Our Courses
East Valley Leader Lab’s
Embodied Leadership Curriculum
Embodied Leadership is about exploring and developing personal practices that will help you be the best leader you can be. The emphasis is on bodily (somatic) practices vs simply learning new concepts. The primary framework for this curriculum is building the capacity to have all the conversations you need in order to: get in touch with what really matters to you, express where you are leading your team and why, cultivate their commitment to a vision and help them navigate breakdowns in planning and execution.
Each course in this curriculum involves five weekly 90-minute sessions, plus handouts that include prompts to practice between sessions. Also included is a one-hour coaching session to provide guidance for continuing new actions discovered during the training. The Leader Lab schedules courses at the beginning or end of the day so you can attend in comfortable workout attire without disrupting the rest of your work day.
INTRODUCTORY COURSE
“What Do You Really Care About?”
This course focuses on the important first step of getting in touch with what is really important to you, so that you can “speak from this care” in all of your conversations with your team. As the introductory course, it is also designed to provide a sample of the richness of embodied learning distinctions and practices.
Objectives:
Understand the power of embodied learning for creating new practices that better serve your goals
Be better in touch with what is really important to you (the future you desire to create)
Begin a practice for better sensing what your body is telling you, with resources to continue that practice.
Identify your personal leadership “edge” and experiment with new actions in that arena
COURSE 2
“The Stories We Live By”
Before we can effectively cultivate commitment in others, we need to first examine what holds us back from freely and powerfully pursuing our own commitments. This course will introduce some of the key conversations leaders need to be competent in having with themselves and their teams. And again, the focus is on body and mind. What are the triggers that have historically caused us to react and contract? What are our embodied stories for making sense of how we behave in regard to these triggers? We will introduce a powerful tool for getting beyond the stories that are holding us back.
Objectives:
Grow your capacity to be centered in your care and willing to take a stand under pressure.
Grow your capacity to confidently enter into potentially uncomfortable situations/conversations.
Discover some of the stories that have power over you.
Begin a practice for moving past old stories that are no longer serving your care.
COURSE 3
“Being a Customer For Your Care”
The self-examination and practice leading into Course 3 are about building a body and mind for having the conversations that are necessary to produce desired outcomes and to bring about the future you, as a leader, have declared worthwhile. The “Commitment Conversation” is fundamental to the building of and performance of healthy teams. In course 3 you will use your intent and energy to practice addressing each of the key elements in the commitment conversation as you develop the capacity to “be the customer of your care”. Because external customers are not generally accessible to team members, leaders need to play this role for their teams, establishing standards and practices to ensure the customer’s conditions of satisfaction will consistently be met.
Objectives:
Learn the anatomy of the “Commitment Conversation”.
Practice bringing your intent and energy to the key elements of the Commitment Conversation.
Continue building the capacity and the body for cultivating commitment in others.
Practice showing up as a “customer of your care.”