Laddership Retreat
Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Duration: --
"In a gentle way, you can shake the world," Gandhi showed us. Yet, it's difficult to live into that when we are disconnected from our inner-voice and each other. Recently, the head of Gallup summarized the global status quo in the Economist: "Negative emotions -- the aggregate of stress, sadness, anger, worry and physical pain -- reached a record high last year. And two billion people globally feel socially dissatisfied to the extent that they wouldn’t recommend their community to anyone."
As a result, leadership today has become akin to a zero-sum race for extrinsic influence -- more money, more fame, more power, more technology! Yet, as Einstein noted, if problems can't be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it, then how do we as leaders, optimize organizations to ignite that deeper collective flow? And who do we have to be, to lead with relationships and the gifts of emergence?
A Japanese farmer who pioneered "permaculture" offered a counter-intuitive idea -- instead of doing-more, do-less. Instead of "move fast and break things", what new synergies emerge when we move gently with ahimsa (do-no-harm) and karuna (compassion)? We imagine leaders as people in charge, executing pathways and directing groups to new visions. However, as our world becomes more complex and connected by technology, what shifts are being called upon in our organizational and leadership models, to effectively lead with relationships over transactions and build radically innovative solutions? We call that approach Laddership.
Particularly in an era of Artificial Intelligence, as bots surpass humans in IQ and EQ, how will we cultivate CQ (compassion quotient)? Business, NGO, community, media, political sectors are all facing existential questions today. If technology helps us automate the status quo, how do we ensure that we don't solidify today's poly-crisis world? If TV took 75 years to get to 100 million users, Netflix took 10 years, and ChatGPT merely 2 months, how will we find time to raise nuanced questions around our innovations?
Join us for this four-day experiential retreat, to explore these rich questions with a community of like-hearted people from across India, at the intersection of our head, hands and heart -- collective practices, inquiries and stories to co-create a field of heart’s intelligence, “a whole greater than the sum of our parts”. On Day 1, the “Me” theme will explore the edge between our inner voice and ego's voice; the second day's “We” theme traverses the spectrum of transactions to relationships to noble friendships; on Day 3, “Us” opens into design thinking that could creatively infuse "love logic" into systems entrenched in "market logic"; and on the last day, we hope to integrate and harvest our learnings, like a fountain rising as one before dispersing in different directions.
To learn more about our upcoming retreat, please see the presentation below:
If you'd like to join the retreat, please click on the 'Apply For Retreat' button below and complete the application below (in English or Hindi) and we'll get back to you.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Moreover, in an increasingly volatile and complex world, we have many challenges and many solutions. Yet, we might benefit from zooming out and exploring patterns across different sectors. Could those patterns point us to an “elegant simplicity” on the other side of complexity? To live, lead and love fully and deeply in this context, and to catalyze a movement of the whole, we hope to dive into some nuanced design questions.
- Inspiring participants. Lots of great hearts are coming together!
- Uncommon questions. For quick-fix, binary, either-or answers, we already have Google; we aim to hold questions to lean into its nuances first.
- Noble Friendships. Our hope is to nurture a rich matrix of friendships among unlikely friends.
- Gandhi. Being on sacred Gandhian land in Ahmedabad, we hope to tap into vast reservoir of inspiration and practicing Gandhians. (More: Standing Up)
- Volunteer Run. It's run entirely by volunteers, so there's no solicitation, pitches, agendas. Just practice of love.
The retreat formally begins on 9:30AM on Dec 14th (Thursday), 2023. Please ensure you reach the retreat venue before that. If needed, outstation guests are welcome to arrive on the previous evening.
Retreat ends at Sunday, Dec 17th @ 3PM. Most participants will leave during the evening, but in case you need to stay back for the night, we will be happy to arrange that.
Please note that is mandatory to be present with us for the entire duration of the retreat. And during the retreat, you won’t have space to take other meetings or step out of the campus.
Through our time together, we will sit in circles to learn from each other’s experiments and challenges; hear and engage with some innovative speakers across sectors; engage in many group practices that nurture our collective inner transformation. Plenty of opportunities to engage the head, hands and of course the heart. Plus a few surprises!
Over last twelve years, thousands have joined from a wide-ranging backgrounds. Perhaps what brought them together was a simple organizing principle: We are not merely what we do, but who we become by what we do. If you resonate with the notion that inner change and outer change are intrixicably intertwined, and if you are moved to cultivate deep connections with kindred spirits, this retreat will likely speak to you! Beyond that, we'd recommend leaning in your heart's intuition -- more often than not, 'heart knows today what the mind will know tomorrow.' :)
To facilitate deeper connections, we limit the group size of our gatherings -- and give priority to project initiators who are anchoring local projects in their contexts.
If you have any questions, please contact us anytime. To co-create our sacred field of emergence, we welcome you join us!
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