seeing from within and feeling it in your body. In this module, you will learn and practice ways to improve your intuition and bring forth insights to know it in your bones. Learn to access universal wisdom and the “knowing field” with proven techniques to embody your wisdom. Continue to practice the second mindful move to open your business’s perspective, explore and imagine possibilities. This creative phase provides room for you to seek out new ideas and solutions and bring them forward. Crafting and asking good questions is an art. Learn how to ask questions that connect you with higher guidance, your intuitive wisdom, and Source energy. MIT’s presencing refers to this as 4th level listening. When you move beyond your mind that wants to debate, judge or be emotional, you can then listen from a generative place. Passion awareness happens when there is a union, an integration of separated parts. Awareness of the “heart of it all” puts emotion in motion. Access your body wisdom and renew your spirit by listening to Source. Remember why you are doing what you are doing and your mission will be renewed and enlivened. Remember your gifts, passions, latent abilities as you bring forth answers. This module provides you with decision process techniques that bring fresh ideas, intuitive insights, and creative options. Use these techniques again, and again to strengthen your decision-making process and expand your business potentials. As you clarify decisions that inspire your mission, you are propelled into the third mindful move to form clear business strategies. Focusing question:What is the mission that guides this business forward? What inspirations are rising within me that can provide innovative business solutions?
  10. Part 1 Month 10 Strategic Vision – After exploring inspired options, a clear picture of what you are trying to create begins to emerge. In this phase, you move your business into the third mindful move and formulate a strategic vision of what your business wants to accomplish. Being strategic with a vision gives direction to your business. Clear, integrated and directed energy produces better results when aligned with a higher purpose and your values. This sense of purpose will initiate action and synergy with co-creative forces. Visionary leaders see the big picture and inspire and engage others with this vision. Many leaders have a vision, but what sets the best leaders apart is their ability to develop and advance that vision into action and results. Being able to strike a balance between dreaming about and implementing a vision with short and long-term goals brings success. This is referred to as “gold-time management”. In this module, you develop a clear one-page plan for the year to focus on the gold, with measurable and pragmatic goals to set your year into action. In defining a realistic, credible, attractive future for your business, a vision provides the rationale for both the mission and the goals the business should pursue. This vision helps you to stay focused, make tough decisions, and execute strategy, always aiming for clearly defined outcomes of performance and success. Focusing question: What is the vision for future business growth? What are key attitudes and goals needed to embrace change and growth?
  11. Part 1 Month 11 Activate Movement – At this point, you’re ready to move into the tactical phase of the process. Knowing all your roles and responsibilities needed to manage your business, you activate your implementation plan with key milestones and timelines to keep the vision moving forward. As the vision comes to fruition, you receive a host of new information and a deeper understanding of co-creation. Activities include: identifying inspired next steps and taking action. Naming and envisioning your desired creations daily and consciously committing. Expressing and communicating clearly through different channels. In this module, you will incorporate “art of connection” techniques to join with others, clarify their roles and responsibilities and support dynamic communication. Test your partnerships – do they have presence, passion, purpose? Co-creating develops partner awareness and offers opportunities to practice engaging and connective communication. Draw upon the fire energy to create more expansion, more connections and increase your recognition. Practice gratitude and celebrate success along the way. Monitor the strength of your energy, gratitude and inspired actions to maximize your business activity and synchronicity. Focusing question: Am I successfully engaging others? How can I better maintain synergy?
  12. Part 1 Month 12 Integrate Environment – This is the cycle when new strategies turn into practice through the creation of ongoing systems, support, and sustainable efforts. In this module, learn how to optimize your business and your environment using Feng Shui principles. Utilize earth energy to identify supportive routines and practice your new habits. Learn specific tips and techniques that will positively influence your business and create more support and harmony in your work environment. Within your work environment, there are related areas associated with each part of your business including the mission, vision, innovation, partnerships, team, wealth, recognition and marketing, systems, as well as vendors and supportive people. Understand the basic baguas of your environment and on your desktop. Know the importance of your office door. Learn how to stimulate and change areas that are blocked. By applying this art, you can create intentional change and positive energy flow. Our natural creative cycles are interconnected and related to your office environment. How you move around the room influences your brain, your body activities and interactions with others. Understand the impact of your outer environment on your business success. Watch your work become fulfilling, productive and prosperous. In addition, you will learn to host others with supportive environments that will assist change and develop new routines. Try out specific techniques that will influence others. Identify a supportive person you can trust and connect with to move through fears, create healthy boundaries, and stay on track. Focusing question: What does my office space reflect? What adjustments will support business growth?

