2006 Authentic Leadership Summer Program

Women and Leadership: Life Cycles, Power, and Work with Beth Jandernoa, Glennifer Gillespie & Barbara Coffman-Cecil

To set out boldly in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.”  —David Whyte

Many women find that in the process of striving to succeed in work they have developed only part of who they are while leaving vital aspects of themselves behind. In the midst of substantial achievement women often report feeling empty, burnt out or invisible. Over the past 20 years we have found ways to help women access their reservoir of presence and to bring forward a fuller expression of themselves. We guide women in the journey towards mastering the relationship between inner dynamics and work/life challenges.

In this module we will focus on each woman’s individual journey and help you discover where you are in your current life cycle.

Together we will

• identify women’s life and workplace challenges
• understand the different archetypal dimensions of your self
• deal with some of the barriers that stop you from being fully yourself
• strengthen your undeveloped capabilities
• use a symbols process to see your current situation from different archetypal perspectives and reshape it to release the potential that you see emerging

We work experientially using dialogic and four quarter models, together with story, imaginative and kinesthetic exercisesm, to access the whole self. We use short presentations, small and large group dialogues, video, journaling and a symbols process to delve into the relationship between inner dynamics and outer expression.

This module is for women who are ready for a deeper experience of mastery in personal presence and authority.

Women who attend this module are asked to bring symbols representing different aspects of their current lives, such as work, relationships, family, and so on.

“Now I become myself. It has taken time, many years and places. I have been dissolved and shaken, worn other people’s faces.” —May Sarton

Beth Jandernoa, Glennifer Gillespie and Barbara Coffman-Cecil lead the “Coming Into Your Own” and “Young Women’s Mentoring” programs. The design, experimental, and research phases of these programs were funded by the Fetzer Institute. The research revealed remarkable results in participants' lives, which were tracked over five years.

Beth Jandernoa is an organizational consultant who divides her time between the U.S. and South Africa. Beth established and directed a Corporate College for Executive Leadership for a healthcare company with 50,000 employees in the mid-1980s and has been working with leadership development and large systems change in business, education, government, healthcare and community non-profits for the past twenty years. She is on the faculty for the Society for Organizational Learning and for the Presencing course with Otto Scharmer.

Glennifer Gillespie lives and works in U.S. and South Africa. She lived in an intentional community for sixteen years and has at various times in her life worked as a teacher, journalist, film and theater critic and at improving the quality of education in the disadvantaged communities of South Africa. She is has been a faculty member and coach on the Dialogos ten-month “Leadership for Collective Intelligence” program for the past eight years, while continuing to explore and practice a lifelong interest in the evolution of human consciousness and women’s ways of being.

Barbara Coffman-Cecil walks into widespread systems breakdown with the organizational learning skills needed to reach through to underlying possibility. Currently she is consulting with a council of health care CEOs entertaining radical change. She spearheaded movement into uncensored media in the Soviet Union and South Africa, was the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities at California State University (Long Beach), taught for The American Leadership Forum and countless senior leadership programs, and has developed a dynamic coaching program for people in transition. Ten years in a dedicated women’s circle have opened new ways of holding the dynamics of our time, which give good reason for hope.

The Ashland Institute website has more information on these women and their work.

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