How TrustTemenos Leadership Academy has Changed Me
I am currently in the midst of the second generation of TrustTemenos Leadership Academy. I wrote this text toward the end of the first generation, last spring. It has been published in our book, Showing Up.
I am learning so much about myself… And I can highly recommend learning about yourself, too 🙂
If you want to experience our work first hand, join our TrustTemenos Effect Gathering in October!
The TrustTemenos Effect Gathering 2017
How the Academy Changed Me
Given how much I had already changed before the academy started, I’m astonished when I now (July 2016) look back to last October. My personal growth journey was kicked off and accelerated twice: once with me joining the agile community in 2009, and again when I started engaging in Temenos in 2012. The first kick got me moving big time, the second one started growing my awareness of how I moved.
Intention and awareness integrate to deliberate action. I had the intention before, and with the amplification of the community it became clearer and clearer what I wanted. But only through Temenos, with the awareness and my growing consciousness of containers, of showing up, did my Self truly start to grow.
What is most different now, compared to October of last year, is my confidence. I am more aware of my power, my leadership authority, the effect I have on people and groups. The exposure to our first participant group and their affirmations, appreciations, regular connections every week have given my soul the space to start truly believing in myself. It took this amount of recognition, regular, intimate and in high dosage, for me to overcome all the voices in my head that kept me small and shy and ashamed and unworthy all those years. In the end, our self-image is a habit just like any other – and it needs intention (I had enough of that) and focused attention (which the academy members generously provided) to change. Every single member of the academy contributed to this learning in myriads of ways. Thank you for that!
Creating a Leadership Academy
When we re-purposed the academy as a leadership course, refocused Temenos as a framework to grow leadership skills, I was not aware how much that would change my perception about my own leadership skills and roles. This focus was contagious – I took the lead in areas outside of the academy, in multiple organisations. It started when we humbly phrased journaling and reflection questions about things like “our inner leader” – I had had no idea such a being existed inside of me! And then all those reflections happened, all the listening to everyone else’s stories and learnings, witnessing and midwifing others’ breakthroughs… And things shifted inside. An Olaf emerged whom I had known all the time, and ignored all the time. Hidden in a basement compartment, so to say. I like him now, appreciate him, and learn to be him more often. I am still in the early stages of stepping into this power.
My ability to develop relationships over time has improved – I can’t yet fully assess how, I just see that it’s significant. The way Christine and I have grown our container, the way we collaborate, create and hold space, invite, has shifted significantly with the focused attention over nine months. Our friendship and attunement has deepened and our mutual appreciation flourished. Together, Christine and I are about 10 times as courageous than we each are on our own. We know we won’t lose. We are ready for more!
Christine and Olaf Showing Up
In summary, I am experiencing the full impact of what we have been believing and teaching for years: that with clarity of who I am and what I want, once I stop blocking it, the options emerge and things start falling into place. All it takes is trust in myself. I do that now, to a far greater extend than before.