Authentic Leadership – Part 2- Year 2Appleton Greene

  1. Part 2 Month 1 Facilitate Ecosystem – In this second year, learn to facilitate teams and improve the culture of the organization using the Authentic Leadership system. Now that you have learned to attune to natural wisdom and strengthen your presence as a wise, authentic leader, you can improve your facilitation practices to transform others. Learn to apply the 5 phases to mobilize the mental, physical, and emotional forces of our human potential. Work from the inside out beginning with individual leadership, progressing to team productivity, then addressing organizational effectiveness and customer partnership. This module provides an overview of the creative process and the natural elements you can bring to your facilitation process for whole culture transformation. Blend your facilitation practices with the Authentic Leadership system assessment tools, activities, movements, meditations that will integrate the energy, actions, and ecosystem awareness. Deepen conversations by applying key questions and movements to strengthen team synergy and improve the group’s momentum. Each team has its own unique ecosystem. It stems from the presence, passion, and purpose of each member, along with all the different experiences that individual members bring into the mix. By gaining awareness of the whole team’s ecosystem you can understand what you need and what others need. It stimulates your self-awareness to balance drive with value, and stimulates facilitation approaches to move the group through blocks and organically grow. In the following modules, you will practice facilitating others by understanding how the creative and destructive laws of nature play out in teams, organizations, systems; Identifying imbalances within team dynamics and environments; inspiring creativity and productivity by unleashing the natural flow of life force; creating synergy based on balanced replenishment and expenditure; and applying practical ways to influence whole system change. Authentic Leadership is an organic, ecoCreative system that empowers leaders and teams. This system cultivates a wholistic, eco-system perspective and aligns presence, passion, purpose, and partnership for remarkably enhanced performance.
  2. Part 2 Month 2 Team Presence – The most effective way to improve a strategic position is to bring forth and build on the inherent leadership qualities as individuals and a group. This means more than just rearranging processes or controlling what people do; it means enhancing their awareness of who they are and what they can accomplish. Developing potential means motivating employees to go beyond their ordinary level of performance and bring out their expanded capacity for creativity, cooperation, and leadership. We begin by guiding individual team member’s to be present to who they are using the first mindful move. This involves connecting individuals within to release stress and be present; clarify their unique ecosystem personality on the team using a short assessment questionnaire; identify where each member is now in relation to where they would like to be and what they would like to accomplish; and develop a sense of responsibility for their attitudes, words, and actions as an individual and as a group. Together, we presence and map the team relationships using embodiment activities to experience and see the group as a whole team. As a group, we co-sense where we are, the current situation and determine what we would like to be different. As we observe, imbalances and areas that block movement are identified. We co-sense obstacles, challenges, and opportunities that exist in the current situation. Our team presence is realized. The facilitation quality to cultivate for this phase is embodied equipoise. By beginning each meeting with this sense of presence, you are able to guide the group toward balance and equipoise. Individuals feel seen and witnessed for their essential selves. Focusing questions: How are we doing? Are we aligned with our values? Where are we out of balance? How can we strengthen? Map a personal assessment with all members of the team individually: What is your understanding of your role within the team; What are your likes and dislikes about your work; What areas of your work are bringing you satisfaction or dissatisfaction; What are your strengths and weaknesses, skills and abilities; What are your thoughts, feelings, values, beliefs, and assumptions; Do you feel that there is anything in the way of expanding your growth potential; How comfortable are you with making changes and taking risks; What role are your thoughts, words, and actions playing in the current situation. Map an assessment of the team as a group: What is the team’s role and function in the organization; What’s working well; What’s not working well; What are the specific obstacles and challenges; How are we responding to these obstacles and challenges; Are we working as one team or are we pursuing different goals; What systems, technologies, and processes are involved; Do any of our processes, practices, or technologies need to be updated, simplified, or reorganized; What role are our attitudes and actions playing in the current situation.
