2006 Authentic Leadership Summer Program

Survival Toolkit for Managers and Leaders: Cultivating Wise & Compassionate Action Under Pressure with Geoff Crinean and Wendy Palmer

As managers and leaders in today's organizations, we often find ourselves in an impossible squeeze. The wish to create and maintain a sane environment for the people we work with sometimes seems impossible in the face of organizational pressures to increase efficiency and improve results. We live and work in an environment of constant change and increasing stress. In many larger organizations, ambiguity and frustration are sometimes added to the mix. Some leaders absorb this stress personally, by working longer hours and coming close to burnout. Others pass it on to other employees, with varying levels of distancing, aggression, or even bullying.

In this module you will learn tools and practices that will help you keep your sanity and grow your confidence, compassion, and sense of humor as you deal with your organizational challenges. You will learn how to recognize the difference between a centered self and an ego-oriented reactive self. Centering synchronizes the body and mind, unifies energy, and increases your capacity to move freely and appropriately into action or stillness. Centering is also the first step in tuning into the environment, or field, in a way that enables you to proceed with wisdom and flexibility.

An experiential format will include practices for centering under pressure and tuning in to the field, role plays for responding to challenging interactions, exercises for deepening insight into personal reactive patterns and limiting assumptions, and presentations and discussion of key concepts from Western science and Buddhist psychology.

Geoff Crinean, PhD, is President of Business Insight International and is a certified business and life coach and workshop leader who has been consulting with and mentoring people in business for 30 years in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, and Australia. In parallel with his business life, for the past 30 years Geoff has studied and practiced meditation and the principles of Buddhism, as taught by some of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters of our time. He leads workshops on leadership principles, awareness development, and life fulfillment.  He co-led, with Margaret Wheatley, the module "Radical Leadership" at the 2004 and 2005 Authentic Leadership Summer Program.

Wendy Palmer has been teaching classes in Conscious Embodiment and Intuition Training for 25 years and has practiced Aikido and meditation for 33 years. She is a sixth-degree Black Belt in Aikido and is co-founder and teacher at Aikido of Tamalpais in Mill Valley, California. Wendy is author of The Intuitive Body: Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice (North Atlantic Press, 1994) and The Practice of Freedom: Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide (Rodmell Press, 2002).  She co-led, with Grady McGonagill, the workshop "Leading from your Center: Aligning Mind, Body, and Action" at the 2005 Authentic Leadership Summer Program.

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