Seven Generations Leadership Quest Part 2

Leadership Quest

The Challenges Facing Today’s Leader

The leader of today faces a myriad of challenges that are unique and unprecedented. The business terrain is complex and rapidly changing. Global influences affect organisations while, at the same time, the implications of organisational decisions ripple outward in their own ever-widening circles of impact. Boundaries between professional advancement and success and personal growth and fulfillment have blurred.

In the past, the task of a leader was fairly well defined. Organisations were hierarchical structures that utilized a top down, command and control form of leadership to accomplish their mission. More often than not, this meant a strict focus on enhancing an organisation’s financial “bottom line”. Less attention was paid to the “how” of leadership or to the capacity to make a positive difference in the world through one’s work.

While these traditional styles of leadership are still relevant today, they are increasingly inadequate to meet the ever-growing complexity of the challenge. More and more, leadership is a collaborative endeavor, one that calls for interweaving skills and qualities that are both personal and professional. This includes the ability to:

envision positive change
communicate mission and direction
call forth motivation and cooperation
respect diversity and different perspectives
encourage both individuality and unity

A Shift in the Intention of Leadership Training

There is certainly much that can be learned in the way of appropriate skills and strategies to enhance one’s effectiveness as this new kind of leader. But beyond a certain point, the emphasis shifts away from merely learning additional tools that will help you to become more capable as a leader.

Instead, the focus moves to cultivating your own innate wisdom and bringing that forward to inform how you naturally want to be in the world as a leader. As you do the work of becoming the person who can lead in this way, you increasingly get in touch with the deeper desires of your soul, of what matters most to you. You can no longer ignore those questions that nag at you:

What is your highest calling?
What contribution do you long to make to this world?
How can the uniqueness of who you are make the most profound difference?
What legacy do you want to leave behind, after you’re gone?
How can you use your capacity as a leader to implement these magnificent possibilities?

Transforming Your Leadership from Within

This is where the real passion lies in leadership transformation. Transforming yourself as a leader happens at a deep inner level. You need to access the leader within – a leader who is rooted in soul, grounded by nature, connected to your own core values and wellspring of wisdom, and dedicated to a vision for a better future. Only then can you call forth your own creative and original expression of leadership and offer it in service of making a difference in the world in ways that are most exciting and enlivening for you.

The Leadership Quest

In traditional cultures, humans are seen as being born with a purpose. Each person comes into this world with a unique mission to carry out and the community needs to recognize each person’s gift in order for it to successfully develop and come to fruition.

Leadership Quest offers men and women leaders from corporations, businesses, non-profit, and community organizations the opportunity to engage in the age-old ceremonial pattern of the vision quest: completion of an old life or way of being; movement through the threshold of the unknown; and return to the world reborn, carrying a vision that serves the whole community.

People from many walks of life have found this to be a very powerful process for supporting change – change that begins internally and then moves out into the world with impact. Those ready to take their leadership to the next level can find great meaning and value in this extraordinary yet timeless process.

A Way to Mark Transitions: Personally and Collectively

The Leadership Quest is also a classic ceremony for meaningfully making, marking, and celebrating the radical change that happens at the major crossroads in life. Successfully navigated, these passages can renew and transform us, grounding us more fully in the fabric of our individual, collective, and spiritual lives. Without meaningful rites of passage, we are often unable to fully complete and let go of the old or begin the new.

A Leadership Quest impacts more than our individual life story. Because we are social creatures who live our lives within community and society, our personal transformations will naturally reverberate out into those larger contexts. This means that a vision capable of directing one’s life invariably impacts one’s entire community of influence.

The Three Phases of the Leadership Quest

Once you respond to your own inner “call” and decide to enact a vision quest, the process unfolds in three phases.

The first is separation and this involves an actual separation from your everyday life that symbolizes an ending of the old life, the old way. Here, you must let go of the familiar past and leave everything behind.

Next comes the threshold phase, that ambiguous “betwixt and between” place in which the old familiar life has been left behind but the new life has not yet manifested. Here, you are “no longer what you were” and “not yet what you will be.” Fasting alone in nature is a key part of this threshold phase. During this phase, chaos and disorder may appear, yet the extraordinary can and does occur and there is a vast potential for transformation. This is the heart of the Leadership Quest, when the mystery emerges and takes form.

As the Leadership Quest draws to a close, the return or incorporation phase begins. Here, you return to your life as well as to the body of community, bearing the gifts acquired on the journey. Incorporation could suggest an “ending” but it’s also a beginning of a new phase of life. The old has given way so that the new could be born and flourish. As one who has completed this vision quest journey, you are now ready to bring forth your vision on earth, for the good of the people.

