Welcome to the sixty-second issue of CEE News!
I write this message with a full heart and a sense of control that I haven’t felt for several months. We hosted the 5th annual (and first ever virtual) Re:Imagine Leadership Summit two weeks ago. Since we were not confined to a single place on a single day, moving the Summit to an online platform yielded opportunities that we’d never taken advantage of before. And taking advantage of those opportunities continue to pay off well after the Summit was adjourned.
First, we kept the commitment we’d made earlier this year to use our platform to shed light and work for justice and equity. We did that by offering a free, pre-Summit bonus session dedicated to The Bottom Line On Bias in the Workplace. You can read the recap of that outstanding session here.
We kicked off the Summit the next morning with a fun competition led by our VP of Client Engagement, Danielle Aguas. Two teams competed with each other captained by Catherine Rells, a brilliant co-founder of Gene Tox Labs and Rusty Quinlan, a transitioning member of the Naval Special Operations forces. Catherine and Rusty had never met before, but were fierce and fun competitors. What’s more, the connection they made at the Summit has led them to meet again to share their enthusiasm for bringing an after school music program to an underserved community in the San Diego area. Good stuff!
We then led the Summit participants through a half-day of short, TED-like talks and small group breakouts on Leading in the Age of Rage by Dr. Tony Baron, Disconnection Syndrome: How to Re-Engage Your Brain led by myself, and How to Build Team Trust in a Remote World taught by Danielle Aguas. We took a short break for lunch but kept the online meeting open so that participants could chat with each other and continue to build connections.
After lunch, Dr. Baron led a keynote on The 7 Key Practices of Transformative Leadership. He made the case that leadership is an inside job – especially today in the Age of Rage. We followed up with walking participants through an eJournal that we’d created to help them work on each of the 7 Key Practices that will carry them through mid-November.
Group photo at the conclusion of our virtual summit
The world is a mess right now. There are many things that we can’t control or even predict. We can allow that lack of control and uncertainty to overwhelm us, or we can focus on what we can control. For seven consecutive weeks after the Summit, we’re committing ourselves to daily restorative practices that will help us focus on being our best. At the end of each week, we reconnect online to check in with each other and share how we’re doing. This is something I didn’t know that I needed, but it turns out that – rather than get caught up in the dystopia of the world – I can focus on my inner world with a small group of others who I know are doing the same work. It’s exactly the prescription I need to help me to be more responsive and less reactive.
Sheri Nasim | President & CEO
