Businesses today are long on managers and short on leaders. As a result they are investing mightily in leadership development… or what they think is leadership development.

Specifically, they focus on the external, on what can be seen, quantified, standardized and learned by rote — a defined set of behaviors in the form of skills, tactics, techniques, competencies and strategies. And while this “cookie cutter” approach might work for developing supervisors or managers, it is neither sufficient nor of the first order when it comes to developing leaders.

We help people become someone others will follow because of their strength at their core and power of their path, rather than because of their job title, position, or ability to invoke fear.

Leaders Walk is an insight-generating machine, and while we can’t tell you exactly what lights will go on for you during your walking, we guarantee many will…and that they will transform you in good ways.

Leaders Walk Uses 5 Simple Points That Teach You How to Learn, As Well As How to Lead 

Every story, every session, is designed to spark a conversation that engages your mind, heart and soul. They will all stand alone, yet still be way points on a continuing arc. You will walk away from each session, not with a neatly wrapped up package and point of learning, but with threads of knowledge that draw you to your own wisdom. If you remain open and curious, and follow the threads, you will learn something fresh, tangible, and transformative to your life and relationships and impactful on your career.  (Click on the bars below to read more about each point.)

[bra_toggle collapsable=”no” caption=”I.  We Are a Journey…Not a Destination”]

“Sherpa” means “Easterner” in Tibetan, and the sherpas who settled there 450 years ago are a peace-love people from the Eastern show of the plateau. They are also compulsive travelers. “In Sherpa-country,  every track is marked with cairns and prayer-flags as a reminder that Man’s real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.” — Bruce Chatwin, “What Am I doing Here?”

Leaders Walk is a journey. It’s an opportunity to challenge your ideas, assumptions, models and maps, and see the world with fresh eyes. It will provoke, inspire, disturb and dare you. It will press you to answer the key questions about your life and work.

• What brought you to now?
• What results do you want to create going forward?
• What people, challenges, or thoughts do you run from?
• What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
• What sustains you from the inside out when things fall apart?

“The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of ‘ideas,’ of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions.” – Peter Matthiessen, “The Snow Leopard”

 

[/bra_toggle] [bra_toggle collapsable=”no” caption=”II.   We Focus on Character…Not Personality”]We seek to develop primary greatness…right values, right seeing, right choices, and right action. We leave secondary greatness…technical, tactical and strategic competencies…for another time and place.

You will travel to you center, and know the place for the first time. You will uncover your unique potential for greatness, and begin to work on becoming the powerful, one-of-a-kind person…and leader…you can be.

We help you uncover that wisdom this lives around you, and in you, so that you can bring that unique something alive in the world that no one else can.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma…which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They some how already know what you truly want. Everything else is secondary.”

– Steve Jobs

We move on to find our song…and learn to sing it in our own voice…by walking and gathering insight from four different paths. (read more…)

[/bra_toggle] [bra_toggle collapsable=”no” caption=”III.   We Use an Ancient Learning Technology”]

Collaborative conversations are the principal driver of learning and innovation in today’s organizations. They carry news, spread intellectual capital, create meaning, foster cooperation, spark creativity, and strengthen personal relationships. Of course, conversations always have been the most powerful force on Earth for such things…

Wisdom accrues…and ideas are born…in the space between people as they think aloud together. Therefore, most of your time will be spent in conversation in pairs and in small groups…and with people whose habits, experiences, and world views are different from yours. And you won’t simply trade old ideas and stories. You’ll reshape them. Repurpose them. Combine them. Draw different conclusions from them. See new possibilities in them.

These conversations will change you. They won’t just shuffle the songs on you iPod. They’ll fill it with new ones.

“In excited conversation, we have glimpses of the universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

[/bra_toggle] [bra_toggle collapsable=”no” caption=”IV.  We Have Stories…Not Bullet Points”]

We are hard-wired to think in metaphors and learn from stories. If we want to know ourselves…or our companies…we must know our stories.

If we want to change, we must change our stories.

We use the language of story…rather than the frozen lexicon of business…to change your eyes and allow you to look at the world, business, and life from incredibly different vantage points. Some of our stories are yanked from today’s headlines. Some are mined from older, deeper quarries. Either way, they’ll lead you to right questions, novel connections, game-changing ideas, and new ways of walking.

“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives…the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change…truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” – Salman Rushdie

[/bra_toggle] [bra_toggle collapsable=”no” caption=”V.   We Steer Clear of Business Speak”]

We believe the language of business has lost much of its edge due to overuse. As a result, most conversations at work are pretty much the same, and so are the meetings we attend. Spontaneity? Candor? Novelty? No. Business speak is a frozen lexicon that limits our seeing, narrows our thinking, and lowers our chances for success both now and in the future.

“Lessons from business books never stick. Much better learning tools are novels, history books and biographies. For me, at least, these can really teach. Why? I suppose it’s because when your imagination is engaged, when you dig the lessons out yourself and connect them to your own life, the learning goes much deeper.” – Rich Karlgaard, publisher, Forbes Magazine

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