It’s hard to believe that it’s 20 years since we ran our first Leadership Experience. Reflecting on this, and on the topic of allowing that we discussed in our last post, I’ve been thinking about how the various experiences have come about over that time.
Our first Leadership Experience was Turtle Camp, at Mapoon in Far North Queensland. It came about because a good friend of ours, Muffy Hand saw an ad about the camp and thought it would be ideal for us. For six years from 2006, we took groups there to assist with work protecting turtle nests and hatchlings, working alongside traditional owners, rangers and scientists from the University of Queensland. Mapoon is only about 100 kilometres south of the tip of Cape York, at the very top of Australia, so it certainly set the precedent for our Experiences to be in remote locations!
When our time with Turtle Camp came to an end, we didn’t have another location in mind. However, in the spirit of allowing, we opened ourselves to possibilities and soon enough found ourselves in conversation with John Read and Katherine Moseby who I knew from my time as an Earthwatch volunteer at Arid Recovery. They invited us to visit Tetepare, located in the Solomon Islands and one of the largest uninhabited islands in the Pacific. They felt it would be an ideal location for us.
And it was. Once again, this time over about four years, we took groups of leaders to work with the local rangers on their conservation efforts on the island and with surrounding communities. We also spent valuable time with our groups connecting emotional health and leadership practice to what they were observing and discovering in this environment.
In the intervening years, we’ve been back to Arid Recovery a number of times and launched new experiences on Eastern Arrernte country in Central Australia, and in the Flinders Ranges with our Ikara-Ediacara Leadership Experience. Each of these has come about through fortunate connections and the thoughtfulness of wonderful people in our network and always because we have left ourselves open to possibilities.
At the time this post is published, Malcolm and I will be in another remote location – Patagonia, Chile, piloting our newest Leadership Experience.
This experience was prompted by one of our clients who asked us when we were going to start talking about ‘Quantum Leadership’.
Regular readers of this blog will know that the principles of QuantumThink®, developed by our good friend Dianne Collins, were instrumental to the creation of Global Leadership Foundation and have been central to our work since the start. Dianne’s Quantum Distinctions were also incorporated into our app, Mastering Emotional Health.
The concept of our Quantum Leadership Experience has been inspired by our own journey since the founding of Global Leadership Foundation, and particularly the way in which the Quantum principles have helped guide our way.
We’re arguably living in an era of greater overall chaos and ambiguity than ever before. As leaders, we need to be comfortable with uncertainty and be able to hold multiple perspectives as we navigate through this time.
We also need to be acutely conscious of the impact our own actions have on ourselves, those around us and the wider community, and even the world. As Dianne and her partner Alan like to say, ‘we’re all actors in someone else’s movie’. And when you think about it, we’re more than that. We’re also the writer, producer, director and star of our own movie. However, we’re not in this movie on our own. And our movie is no bigger or more important than anyone else’s.
Quantum Leadership is about understanding all this and always remembering our place in the universe.
And so for me, with all of this in mind, when we started thinking about a leadership experience focused on Quantum Leadership, there was only one place I’m familiar with that would fit the bill: Patagonia. With its immense landscapes, stunning glaciers and clear skies, there are few places on our planet that can make us feel like very minor characters in the movie of Planet Earth. This is the perfect place for perspective!
At the same time, Patagonia has a prominent place as an area impacted by human-induced climate change, along with some wonderful, inspiring examples of large-scale recovery efforts.
This pilot program has already started in that we’ve had a series of discussions with the participants focused on what we are calling ‘Quantum Leadership’. As a group, we’re well placed to explore this thinking in the awesome environment of Torres del Paine National Park over the coming week.
I look forward to reporting back, and to hopefully being able to offer future opportunities to take part in our Quantum Patagonia Leadership Experience.
Gayle