Nature Connected Leadership: Thriving in the face of Uncertainty

A leadership journey of Personal and Cultural Transformation

With Mark Morey

Super storms, declining resources, a stressed economy and people consuming at faster and faster rates are disturbing signs of our times. Change is happening very fast and as a leader how do you adapt and make a positive difference ?

Are you feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to lead in the face of an unknown future

The Issue of Disconnection

A byproduct of modern living today is disconnection, separation and isolation. While consumption is at an all time high, satisfaction and meaningfulness is low. In the workplace, research is showing 80% of employees are lacking engagement. There are enormous bodies of research that are documenting the trend of increased disconnection disorders to self, others, and nature.

At whatever level you are perceiving the imbalance in the world today, personally, in your family or in the workplace, ultimately we are part of this earth. Through simple forgotten tools, we can learn profound ways to live in accordance with it’s natural laws again. What we do and who we are as leaders matters, not just for our personal well being, but the future well being of our children’s children.

The answers to personal, organizational and ecological challenges lies in your ability as a leader to take in the power of nature’s wisdom. This course engages you in ancient tools and methods of learning that have been left behind and teaches you how to apply your insights into a modern context.

Be resilient. Equip yourself as a leader with diverse ways to thrive like nature. Embrace change, pay attention and become comfortable with the unknown. Acquire tools for harvesting the wisdom of nature’s teachings and go home with methods for empowering others.

Through storytelling, guided inquiry, ritual, and immersive practices of connection with the natural world, Mark will guide you on a transformational journey that will result in breakthrough ways of being a leader. This experience will be a unique intersection between leadership applications, initiation, systems thinking, deep nature connection, mythology, and best practices for human connection.

This week will be centered around going into an ancient woodland for an overnight of going deep within self and nature. The experience will be a balance of exercises with the class, a small group of 15 or less and going solo. We will prep for this nature immersion on the Schumacher campus, through lectures, small group discussions, nature connection activities, personal mythology activities, inquiry into what’s holding us back and vision to where we are going.

The return from the woodland will be a process of harvesting insights, and naming tools experientially learned from this embodied journey. From there we will discuss and share strategies for taking this into your life as a powerful mentor of other leaders and a resilient designer of thriving cultures at work, home and community.

Mark Morey has been researching and experientially applying natural models and indigenous social systems for 20 years in businesses, organizations, communities and the Art of Mentoring, an international movement of connected leaders.

What would be possible if you lived your life and leadership without compromise, with heart and authentically connected to yourself ?

This course is for you if…

• You are willing to be adventurous and connect to nature as a source of power in your leadership at home, in your community and company.
• As a person you are willing to explore the truth and risk discomfort to achieve authenticity and integrity
• In your leadership you equally value people and profit (survival) but you don’t know how to bring out the humanity in your organizational culture

Course Topics:

• Context of where we are in history
• Key concepts in Complex Systems Science
• The Psychology of Learning and protective habits that hold us back
• Core Routines of Connection to self, others and nature.
• Indigenous Practices of Cultural Resilience
• Hero’s Journey Mythology and Initiation

The nature connected leader understands their pivotal role in creating and inspiring the culture of the organization. The more awake and connected the leader is to self and others, the more conscious and innovative the culture will become.

This course follows the arc of a modern initiation. First, separate from the ‘everyday world’. Then immerse in the fullness of life, nature and adventure. Finally, reflect and integrate the experience and name your updated sense of who you are as a leader.

To initiate is to begin. Begin taking responsibility for the choices you have made, the opportunity you have right now and the legacy you will leave to those that will follow you.

During the course of the week you will be led through a four-part process, equipping you to be transformational change agents for yourself, those around you and those you will never know.

1. Unhooking from the limiting self. As leaders we need to be free from the concerns that have kept us safe. This is a time to upgrade to our higher connected self. Through guided inquiry and ritual, we will pass through a threshold together into the unknown, distinguishing ourselves from the limiting conditions of our formation and find the essence of our heroic leadership.

2. Reconnecting with the wholeness of nature. The natural world has been the source of life for as long as human beings have inhabited the Earth. Our bodies, minds, hearts, sensory abilities, and capacities for science, art, and visionary thought have all been shaped and fed by nature. Reconnecting with the natural world re-awakens our original design and inherent genius as fully alive human beings. It gives us access to new insights and capacities for designing social and community systems that reflect nature. Through ancient practices of nature connection, relationship building and reciprocity with the land, we will deeply engage with nature as the ultimate source of our creativity and inner resilience.

3. Re-forming a new, coherent worldview and mission. With a taproot of connection to the earth and with nature as our guide, we will courageously articulate our new understanding as leaders and direct our missions of contribution to our companies, communities, organizations, and world.

4. Integration and application of transformation. To ensure that the outcomes of this course “stick” and translate into powerful actions and changes in participants’ lives and work, a major focus of the course is integration, meaning making, and transforming vision and mission into action. In addition to integration work during the short course, there will be three group calls afterwards, offering students high-level coaching to continue moving their leadership and transformation forward.

A blend of courage, ecological design, and deep indigenous process, this leadership course will lay the groundwork for unprecedented breakthroughs in your personal, organizational, and community leadership. While Mark will be bringing case studies of transformational leadership and courageous culture change, the real case study will be you. This course demarcates for Mark the beginning of an era of eco-cultural leadership training for executives and companies worldwide

“For me this is the most useful thing I have ever done. The feeling that I had coming off of the course was of grounded inner strength. I believe everyone can access that, if they want to. If they had a taste of it, I think it’s something that everyone would want. Something strong happened inside me at Mark’s course, and I will never be the same. It was not an intellectual thing for me. I left, feeling in my body, a sense that anything is possible, and that we can make a better world. I have been on other courses, and they haven’t left me with this feeling.”

- Carol, Ecologist, Connected Leader Participant

Facilitator

Mark Morey

Mark Morey is a visionary educator, an engineer of culture, and a mentor of leaders. He dedicates his life to helping businesses and communities achieve healthy, functioning and self-sustaining organizational cultures by harnessing the authentic and powerful principles of nature.Mark has over 25 years experience mentoring and leading leaders down a path of discovery and skills training. He is a skilled storyteller and designer of group event and initiation experiences. Mark co-founded four companies in the past 20 years, with his most recent being: The Connected Leader, bridging business leadership, nature and consciousness. His work has touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals and leaders worldwide.

As a speaker and teacher he has inspired thousands to take action towards deep nature connection, cultural design, radical leadership, and visionary change for a better world. Mark’s work bridges the ancient and modern, drawing on deep-lineage mentoring from native elders, extensive experience training teens and adults in wilderness survival, and cutting-edge methodologies of personal and organizational change.

Mark currently travels between the United States and Europe consulting, teaching and mentoring leaders and communities and resides in the hills of Southern Vermont.

Fee: £ 995.00Course fees include comfortable accommodation, all meals as well as field trips, materials and all teaching sessions.