Courage to Lead : A Circle of Trust® Retreat

“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 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® 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.

The Courage & Renewal approach in Circle of Trust retreats help you become a more self-aware, wholehearted leader. You will experience the time and space to:

• Pause, be still, and disconnect from technology and the demanding pace of life while reconnecting with self, the land and community

• Seek clarity in your vocation and sense of purpose and cultivate the courage and stamina to rise to today’s challenges

• Honor both successes and struggles in your professional and personal life

• Witness and be witnessed, listen and be listened to – without performance evaluation, “statusizing”, or ego

• Recognize and value the genuine in yourself and others

• Strengthen your skill to ask open-ended questions that help others uncover their own inner wisdom

• Expanded capacity to be fully present to others in ways that affirm and heal

• Greater confidence to seek or create communities of support

• Move beyond either-or thinking into holding opposing 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 core values and 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.

In Circle of Trust® retreats, skilled facilitators help create a trustworthy and intentional space—a circle of trust—in which the noise within us and around us can subside, where introspection becomes possible.  This allows us to shift from a dominant perspective of leadership that prioritizes external authorities and helps us lead from within.  In large groups, small groups, and solitary settings, we will explore the many intersections of life and leadership. Using multiple ways of knowing and being, we will reflect on our leadership experiences with insights from poets, storytellers, artists, various wisdom traditions, and time on the land.

During the retreat, we’ll have valuable time to focus, without distraction, on what matters, especially our values and vision, challenges and fears. We’ll learn principles and practices from the Courage & Renewal approach that can be applied to life and leadership, helping us stay true to who we are even in the tough times. And we’ll connect with others seeking similar insights, who listen fiercely and honor each other’s identity and integrity.

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 Circle of Trust® 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 

Maximum number of participants = 18