Courage to Lead® in Uncertain Times

“Leadership is a concept we often resist.  It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders.  But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not.  When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.”   ~ Parker J. Palmer

Are you actively engaged in creating communities rooted in justice, peace and ecological responsibility?  Are you passionate about your vocation or cause and trying to sustain yourself in these complex and uncertain times? 

While the forces of exhaustion, loneliness, violence, and injustice are real and undeniable, so are the powers of human authenticity, generosity, courage, and community that rise up to meet them.

Courage to Lead® in Uncertain Times is a rare opportunity to slow down and deepen connections with kindred spirits and committed peers. This event will support courageous change makers to understand how their unique gifts can meet the needs of their communities while exploring questions of importance in their life and leadership.  

Circle of Trust® retreats help you become a more self-aware, wholehearted leader. You will experience the time and space to:

• Pause and disconnect from the fast pace and distractions of daily life
• Engage in self-reflection, invitational large and small group sharing, multiple ways of knowing and being, and other contemplative practices designed to support access to inner wisdom
• Seek clarity in your vocation and sense of purpose and cultivate the courage and stamina to rise to today’s challenges
• Shift from a leadership model of comparison and critique to awareness and attunement to self and others
• Strengthen your skill to ask open-ended questions 
• Expand your capacity to be present in ways that affirm and heal
• Move beyond either-or thinking into holding multiple truths and complexity 
• Stay grounded in your own integrity and inherent worth

The Courage & Renewal approach helps us actively and intentionally choose to nurture ways of being with ourselves and one another that move against the violent, oppressive forces that create personal and societal division. Instead, we choose to embody practices that move us towards personal and societal wholeness, embracing the genuine within us, and honoring the inherent worth and dignity of every being. These are not choices we make just once, but ones that must be made time and again–for ourselves and our community.

This retreat is open to emerging and seasoned leaders from diverse fields and is designed to help participants renew their passion and enthusiasm and commitment toward their leadership and community. Past participants have included leaders from nonprofit, government and corporate sectors, educators, activists, clergy, coaches, social workers, mental health practitioners, and others. Leadership can also be reflected in the ways that we show up in the world through our professional, family, or community life.

We can return to Circle of Trust® retreats again and again; each experience offering new possibilities, helping us discover what brings true meaning to our lives.

This retreat is modeled on the Courage & Renewal® approach developed by Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal.  You can learn more about “Circles of Trust” at www.couragerenewal.org or in Parker Palmer’s book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.

“Courage to Lead was by far one of the best professional development experiences I have had. The skills I learned have helped me in my workplace, in work I do in the community, and in my personal life.”  –Past participant, Courage to Lead

“We reflected on how to contribute to an increasingly fractured world without getting lost in hopelessness at the magnitude of the issues facing us. It is this practice of resiliency that I feel is so essential for young leaders and activists to develop “  -Past participant, Courage to Lead

“This teaching reminds me to tend to myself and my health first so that I can be my best professional self. Through tending to our own inner selves and concentrating on what we can influence and control–how we see, speak, and move throughout the world–we can create an unquantifiable ripple of change and influence.” –Past participant, Courage to Lead