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Tonight I begin offering a 3-session series in Salt Lake City, three hours for each of the next three Mondays. I’m hosting it with my friend and colleague Kinde Nebeker. It is called the Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership.
What “Evolutionary Leadership” means is one of the questions that we will engage. What’s different about that? What does that naming open up for us? What skills are needed? What dispositions? What practices? It is important to me to hold this term with some softness, just as it is with most other terms. It isn’t the precise definition that matters. Rather, it is our ability to be in relationship with those words as a symbol of something that is dynamic.
This series builds on what Kinde and I offered last October, some of which is harvested in the above photo.
Our focus for the first session is on the inner work of showing up. Presence is a central theme. Why presence now? What’s going on in the world that makes this important in and for any of us? What are the many ways that we can increase or practice our presence? What is one simple practice?
The second session will turn attention to the outer of hosting and convening people. Asking good questions. Creating ways for people to turn to one another. Harvesting.
The third session will give attention to integrating the inner and the outer. No, that is not perfect — I don’t want to unintentionally claim it to be so. In fact, one of the underlaying premises for me is that we must become more comfortable with uncertainty. No matter what we do in our jobs, in our families, and in our communities there remains fundamental uncertainty. I would suggest our efforts to ignore this or deny this create a lot of stress and misdirection together as we build programs and initiatives to remove something that can’t be removable. We don’t talk about that much, yet it feels essential.
I like the feeling of this beginning. Kinde is an excellent companion to work with. Ready, go.
