Blog

24th July 2013

New Leadership Journey in India Scheduled for January 2014

The Extraordinary Leadership Journey

Stripped of your status, your power, the hierarchical deference of those in your organisation, your cultural reference points, your emotional shields and physical home comforts, what kind of a leader will you be then?  The Extraordinary Leadership Journey provides the leadership experience of a lifetime. 

  • Discover your authentic leadership self, free of the concerns of your ‘commercial personality’
  • Explore who you are as a leader stripped of all the hierarchical, status related supports of your usual environment
  • Experience what truly matters for you, your company and your family without the false and fabricated concerns that get in the way
  • Learn how to develop engagement through immediate, deep connections with others and thereby maximise commitment and productivity
  • Access new dimensions of your potential that are inaccessible in your normal, everyday/every-year environment
  • Experience a sense of abundance in an environment of scarcity, in contrast to your normal fear of scarcity in the midst of abundance
  • Understand sustainability in all its aspects to a depth impossible in your normal life
  • Transform your leadership to an aspect of your authentic being rather than a ‘style’ adopted from training books
  • Learn how to lead from the presence of ‘flow’ rather than the abstraction of ‘the head’

 Extraordinary Leadership Journey – West Bengal, India

For the past 5 years Extraordinary Leadership has been accompanying clients on their Extraordinary Leadership Journey to the Summit Schools, a school community created and run by retired teachers in Rural Kenya, North of Thika.

Now, in close partnership with Shivia (www.shivia.com), and supported by Venquis (www.venquis.com), Extraordinary Leadership and Shivia have developed an Extraordinary Leadership Journey in and around Kolkata and Shivia’s operations in West Bengal, India.  This journey will enable clients to explore dimensions of themselves in new, challenging and moving environments and accelerate their personal and leadership development in unique ways.

  • You will start the journey by exploring Kolkata, a city steeped in history, which exemplifies the immense energy and vast contradictions of India.

Hand rickshaw ride through the back streets of Kolkata

Experience the flower market, Kolkata

  • You will experience Shivia’s Livelihood Programme in the rural villages, interacting with the home-farmers who are truly poor and incredibly motivated by hard work; you will be inspired and will pick up on their hard work values.

Visit Shivia’s home-farmers involved in back-yard poultry rearing

Speak to the home-farmers about their experiences

  • You will visit the Familia community (www.familiaindia.org), where you will meet and learn from Mr. KC Thomas, a man who, armed only with his vision and passion to serve, has lead the creation of Familia’s orphanage, nursery, school, old peoples’ home and crèche.

Familia’s nursery school

Familia’s old peoples’ home

  • You will work on projects that you develop in Familia to make a lasting contribution to the children and the community – and, of course, to yourself
  • Group and individual coaching will take place throughout the journey to ensure that you are able to benefit as deeply as possible from your experiences
  • You will receive a pre-departure and post-return individual coaching session to enable you to prepare effectively and integrate your learnings into your home activities
  • Leadership teams will also receive pre- and post-journey one-day workshops to maximise the benefit for themselves as a team and for the organisation as a whole

This will not be a “five-star” journey.  You will travel on local transport and mix with the people of Kolkata, the villages and the Familia community – a unique opportunity to experience India as it really is …

You will interact with different types of leaders across a range of contexts enabling you to draw on the values of the remarkable leaders you will be mixing with.  You will be stripped of all the environmentally-driven supports - internal and external – for who you think you are, or who you think you should be; clients are able to access dimensions of themselves that are literally inaccessible in their day-to-day, year-to-year lives. 

Through your interactions with Shivia’s home-farmers, Familia’s children, staff and leader you will learn that leadership is rooted in purpose and mediated through true awareness and connection.

You will learn about sustainability, about a culture of sufficiency and cooperation instead of scarcity and competition, and interact with leaders whose lack of “ego” belies their amazing achievements.

You will be coached each day to enable you to integrate the impacts and learnings so powerfully amplified by your surroundings.  You will be fully briefed and coached before and after the Journey to enable you to bring your new leadership capabilities home for maximum benefit for yourself, your team and your organisation.

Videos of our latest clients talking of their experience on the Journey in Kenya and other information can be found on:

www.facebook.com/pages/Extraordinary-Leadership-Journeys/337511570994

More information on Extraordinary Leadership can be found at www.xleadership.com

The Inaugural Indian Extraordinary Leadership Journey with Shivia

  • The inaugural journey to West Bengal will depart from Heathrow on Saturday 25th January and the Journey finishes on Friday 31th January, when journeyers are free to return or depart to additional activities as they wish
  • Fees are £3,500 per person, which covers all coaching fees and in-country costs.
  • Journeyers will be responsible for their own flights and insurance etc.
  • This is a not-for-profit activity by Extraordinary Leadership: all surplus funds after costs are retained by Shivia and Familia to support their invaluable activities in India

Principles of Extraordinary Leadership

  • We are all unique individuals – the way you lead most effectively will differ from the way others lead.
  • Leadership beyond the very basics cannot be “trained” – it must be developed by each individual through their own personalities.
  • Knowledge and skills are not enough – for sustainable behavioural change, leadership must be addressed experientially at the level of values, beliefs, and purpose.
  • All leadership begins with leadership of self – the ability to “… keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you!”.
  • Authentic leadership integrates the leader’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions.
  • Leading others is about enabling, not doing.
  • Leaders at all levels need to be empowered to respond to events as they occur with confidence and accountability.
  • Leadership development delivers tangible business value – performance and profit – as well as human value such as engagement and empowerment.
  • Leaders operate effectively in Time (from the present towards a desired future along the optimal path), in Space (themselves, their teams and the world they affect) through their ACTs of leadership (Awareness, Connection, Transformation).
 Hand rickshaw ride through the back streets of Kolkata

Hand rickshaw ride through the back streets of Kolkata

Experience the flower market, Kolkata

Experience the flower market, Kolkata

Visit Shivia home-farmers involved in back-yard poultry rearing

Visit Shivia home-farmers involved in back-yard poultry rearing

Speak to the home-farmers about their experiences

Speak to the home-farmers about their experiences

 Familia nursery school

Familia nursery school

Familia old peoples home

Familia old peoples home

Posted by Jefferson Cann

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