by Amy Thomson

“We give away our power when we tie our well-being to outcomes that are outside our control,” Susan Collin Marks. This is just one of the many ideas I have gained out of yesterday’s session. The fantastic thing about it, was that most of the learning was not about abstract concepts, although they did occasionally have a part to play. Most of the learning was about ourselves and came from within us. I have done leadership training before, but leadership development is an ongoing process and needs to be returned to throughout our lives. Today’s session gave me an opportunity to do this.

We started off Tuesday listing the qualities of leadership that we have and that we wanted for ourselves and meshed them together to identify what all of us consider leadership to be. This included qualities as diverse as love, courage, perseverance, integrity, passion, patience, organization, communication, ‘when to say no’ and trust. We then moved in to a time of reflection and meditation led by Serena Tripathee. We were asked to think about what our purpose is, what we want to be and how we are going to achieve those things. This was a truly profound part of the day. It gave us the time to think about things we usually neglect. We make choices on an everyday basis that can affect our life journey and if we forget to think about where they are taking us, our ability to lead will be compromised and our vision will fail to be realized. A fork is visible in my life’s path and come next year I will have to choose which path to take. This exercise really helped me to hone in on what lies on each path, whether it be obstacle or help, and to understand at what place each path ends and how close to my purpose they are. In the second half of the day, we looked at how we want the leaders of the world to act. We concluded with a fun activity drawing what we have learned about leadership from our experiences during the day. I think some of the people in the room have a (no longer) secret artistic talent. There were beautiful drawings of the sun, a poem, a world citizen passport, a spider’s web and lots more.

Throughout the morning inspirational quotes decorated the room. We were given the opportunity of choosing one quote from the wall to have as our own. To conclude I would like to share my choice with you. “‘One can’t believe impossible things,” Alice said. “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’” Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter V.