January 2008 Newsletter


Happy New Year!

Crocus' green needles
Pointing Skyward, whisp'ring of
Saffron sun to come!

This issue of our eFlash introduces you to Crestone, Colorado. While Seattle, Washington is the administrative home for Personal Leadership Seminars, Crestone, Colorado is our inspirational home. You’ll see why when you read the feature story below.

One of the most exciting projects we engaged in last year was one for which we integrated Personal Leadership with the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry. Those of you who know both systems know that they are philosophically aligned and very complementary. Read more about what we did and what we learned in our second feature below.

And finally, our third feature focuses on Personal Leadership Coaching. If you can’t join us in Crestone or at one of the other venues where we offer public seminars, consider the alternative of a customized coaching series. Or maybe you want to deepen your existing practice, or have help aligning a personal or professional decision with your highest and best. As the London School of
Business put it, “Coaching is the single most powerful process ever devised for releasing individual human potential.”

Wishing you all the very best for 2008. May we together make a world of difference.

Where’s Crestone – Why Crestone

The Center of the Universe

“Where are you holding the Personal Leadership Seminar?” “Crestone, Colorado,” we say.

“Where’s that?” “Where the Southwest meets the Rocky Mountains.”

While we have often used this catchy and romantic answer, it is not quite accurate. Crestone is a tiny former gold-mining town nestled up against the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. It is in the San Luis Valley, which is a vast high desert located in the rural south central part of Colorado. In actuality, Crestone is more in the center of the Rockies.

Every time we go to Crestone driving from Denver, we can’t wait to come over the final, high, aspen-covered 9,010 ft elevation - Poncha Pass. From that vantage point, we see a spectacular, sprawling valley with high straw-colored hills to the west and a long spine of snow-capped peaks that extend, seemingly forever, to our south…and it only gets better! After about 30 miles of incredible beauty we turn east toward the mountains. Now the breadth of the Sangre de Christo range takes up our entire windshield view. Over the next 15 miles to Crestone, the mountains seem to get bigger and bigger until in Crestone itself our heads have to bend down in the car so we can see the tops of the peaks! We always have the sense that this is one of the most beautiful places in the universe.

“Why Crestone for a Personal Leadership Seminar?”
Besides sheer remote beauty, Crestone is unique in other ways too. A recent US News & World Report article explained that Crestone is a most unexpected locale to find a growing religious center. But Crestone today boasts a denser concentration of high Tibetan lamas than normally would be found even in Tibet, and that's just for starters. Christian Carmelites, Islamic Sufis, Jewish Cabbalists, Hindus, Zen Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists, and American Indians have all moved to Crestone.

There is an energy that arises when people of different faiths and non-faiths live in a community of openness and respect. People who come here say they can “feel something” in Crestone. So what better place to hold a Personal Leadership Seminar that is dedicated to living and working well across difference: a place that is trying to live out such a vision. Over time and from personal and professional experience, we know that people have many wonderful breakthroughs and "ah-ha" moments, with life-changing insights and inspirations, when they come to Personal Leadership events in Crestone.


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Appreciative Inquiry and PL

February 2007 was a very challenging time for the inhabitants of Jakarta, Indonesia, and a time of expansion, and compassion, for PLSeminars. Barbara, Sheila, and Joanne Daykin, of Innovation Partners International, offered "An Approach for Positive Collaborative Change” to the community of Jakarta International School (JIS). For the first time a Personal Leadership (PL) seminar was conducted in tandem with an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) summit.

We were with JIS during a most unusual time: flooding in Jakarta worse than any seen in more than almost a decade. Despite the consequent distraction of personal needs and of helping to meet the needs of the local Indonesian community, despite the potential of School closure, and despite the loss of internet and telephone service through which to announce the event, the JIS community continued to put a high priority on the AI summit and PL seminar. When we arrived on site, the event rooms were full of flowers, anticipation, and commitment.

Our two weeks at JIS were a great time of heightened learning for all. The focus of the integrated PL/AI project was to assist JIS in re-visioning the School, to build agreement around core values, and to leverage communal and individual commitments for effectively addressing diversity. As with most international schools around the world, JIS serves students of some 60 nationalities, making for a complex community rich with challenges and opportunities for students, staff, and parents alike. Working together, we experienced what can happen and the possibilities that emerge when PL and AI collaborate to effect organizational change.

For those unfamiliar with it, AI is an approach to change that is used worldwide. It is based on the simple and profound idea that the questions we ask influence the direction of the change we experience. If we use a deficit-based approach and inquire about what is wrong, we will discover more about problems. If we use a strengths-based approach to inquire about what works, about best practices, about what gives life and energy, we will discover more about the positive core and successes of an organization. The methodology of ‘Appreciative’ Inquiry encourages the involvement of an entire community or organization to use a strength-based paradigm for creating a future founded on the best of what has been. The basic methodology leads people through four stages: Discovering, Dreaming, Designing, and Delivering (the ‘4-D model’) a preferred future.

It was quite obvious in the JIS project that PL and AI are mutually enhancing methodologies. More specifically, what did we discover?

In summary, an AI summit brings together the individual voices of a community and unifies them into a joint direction. Participants commit to a shared future, identify ways to collaborate with each other, and ignite action with intention. This generates a high-energy creative experience for all. A PL seminar introduces people to the two principles and six practices of PL; they learn how to take leadership of their own cultural programming – of their own values, beliefs, communication styles, and worldview – so that they can access higher levels of insight, collaboration, and creativity in situations of difference. PL helps individuals stay connected and committed both to the joint direction they have identified in an AI summit and to the inspiration of the collective energy. In addition, PL offers a pathway for people to re-new themselves individually, even as they work together to bring forth their AI outcomes.

It was a distinct privilege for PLSeminars to work with the JIS community and to have the opportunity to experience the power of AI and PL in combination.

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An Introduction to PL Coaching

Do you want a customized introduction to Personal Leadership’s two principles, six practices, and the Critical Moment Dialogue?

Do you want to deepen your existing Personal Leadership practice?

Do you have a particular practice that intrigues or bedevils you, and that you want to better engage?

Do you have a big “Something’s Up” for which
you’d like specific coaching using the Critical Moment Dialogue?

Personal Leadership Coaching offers you a dynamic, purposeful, and immensely engaging process. It is directed by and grounded in your daily lived experience — what are your goals and intentions, what are you concerned with or confronted by? That's where we begin. This discussion is continued on our new page entirely devoted to PL Coaching.

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PL Seminars Kyoto 2007

The Kyoto Foundations seminar was distinguished by good food and a relaxed environment in the beauty of fall colors; by laughter and "duck walks" that energized us; and most especially by the quality of profound inspiration that emerged through the dynamic interactions among participants.

The Refresher seminar was characterized by the depth and richness of conversation, with particular insights on how fundamental PL concepts are experienced in a Japanese cultural context.

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