  3. Part 2 Month 3 Group Creativity – In this module, you will learn to facilitate and inspire the group’s creativity by unleashing the natural flow of life force. Apply activities to breakthrough old collective paradigms and archaic relationship/organizational models that continue to pull upon the success of your team. Based on eastern wisdom, open the acupuncture points of the group and practice new team movements to be curious and playful. Remove barriers to effective team communication by identifying, sharing, and releasing reactive attitudes about perceived limits and frustrations. Guide the group to listen to source energy through mindful movements. As the members of the team claim their strengths, passions, and goals, they become eager to come forth and offer these resources for achieving the common task. Facilitate the team to explore innovative products and solutions using creative problem-solving skills and a “yes and” mindset needed for synergistic performance. Guide the group to shift from co-sensing the current reality to co-presencing the emerging future. Through creative play and deep listening, the group moves from where they currently operate and opens to where new possibilities are revealed. The facilitation quality to cultivate for this phase is compassionate emptiness. This quality invites generative listening and allows the creative spirit to move through the group. Open each member of the team to new approaches and opportunities: What would your ideal workday look like; What are your personal passions and desires for fulfillment and accomplishment; What are your opportunities for professional development and achievement; How can you expand the energy you bring to your work (i.e. changes in diet, exercise, sleep, childcare and workspace.); How can you open your imagination to exploring your unlimited potential; How would you feel if you could make any changes you wanted to in your work; What creative new options could you imagine, if you could do absolutely anything you wanted to. Open the team to new approaches and opportunities: What can we learn about alternative practices that might offer improvements; What can we learn about the practices of other teams in the industry; Are there any other alternatives to our existing practices, systems, and approaches; How can our team contribute more to the organization (both within and outside of its current charter); What new practices, approaches, and potentials can we imagine, if this team could do anything we wanted to do.
  4. Part 2 Month 4 Shared Direction – After opening the team to creative and inspired options, clarity begins to emerge from the group’s highest wisdom. Building upon this magnetic approach, facilitate the team to develop a clear vision and shared direction for the future. Formulate and crystalize a strategic and purposeful vision for what your team wants to create and accomplish in the next 3-5 years. Authentic Leadership is based on the principle that the key to moving an organization forward is to establish a clear, unified vision based on the values and passions of all the individuals, teams, systems, and alliances involved. The most successful teams are made up of empowered individuals who come together strong and whole to join in creating a common vision. A strong, successful team is one that flies together toward a unified direction like a flock of geese. In this module, facilitate the team to reach alignment from the inside out. Next, develop a one-page plan for the current year and arrive at consensus on vital issues. Create and commit to a plan for success based on mutual support. Clarify visible leadership on specific projects with measurable and pragmatic goals for each team member. The facilitation quality to cultivate for this phase is wise attention. This quality directs the group to embrace higher wisdom to crystalize purpose and clarify decisions. Transform your team into an integrated, dynamic force that consistently performs with leadership, innovation, and excellence, by: Increasing trust, acceptance, and cooperation between team members; Building a sense of being a part of a larger, supportive whole; Establishing a clear vision and team identity as a unified force; Identifying each member’s essential role in the team as a whole. Focusing questions: What is our emerging vision for future growth? What are key attitudes and goals we need to embrace change and growth? Frame each individual’s vision of their larger career potential: What ideas from phase two can be grouped together under one topic; What ideas from phase two feel the most important; What larger vision of your potential can you see emerging from this evaluation process; What do you want to achieve or create within five years; What do you want to achieve or create by the time you retire; What do you really want to accomplish in life (Write a vision statement.); How can you create a tangible reminder of this vision; Frame the team’s vision of its larger potential within the organization; What ideas from phase two can be grouped together into specific projects or subject areas; How can we rate these projects or subject areas by satisfaction or performance level; Which of these ideas can have the most significant impact on the organization as a whole; Which of these opportunities do we really want to pursue as a team; What larger vision of the team’s potential can we see emerging from this process; How can we combine our individual strengths and perspectives to create an integrated vision of what we want to accomplish; What do we really want to accomplish (Write a vision and mission statement.); How can we create a tangible reminder of this vision.
