A six-week course to accelerate the development of your capacities for presence, awareness and reflection, and ultimately towards becoming a more effective, empathetic and charismatic leader
led by Renée Ryerson
Integral Master Coach, Facilitator and Co-founder of Beyond Either Or
Online, Mondays 17:00-18:25 CET
Introductory session: dates coming soon
Foundation course sessions: dates coming soon
Welcome to Being Leadership!
Join me for a transformative journey into the rich and rewarding realm of Being Leadership!
Do you ever find yourself dissatisfied with how others fail to meet your expectations or what you are able to achieve? How do the stories you tell yourself impact your experience of events? Do you experience feelings of shame, anger, or disappointment?
What assumptions do you hold about what is possible for you to express – as a leader, employee, customer, family member, partner, or friend? Are you aware of how your stories and assumptions shape your life? Are you allowed to express anger, ask for help, or take a Saturday to indulge yourself? Are your stories and assumptions always true and helpful in your current situation?
What if you could have more impact without working longer hours?
This foundation course guides you towards becoming more aware of everything happening in each moment, allowing you to see through and beyond your assumptions. It helps you notice more choice points and gives you the freedom to consciously shape what is happening rather than reacting on auto-pilot. As you deepen your practice, you will become kinder to yourself and others while also developing your ability to skilfully make a stand for what matters in a way that creates allies rather than opponents.
Most leaders focus primarily on Doing as a means to productivity and achievement, overlooking Being as a foundational element to support their doing and increase their impact. This foundation course will help you correct for that, and build capacities to be a more effective, empathetic and charismatic leader. On completion, you will have the option to enrol for ongoing practice.
Drawing on my many years of expertise in Integral Coaching, Relatefulness, Circling, and Tibetan meditation, combined with the business and leadership experience of the entire Beyond Either Or team, this course offers a unique and powerful approach to leadership development.
If you are part of a team, group, tribe or organization that wants to grow together, we can customize and deliver this training exclusively for you. Please contact us if you are interested.
Get a taste for what this is really about by joining a free Introductory Session!
You must have participated in an Introductory session to register for the foundation course.
I look forward to Being with you.
Renée
Renee Ryerson is a gifted facilitator and inspiring leader. She truly has a passion for leadership and for getting to the heart of the matter. It is all about caring about the people around you. One of the best out there.
Peter Shub
Leaders who are able to combine technical knowledge with emotional intelligence will be best equipped to lead teams in the age of automation and artificial intelligence.
Calum Chace, global keynote speaker, author, and adviser on artificial intelligence
WHAT IS BEING LEADERSHIP?
To have the most impact, we need to attend closely to the subjective inner world of Being as well as the objective outer world of Doing.
The discipline of management is mainly about Doing, while the discipline of leadership is mainly about Being.
Including both results in increased productivity, being more on purpose, and experiencing less stress and more fulfilment and joy.
BEING LEADERSHIP IS:
- Being informed by the facts of moment rather than (just) by recollections of the past or our plans and imaginations of future
- Having a better understanding of ourselves and how our beliefs shape the options we see and drive our behaviours
- Communicating what’s most important, getting to the essence, and calling that forth from others, rather than assuming we understand each other
- Enacting subjective capacities such as self-awareness, presence, emotional intelligence, and empathy and compassion for self and others
If we are not careful, it is all too easy to fall into becoming more of a human doing than a human being, and forget who is doing all the doing, and why.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School,
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BEING LEADERSHIP?
The practice of Being Leadership strengthens your ability to learn from experience in all aspects of life. As you continue to develop your Being Leadership, you will see benefits in each of the domains of Self, Relationship and Process Leadership.
Self Leadership
Benefits include becoming better able to:
- Understand how I make decisions
- Be more attentive to my needs
- Be proactive and resilient rather than reactive
- Be mindful, present and self-aware
Relationship Leadership
Benefits include becoming better able to:
- Understand how others make decisions
- Make what’s implicit explicit for each other
- Cultivate psychological safety
- Make requests and set boundaries
Process Leadership
Benefits include becoming better able to:
- Pivot to what creates most value
- Sense and respond to change
- Hold people accountable
- See what is working and what to change
I’m really looking forward to moving more into being and moving out of doing, and reflecting on my life more, as opposed to blasting through it and getting shit done.
Gwyneth Paltrow, actress and businesswoman
HOW CAN WE DEVELOP BEING LEADERSHIP?
We recommend two main categories of practice, personal and interpersonal.
For many, the most powerful is interpersonal practice, and this is the primary focus of this training.
We will reflect how we experience ourselves and each other, getting a sense of what is available in this space and how this experiencing is different from doing.
By asking powerful open questions, we help each other get to the essence of our experience, needs and assumptions. We improve our capacities to connect and respond to others.
I love Renee’s awareness and presence with herself and the group. Renee’s leadership creates a safe container for expressing deep feelings and emotions. She is able to create cohesion within groups as well as navigate discord if it’s what’s present. My experiences with Renee felt very rich and nourishing.
Connie DiPasquale
In addition to interpersonal practice, we recommend engaging in personal practice. We can meditate, write in a journal. We can practice mindfulness by being more curious and present to our sensory experience, emotions, thoughts and assumptions, while going through our day.
The way of being with another person is different from the way of doing something to another person. It is a way of relating, not a way of fixing.
Stephen Covey, educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker
IS THIS BEING LEADERSHIP COURSE FOR YOU?
Take a moment to sense into whether this course is a good fit for your needs right now.
