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