Spotlight on Professional Advancement:

Meg Wheatley on Renewable Leadership: How to Respond Well to Crisis after Crisis

Renewable energy comes from sources (such as wind and solar) that are never used up no matter how much they’re used. For the past several years, Meg has been working in-depth with leaders and communities in the U.S. and Australia who have experienced repeated crises and disasters. She has noted their capacity to function at high performance levels during the crisis, then use the pause time to learn and refine their responses and thus prepare themselves for the next challenge. Meg is calling this capacity to keep responding well to each crisis, “Renewable Leadership.” and her interest has been in understanding the cyclical nature of crisis response: immediate response followed by periods of learning in order to prepare for the next crisis.

Meg has come to realize that the lessons learned from such terrible crises as Katrina are fully relevant to all organizations and all situations during this era of turbulence and uncertainty. How does any organization not only respond, but also grow and learn, so that it is better positioned for the next disruption or crisis? How does an organization or community grow in resiliency and intelligence in these chaotic times?

Renewable leadership relies on the skills, intelligence, generosity and caring of people within the organization and the community of stakeholders. These leaders know how to build a strong container for self-organization, where people use their own intelligence and experience to decide how best to respond in the moment. Creating this container requires several fundamental conditions and actions:

• The leader has a clear theory of action that explains why people do what they do, and dedicates time to educating everyone to become skilled in its application.


• The leader is present, available, appreciative and communicating constantly.


• The leader knows the roadmap of the journey out of the current crisis and constantly draws attention to the progress that’s been made and where the organization is on this journey of recovery.


• A strong web of relationships among staff is woven ahead of time and tended to over time.


• People know how to learn; time and resources are given to making learning visible and sharing it among all stakeholders.


• The organization knows itself, what its capacities, strengths and weaknesses are.


• The organization is clear at its core: everyone knows what the expectations, standards and values are and how to embody them in whatever the context.

Who Should Attend?

• Everyone who leads and or aspires to leadership
• Those interested in renewable personal energy!

Facilitator: Margaret Wheatley, EdD., writes, teaches, and speaks about how we might organize and accomplish our work in chaotic times. She invites us to attend to the quality of our relationships to weather the increasing turbulence. She knows that whatever the problem, community is the answer. She is co-founder and President emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable global foundation that works in partnership with a rich diversity of people around the world who strengthen their communities by working with the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions and environment. (www.berkana.org) She has written four books: Leadership and the New Science (in twenty languages and third edition), Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (in two editions), A Simpler Way (with Myron Rogers) and, most recently, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. Her numerous articles appear in both professional and popular journals and may be downloaded free from her website. www.margaretwheatley.com Wheatley received her doctorate in Organizational Behavior and Change from Harvard University, and a Masters in Media Ecology from New York University. She has been a global citizen since her youth, serving in the Peace Corps in Korea in the 1960s. She was a practicing consultant for 30 years to a very wide variety of organizations on all continents.

Length: 1 day
Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Times: 9am – 5pm
Cost: $255 + GST
Course Code: PABL1951
Please Register By: Wednesday, September 16, 2009

For further information please call 250-391-2600 ext 4801 or toll free at 866-890-0220

Everything Conspires to Tell Us....

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost, 1920.

Everything conspires to tell us the story of life – the forest, the mountains, the birds, the salmon, the slug, the bear, the stars. Our own cultural story has, in the words of Thomas Berry, “become inadequate for meeting survival demands of the present situation” (1988, pg xii). So, how do we create an empowering new story while appreciating the distant past, present and near future?

It seems our society lives in a state of irony where organizations stumble along in disorganization, leaders seem rudderless, peace-keepers engage in war, over-consumption creates a culture of wanting and emptiness, ‘organic’ products ship in plastics, and not least of all, advanced communication technologies threaten to isolate and further disconnect us all. And the supreme irony is that the same systems that served to deliver mankind into industrial ‘progress’ now act as a powerful, disintegrational force. What can we learn from these paradoxes? What road shall we take to find our way through this dark and challenging wood?

There has never been in all of our history such a perfect time for us to start listening to and reviving our intimacy with the phenomenal, animate world returning to the primordial source of all that we are and ask, “What can we learn from the places we inhabit?” When we foster our human-earth relationships, engage in a discourse with the wider natural community and develop a deep and abiding sense of place and connection beyond the borders of the modern mind, we begin to hear the call of earth’s aliveness everywhere – a resounding “yes”, everywhere, instruction.

If we care to look, learning can be found codified in: ecological perspectives that value natural living systems as our primary teachers; the boundarylessness of the human smile; the perennial return of spring; the endless intuition of the river, the calm before the storm, the wellspring of knowing of the ancient traditions, the sweet triumphant life of the seed that grows in the sidewalk crack. Learning happens when we make the time to seek, listen, question, and wonder. And lifelong learning – that crosses multiple disciplines - can light the way on many new paths of possibility in an atmosphere of open participation, critical inquiry, creativity and curiosity, honour and care. A compelling invitation to live into the larger questions that are our lives.

Participate, rejuvenate, incubate, while contributing to cultivating a more sustainable, resilient, and peace-filled existence for all. Keep learning and be more responsible to what you know -and as the poet says- choose the path that will make all the difference.

~We’ll meet you there…

Hilary Leighton, MEd
Director, Continuing Studies

first printed in 2008-09 CS Calendar

A Wide World of Possibilities at Royal Roads University

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.

Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them; for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.” ~Thomas Merton, 1961

This is a precious time.

Our ability to gather sufficient information in order to character-and nation-build, and our ability (and freedom) to act to create a civil and just society that understands the interconnected open system in which we live, will enable our very survival. We dedicate this work to the legacy of our ancestors, to the unborn generations, and to the living body of the earth, by recognizing there are many ways of building a democratic, peaceful, compassionate, and sustainable civilization. Learning together, we can shift perceptions, awaken communities of practice, collaborate, listen to one another and embrace the wisdoms of ancient and sacred traditions.

Learning together in this exquisite forested and gardened space by the sea, reaffirms out interconnectedness to everything that lives. Learning together transforms and readies us to contribute more to our families, our co9mmunities and our organizations. Learning together brings meani8ng and purpose, encourages questions and conversations, opens up to a wide world of hope-filled possibilities, and bonds us into collective action.

This is a precious place.

Everyone is welcome here, every voice is heard. We honour the richness of experience and knowledge that each learner brings in a climate of open participation, critical inquiry, curiosity and creativity.

This is your invitation to participate in true trans-disciplinary learning to: incubate ideas; explore and map out new paths; gather information and research, build friendships and networks; increase personal responsibility, skills, knowledge and confidence. And not least of all, in all that we do - the personal and professional - find ways to create a more sustainable existence on this earth - the source of all we are and all we can achieve.


Hilary Leighton, MEd
Director Continuing Studies Royal Roads University

originally printed in CS calendar September 2007