This may be for you if you:
- Are curious about re-evaluating your beliefs and assumptions
- Are willing to give and receive feedback
- Want have a positive impact on the lives you touch
- Are more interested in doing the right things than increasing efficiency
- Would like to show up more fully at work and support others in doing the same
This may not be for you if you:
- Are not very interested in the experience, perspectives or goals of others
- Are confident that most of the time we already have the answers
- Want techniques or tools to influence others to do what you want
- Want to give advice without first making the effort to see through someone else’s eyes
HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL GET IN BEING LEADERSHIP
Six Interpersonal Practice sessions
The six 85-minute live Being Leadership practice sessions will be delivered over the zoom platform. Recordings will be made available. As this is an experiential course, it is imperative that you attend the live sessions. The sessions will typically follow this structure, with an emphasis on practice:
- Setting intention and getting present
- Opportunity to share what you’re in in relation to Being Leadership
- Practice in pairs with debrief in plenary
- Practice in small groups with debrief in plenary
- Practice in whole group
- Q&A and close
Reading materials for each session
A short guide will introduce you to all the necessary frameworks for each session, so that we can spend most of our precious time together in practice.
The session topics are:
- How we see the World
- Past Present Future
- Speaking from Presence
- Setting and Navigating Boundaries
- From Reactivity to Choice
- Bringing it all together
Self-assessment worksheets
After each session, we will provide you with self-assessment worksheets to increase your understanding of the material and help anchor your learnings.
Learning in Community of Peers
You will be practicing Being Leadership together with other leaders who care about personal and organizational goals. In this trusting container of deep sharing, you will come to appreciate the sincerity of your other participants.
As they share from their own experience and perspectives, you will get new insights about situations relevant for your organization, and begin to see your own situations better.
Perhaps you will make new friends in this community who will support you when you need someone to listen and ask good questions.
Ongoing Development
After attending all six sessions of the Foundation Course, you will be eligible to become a subscribing member of our weekly Being Leadership Practice Lab.
These 55-minute sessions consist mainly of practice with a small amount of time devoted to teaching. In addition to developing your own Being Leadership, you will continue to learn from a group of peers similarly dedicated to seeing how Being can support Doing for the sake of their personal and organisational goals.
PLUS RECEIVE THESE BONUSES
You will receive the Guide to Personal BEING practice and the Guide to asking OPEN Questions electronically when you register for the program.
You will receive the Guide to DOING better by including more BEING at the end of the program.
BONUS #1
Guide to Personal BEING practice
This guide provides tips on how to develop your Being Leadership by yourself, through practices including:
- Meditation
- Mindfulness
- Journalling
- Self-observation
- Micropractices
BONUS #2
Guide to asking OPEN Questions
This guide will support you to lead with questions that help others to find their own answers.
- Qualities of an open question
- How questions are often better than answers
- Lots of examples for you to adapt to your particular situations
BONUS #3
Guide to DOING better by including more BEING
This guide will give you resources on how the marriage Being and Doing reaps benefits for individuals, teams and organizations.
- Theory U
- Learning to Learn
WHAT’S IN THE FOUNDATION COURSE CURRICULUM?
Over the six weeks, we will explore a variety of topics that will serve as maps to help us navigate our individual and shared experiences. However, our ultimate goal is to dive deep into the actual “on-the-ground” territory of our experiences. Please note that the sequence in which we explore these topics may vary from what is described below. Here’s an overview of the topics we will cover:
Week 1: How we see the World
Or worldview is like a pair of eye glasses that we wear everywhere – except we don’t know we are wearing them. They shape how we see – and we forget others are wearing glasses too.
- The truth: how you see things is not how others see them
- Narratives, assumptions, stories we tell ourselves
- Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object theory
Week 2: Past – Present – Future
When we remember the past, follow a plan, or think about the future, we are relating with constructions of mind. It is easy to be so preoccupied with our thoughts that we miss the present moment, in which everything happens.
- How to direct our attention to the present moment
- How to speak from the present moment
- How to differentiate between speaking from experience and thoughts
Week 3: Speaking from Presence
In a fast-paced world, we can captivate or lose the attention of our audience. How does the clarity of your speech, the perspectives you take, and speaking on behalf of others influence how people respond?
- Speaking concisely to invite people’s attention
- Communicating using first-, second- and third-person perspectives
- Ego-, ethno- and world-centric perspectives
Week 4: Setting and Navigating Boundaries
Increasing our comfort with boundaries creates room for more intimacy, allowing us to become more vulnerable and take more risks in giving and receiving feedback.
- Permission to say “No” (and “not now”)
- Tracking our boundaries through a conversation
- How our curiosity and motivation impacts each other’s boundaries
Week 5: From Reactivity to Choice
Being Leadership is about having choice. Rather than simply moving away from what we don’t want, we can support each other to get clearer on what we do want, and take action to make a favourable outcome more likely.
- Speaking to what I want more of versus what’s not working
- What do I want? Attachment theory and 5 Love Languages for Work
- What do I really want? Taking a longer view of time
Week 6: Bringing it all Together
You have spent six weeks in interpersonal practice to develop your Being Leadership. Now is the opportunity to try some new moves, get feedback – and to look ahead to ongoing development.
- Practicing using all the tools we have learnt
- Questions and answers
- Introducing the Being Leadership Practice Lab
DO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE BEING LEADERSHIP COURSE?
The Being Leadership Foundation Course costs €400 plus VAT for all six sessions.
Before joining, you should attend a free 85-minute Being Leadership Introductory Session.
The Introductory session introduces you to the Foundation Course and follows the same structure you will experience there:
- Setting intention and getting present
- Opportunity to share what you’re in in relation to Being Leadership
- Practice in pairs with debrief in plenary
- Practice in small groups with debrief in plenary
- Practice in whole group
- Q&A and close