Past Program

The purpose of the Leadership Project is to focus specifically on often under-explored, introspective aspects of leadership by bringing together participants from around the world and providing a framework that will allow them to reflect deeply and thoughtfully on the ethical, moral, and spiritual aspects of their own leadership and on leadership in their own cultures. The Fetzer Institute will sponsor a series of four smaller sessions (20-25 participants), February's session will focus on leadership issues in education.

Rather than providing a prescriptive definition of leadership, this project will seek to bring together people with diverse approaches to leadership in order to identify and better understand those internal aspects of leadership that are universal and those that are distinctive to particular cultural, social, or historical contexts. By conducting these sessions over the course of several years, it is hoped that this project will contribute to the personal and professional growth of all participants and, at the same time, will give rise to a new body of comparative and cross-cultural knowledge about the internal aspects of leadership.

In order to allow the session participants to explore their own leadership and reflect on the internal qualities of good leadership across cultures, each session will be structured around a variety of activities including presentations by faculty panels, roundtable discussions, work in small groups, case studies, and time for meditation and reflection. Facilitated self-assessment exercises, readings about leaders and leadership in different cultures, role-playing, the use of narrative and the sharing of personal leadership experiences will all form part of the process of exploration. The process is intended to provide participants with a useful and relevant framework for “looking within” and exploring their own leadership both during and after the session. It is also hoped that the session will have a restorative impact on participants.