Have a look at this years invitation to read more: GetWiLD2012.

Enjoy.

Save the date 2012

Our GetWiLD Leadership Retreat took us to one of our favorite locations this year; Vålådalen in the mountainous Sami country in the north of Sweden. This year we had participants from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Israel and Belgium. Some pictures are available in the Gallery part of this website or on our Facebook page.

I also had the pleasure of teaching Dynamic Project Management with my colleague Sif Ø. Zachariassen at my old folk high school, Krogerup, in the North of Denmark. It was a part of the recurring event URO, a week of lectures and courses each summer, made by and for old students. You can learn more about it here.

One of the most important developments this summer was that our application for funding through the European Grundtvig’s Life-long Learners Program was accepted. This means that myself and a small project group spanning people from Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Austria and Germany now has just over 100.000 Euros at our disposal for a two year research project into the teaching methods and practices that counter resistance to change and attempts to create transformation in individuals. This is a complex project that will take much of my time in the coming two years, and much more information about the content of the project will follow in a detailed post later. The project starts in the end of August 2011 with the first project gathering in Kinsale, Ireland.

View the invitation online here or download it directly:

Get WiLD invitation (400kb)

This year we will host an advanced training Vålådalen, incorporating the feedback we received last year in the best possible way. We’ll have an increased focus on working together and sparring with each other in the days leading up to the solo as well as more time to practice simple meditation techniques throughout the weeks program. Finally, we’re opening up for the participants to share their own practices with the rest of the group as morning practice during the week.

The event will take place between July 4th and July 10th. Sign up now!

From the invitation:

“The training consists of a 3-day solo in nature creating a setting for you to establish a deeper sense of interconnectedness and a deeper connection to the natural world. Before and after the solo you will be engaged in group processes with your co-participants, camp-fire dialogs and meditation practices to highten your experience.

Solo retreats into wild nature have been used by indigenous peoples around the world during times of transition.They involve being alone in nature, reconnecting to one’s spiritual core and developing clarity about one’s life purpose. Get WiLD, which is led by experienced guides, is a contemporary version of this ancient native tradition.”

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I’m in Rio de Janeiro, Cidade Maravilhosa, and so far I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the founders of The Hub Rio, a brother of The Hub São Paulo that has been conceived but is yet to be born. While here, I’m trying my best to learn Portuguese, and to ease the process I’ve joined a language school for a three week semi-intensive course. I’m progressing slowly but I have to admit that it’s much harder than I expected.

As many of you will know I’m hear both for work and as a getaway between my move from Aarhus to Copenhagen. To follow my endeavors on a more personal note, visit my blog.

From February I’ll spend three months in Brazil and Columbia. In Brazil I’ll be working with the GetWiLD leadership retreats, and visiting The Hub Sao Paulo during the execution of their summers school. In Columbia I’ll be visiting Team16 of The KaosPilot on their Outpost in Bogota.

I’ll be back in Europe in time to host another round of GetWiLD leardership retreats in Sweden in July.

Happy New Year everyone!

This word has a slightly ambivalent nature, so to help make it concrete, here are four different types of transformational processes to show some of the levels on which you can engage in it*:

Individual

Transforming individuals

• Helping individuals grow and develop greater self-awareness

• Educating to broaden knowledge base

• Training to broaden competency base

• Attending to mental and spiritual health and growth

• Making explicit and examine assumptions, mindsets, mental models (i.e., transform not only “what” one knows, but “how” one knows)

Relationships

Transforming relationships

• Reconciliation / Conflict transformation

• Building trust

• Promoting respect and recognition

• Increasing knowledge and awareness of interdependence

• Changing patterns of dysfunctional relations

Culture

Transforming collective patterns of thinking and acting

• Changing the “rules” and values that sustain patterns of exclusion

• Exploring and transforming taken‐for‐granted collective habits of thinking and behavior

• Promoting more inclusive, participatory culture of “civic engagement”

• Transforming patterns of overly simplistic and distorted discourse

Structures / Systems

Transforming structures, processes, mechanisms

• Lobbying for more just policies, greater transparency and accountability, institutional rearrangements

• Providing just and equitable allocation of resources and services

• Reforming processes

The GetWiLD course that I host (click the “courses” link to the right to see more) focuses on personal transformation. An interesting aspect to the course however is the spill-over effect this personal transformation has on other parts of your life. Empowering you in your relationships, allowing you to see the culture you are a part of with new eyes and reevaluate your position in it, as well as open to an understanding of systemic patterns in the world at large and in cultures and social structures overall. In other words these different levels of transformation are interconnected and effect each other in complex ways. This means that any given intervention will touch on more than one of these levels.

* This list was given to me by a colleague who unfortunately doesn’t know the source. I’ll try to find it and write it here if I succeed.

The program included a diverse list of speakers and one of my favorites was Richard Reynolds, an inconspicuous Brit with a passion for gardening. He runs the web-based community guerillagardening.org for urban gardeners around the globe and promotes a vigilante style approach to beautifying urban spaces. It speaks directly to the inner child and troublemaker and at the same time creates beautiful little oases of green for everyone’s enjoyment.

I put together a little video about our experience with Richard in Århus. See it here.