  5. Part 2 Month 5 Engage Co-Creation – In this module, you will incorporate more engagement activities to join others and improve the team’s ability to effectively collaborate and grow. Draw upon the fire energy for more expansion and recognition and assist the workings of the team to be harmonious, focused and efficient. Strengthen the fire within each member’s belly and develop a gratitude vortex by celebrating success often. Utilize the qualities of a good dance partnership to produce harmony and synergy. This includes clear roles, shared structure, and equal engagement by each team member. Guide the team to integrate head, heart, hands, and hips through dynamic communication. In this phase, you move the team into the tactical phase. Clarify each member’s monthly goals and activate the implementation plan. Be able to translate high-level strategy into specific actions. Keep the vision moving forward with key milestones and timelines. As you gain traction and the vision comes alive, a stronger bond of trust develops amongst the team members. The facilitation quality to cultivate for this phase is generous joy. This quality expands the connective qualities for engagement within and between others. Engage the team not by telling them what to do, but inspiring them to be part of a team that makes a difference. Shift attitudes from “I have to” to “I want to”. Liberate them to achieve the vision’s purpose. Focusing question:
Are we successfully engaging others? How can we better maintain synergy? Develop and execute a plan to accomplish the individual’s vision: What do you want to create in the next year, based on the long-range goals that you identified in the last phase; What practical steps will be needed to achieve these goals; How can you break your goals down into smaller steps; How do you plan to achieve each of these smaller steps; What is your schedule and your key milestones for achieving your goals; What rewards can you build into the process to celebrate your achievements and inspire further progress; How can you make sure that your plans and timelines are flexible and able to change in response to unexpected circumstances; How can you locate supporters or mentors who can help you achieve your goals. Develop and execute a plan to accomplish the team’s vision: What are our objectives for the next five years; What are our objectives for the next year; Who will be responsible for each aspect of these objectives; What role will each member of the team play in achieving these objectives; What tactical steps will be required to implement these objectives; How can we break our objectives down into smaller, tangible goals; What is our timeline and our key milestones for achieving these goals; What rewards can we build into the process to mark our accomplishments and encourage further progress; How can we make sure that our plans and timelines are flexible and able to change in response to unexpected circumstances; How can we use our leadership skills to inspire others to support our plan.
  6. Part 2 Month 6 Team Environment – Overall, this cycle is about creating ongoing systems and sustainable efforts for a positive team environment. Practice hosting team meetings with a circle atmosphere where the playing field is level. Facilitate them to identify changes in their shared environment to support the team’s routines and new habits. In this module, utilize the earth energy to continue to expand the group’s awareness for the environment that surrounds them. Guide them to notice the flow in the environment and how the team moves around and connects in shared gathering places. Explore meetings rooms and their ability to inspire their creative connections. Discuss with your team Feng Shui principles including the importance of the front door, and the related baguas associated with the mission, vision, innovation, partnerships, team, wealth, recognition and marketing, systems, as well as vendors and supportive people. Identify, stimulate and change areas that are blocked. Guide each person to optimize their office environment. The facilitation quality to cultivate for this phase is wholesome stability. This quality hosts a holding space and begins to develop an ecocreative culture for all to thrive. When members leave the team’s circle, they bring the continued strength and substance they created together to their individual offices. Focusing questions: How can we best support the team? What does our office environment reflect? What adjustments will support team growth?