The Basics of What Makes Leadership Quest Different

Unlike many other leadership training programs, Leadership Quest is not interested in teaching you new skills or strategies so you can become a more effective leader. You already know enough. Instead, Leadership Quest creates a sacred container in which you can unearth your core passion, discover and claim your natural gifts and unique talents, respond to the longing in your soul to make a meaningful difference, and apply yourself more fully to your work in the world as a leader.

In an increasingly complex and fast-paced world, Leadership Quest offers that rarest of commodities, time and space for reflection, listening, and dreaming about what is possible. In the vastness of the wilderness, time slows down and the stillness can open up a powerful point of potentiality. The sacred dimension is present there and you can enter it naturally, listening quietly for the wisdom of your own soul to emerge.

Leadership Quest provides a container for testing yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, all in a safe and supportive community of kindred souls. This is no mere workshop. Leadership Quest will likely challenge who you are, as a person, as a leader. It will provide you with an opportunity for thinking and being in radically new and different ways.

The only three things that are absolutely primary for all cultures are:

The interconnectedness of all things
The community
The land

We Meet

Gathering in a small community of men and women leaders like yourself, we’ll start our time together mid-day on Friday and spend the rest of the day beginning to set the stage for our work together. Guided by caring staff, you’ll start to prepare for the journey. You’ll learn about the wilderness terrain, necessary equipment, and about physical safety.

We’ll enjoy a delicious dinner together on Friday evening, then leave on Saturday morning, after breakfast, and head out to the quest site. Once we arrive at the trailhead, we’ll gather our collective gear and hike to base camp.

Basecamp

We’ll continue meeting in our group on Saturday and Sunday, learning about ways to approach the inner and outer terrain and going over the story that has brought you each to this threshold. As part of this preparation, you’ll be given some ancient teachings that might help illuminate your way. The quest itself becomes a metaphor for your life. The small questing group becomes your community, offering support and witness to your journey.

On Saturday, each of you will head out from base camp in search of your own solo site. You’ll carry at least 8 litres of water with you so you’ll have plenty to drink while on your fast. We’ll have our last community dinner together in base camp on Sunday evening and then the solo starts at dawn on Monday morning.

The Fast Itself: The Solo Experience, The Shared Stories

You will each go out in nature alone, fasting at your chosen site through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday morning sees the return of each of you to base camp. We’ll then reconvene to the sacred circle of the group that morning where you can each share the story of your quest and have it artfully mirrored back to you in ways that allow you to recognize and claim its power. Together, we’ll open to the individual and collective insight and wisdom that emerges from this “council of elders” and you will each emerge with a stronger sense of who you are as a leader.

Back to The Resort

On Friday, we head back to the lodgings where we will spend the remainder of our time together. Leadership Quest officially ends by noon on Saturday, giving you plenty of time to leisurely make your way back home.

How Fit Do I Need to Be?

While Leadership Quest involves spending individual time in nature, no previous wilderness experience is required. However, you must be reasonably fit and be able to carry a backpack weighing approximately twenty kilograms for a few kilometres. And you should feel reasonably comfortable with the idea of sleeping out in nature, without a tent (but using a tarp for shelter), for the three days and nights of your solo time.

The Broad Strokes

In Leadership Quest, we’ve taken the universal elements of an ancient rite of passage and constructed a leadership program designed for people living in our modern society. Our guides will serve to mirror and support you on your journey, first by helping you to clarify your intention and prepare for your solo fasting time and then by helping you to understand and integrate your experience upon your return.

Our Intention

Our goal is that the Leadership Quest experience cultivates in you a deeper understanding and appreciation of yourself as a leader and leaves you with a clear vision of how you want to make a difference in the world through taking your leadership to the next quantum level.

Our hope is that you will feel inspired to courageously incorporate more of your unique gifts, talents, and passions into your leadership, and then boldly lead from this place of empowered authenticity. As you risk participating in and leading a far bigger game than you ever have previously, we trust that your legacy will ripple outward in the world in ways beyond what you’ve previously imagined.

Support and Follow-up

Keep in mind that incorporating and implementing the Leadership Quest experience can take time as the experience unfolds naturally within you and your organisation. The support we offer during the Leadership Quest program goes a long way toward helping you live what you learned. And the follow-up virtual community is another step along the road of incorporation.