  7. Part 2 Month 7 Organization Effectiveness – Once a team breaks out of the reactive mode and starts working together synergistically, its members begin to focus on the long-range view and how they can further improve their team’s effectiveness by extending their new level of synergy to the larger systems of which they are a-part of. Authentic Leadership begins to transform the cultural environment of the organization as a whole, as the empowered team reaches out to its internal customers, suppliers, and associates to extend its own renewal to the larger system. By hosting group learning conversations, you as the facilitator along with the original team members lead the way in moving the entire organization to a more productive—and therefore more profitable—position. Stimulate and engage group across departments in spirited conversations that matter. Through learning conversations, individuals and groups are guided to a co-creative atmosphere and innovative solutions. Co-creative conversations create the world. They blur the boundaries between ego and eco. Participants are moved to scale up from personal stuck-ness to a natural ecosystem and address challenges and questions in real-life situations. Through dialogue and interaction, you as a facilitator will move the group through the 5 phases to increase their presence, passion, purpose and further their partnership engagement. These fun, fresh, insightful learning conversations guide others to “play” with obstacles, enrich interactions, deepen communication, and create the future together. These conversations inspire wisdom within that is present and accessible, and set intentions into motion. Participants listen, laugh, feel inspired, and strengthen connections, and leave lighter, clearer, and wiser. Great for both large and small groups, learning conversations are flexible and can be used for many different purposes—information sharing, relationship building, deep reflection exploration, and action planning. Collecting the wisdom of a group involves the following assumptions: The knowledge and wisdom we need is present and accessible; Collective insight evolves from honoring unique contributions; connecting ideas; listening into the middle; noticing deeper themes and questions; The intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways. The opportunities for the organization include: Exploring ways to improve communication and processes throughout the organization; Seeding the transformation of other working teams throughout the system; Exploring how to serve the needs of internal clients in more productive and effective ways; Reaching deeper into the leadership abilities of each member of the original team; Including customers, suppliers, and associates in these learning conversations to design improved processes, systems, and ways of interacting; Designing systems that help employees remain proactive rather than lapsing into reactive habits; Asking strategic questions, such as: “What makes sense for the whole organization?” and “How will the company benefit?”; Acting as an internal catalyst for positive changes that result in a more integrated, unified organization.
  8. Part 2 Month 8 Organization Culture – Observe and acknowledge your organization’s culture together in a learning conversation. Each organization has its own unique organizational culture that starts at inception. It stems from the vision of their own leaders along with all the different experiences that individual members bring into the mix, including stakeholders and partners. This creates a dynamic, living and breathing eco-system. Using a short assessment tool, explore with the group the organization’s culture. Listen to what your organization needs by understanding these patterns of culture. When our inner and outer ecosystems out of balance it impacts all who participate within the ecosystem. By gaining awareness of the whole organization’s system the group understands what is needed. It stimulates an awareness to balance drive with value, and innovative approaches to move through blocks and organically grow. Using the Authentic Leadership system, this natural ecosystem, guide learning conversations to dialogue into a deeper, meaningful experience. As we connect with others using this ecosystem our human, spiritual, and environmental values are remembered. Groups can open creatively, hear all voices, improve collaboration, and make better decisions. We all have a part to play in developing healthy ecosystems. Apply what you learn to enhance teamwork and support a thriving organization. For this learning conversation you put focused attention on the first mindful move to map where you are and build upon the awareness of presence of the organization using the facilitation quality of embodied equipoise and energy of metal. Find the acupuncture points and learn to facilitate the ecological, spiritual and social centers within the organization. They exist in each member’s body, as well as the external world. Apply mindful movements that will influence these three centers and support a thriving organization. Gain confidence in influencing and pollinating change from the inside out. Focusing questions: How are we doing? Where are we out of balance? How can we strengthen our ecological, spiritual and social centers?
  9. Part 2 Month 9 Money Ecosystems – Explore and open a conversation about money ecosystems and the world’s economy. Facilitate learning conversations using the Authentic Leadership system to expand perspectives while exploring the world’s movements. Master the art of broadening and deepening the definition of the problem to get all the relevant parties, who need one another to change any system, committed to participate. Complex problems require complex solutions. When you understand your view of the money world and view of others, you approach challenging conversations differently. Exploring money ecosystems together allows you to discern the influences on your own worldview and allows you to consider how someone else sees and experiences the world. It provides a new approach and language that gets a different outcome. Limiting money paradigms can impact behaviors. How you invest your time and money as an organization is influenced by ingrained paradigms and historical patterns within our collective consciousness. In this module, we explore the group’s interconnected money ecosystems and understand how this applies to your organization’s ecosystem. Explore the relationship between the value of your organization and the exchange of money. Utilize the quick assessment tool to understand individual money paradigms and limiting paradigms in relation to others in the organization. Money influences how the organization conducts business. Then apply the second mindful move to open and renew your organization’s passion. Explore and imagine new possibilities in this creative phase and bring forward inspired ideas. Meeting in this way changes the conversation and this changes the outcome. Approach the conversation with awareness of money paradigms to explore the world’s economy. This phase provides the group with fresh, creative insights, and opens the group to expanded possibilities. Focusing question:
What money paradigms can get things stuck? What is the passion of this organization? For this learning conversation you place focused attention on the second mindful move to open perspectives and build upon the awareness of passion using the facilitation quality of compassionate emptiness and energy of water.
  10. Part 2 Month 10 Align Eco-Partners – As internal teams become more productive, their members realize that they possess the power to make any system more effective. They begin to apply their new skills in “moving as one” (thinking in unified terms) to the challenges posed by the external environment, such as establishing strategic alliances and leading the marketplace. Authentic Leadership engages the participants to join with their external customers, suppliers, and stakeholders to build strong partnerships that provide the company with greater market power. In these learning conversations, you emerge inspired and shared visions and values amongst your chosen eco-partners, those that share systemic thinking. As you open the group conversations to creative and inspired options, clarity begins to emerge from the group’s highest wisdom. Building upon this magnetic approach, facilitate the group to develop a clear vision and shared direction for the future. Formulate and crystalize a strategic and purposeful vision for what your organization along with their eco-partners want to create and accomplish in the next 3-5 years. Focusing questions: What is our emerging vision for future growth? What are key attitudes and goals we need to embrace change and growth? These learning conversations in this module are particularly focused on the third mindful move to clarify vision, and build upon the awareness of purpose using the facilitation quality of wise attention and energy of wood.
  11. Part 2 Month 11 Cross-Weave Networks – In this module, you will incorporate more engagement activities to join others and cross-weave your networks. Expand your connections by weaving together networks from key members. Gather across sectors and facilitate more learning conversations. Draw upon the fire energy for more expansion and recognition to effectively collaborate and grow. The opportunities include: Applying unified thinking to the global marketplace and economy; Exploring ways to establish leadership in the marketplace; Bringing customers into learning conversations to improve their satisfaction and loyalty; Bringing suppliers along to improve their commitment and joint productivity; Bringing other stakeholders into the Authentic Leadership process as needed to take advantage of their perspectives and address their concerns; Developing other strategic alliances and partnerships to provide greater profitability, innovation, and market power; Becoming aware of the impact of external forces and the global economy on the company’s decisions and actions. In this module, you focus primarily on the fourth mindful move to engage co-creation, and build upon the awareness of partnership using the facilitation quality of generous joy and energy of fire. Celebrate these cross-weave networks. Guide the groups to strengthen their fire by integrating head, heart, hands, and hips for expansive, dynamic communication. Focusing question: How can we weave together our connections? How can we better engage others and maintain synergy?
  12. Part 2 Month 12 Host EcoCreation – To further integrate with the earth, align with its cycles. We have many beginning and endings. Notice the seasons, as well as the moon cycles, and utilize the strength of these cycles to build upon your organization’s rhythm. Always be in dialogue with the universe. The universe and the larger context that surrounds us provides useful feedback. Observing the whole in terms of the ecological, social/emotional, and the spiritual/higher wisdom, broaden your facilitation skills to impact systemic change. Become a master ecoCreator and cross-pollinator by embodying all the elements for whole culture transformation. In this module, you synthesize all five mindful moves with specific emphasis on the fifth mindful move to sustain momentum and embody wholesome stability. Overall, the intentions for this program is to: restore the integrity of body, mind, heart, and soul; help balance YIN (feminine) and YANG (masculine) energies; develop and nourish our intuitive wisdom; release old paradigms of confusion and blind-spots; heal wounds of imbalance; enable self-compassion; and finally, align with love, to co-create a better world together! Focusing questions: How can we best support a systemic change? How can we shift our organization to an ecoCreative culture for all to thrive?