Make Your Leadership Golden
The Alchemical Leader™ program helps leaders understand themselves better, so that they can live and lead with purpose, intention and authenticity. Leaders who commit to The Alchemical Leader program gain insights and uncover limiting factors that prevent them from being effective leaders. With this new knowledge, leaders set new intentions and action plans for change.
In understanding our leadership, we must move toward finding the “sweet spot” of our purpose, where who we are and what we do delivers mutual benefit to ourselves as well as to others. Thus, leadership requires that we are both inner and outer focused.
Leadership begins within. To lead, we need to know and accept who we are, including both our light and our darkness.
Leadership asks us to be present, mindful and deliberate. It asks us to reflect on our choices and act in alignment with who we are. We need to “walk our talk,” not just for our own health and well-being but so that we are consistent and build trust with those we lead.
In being outer focused, leadership asks that we engage others with empathy, compassion, forgiveness, respect and integrity. Ultimately, being a leader is not about the leader; it is about the people, organizations and communities that we lead.
Program Structure and Expectations
The Alchemical Leader program is best experienced in a one-on-one setting but can also be designed for small groups of participants (4-6) who are willing to share deeply personal information as well as participate and learn from each other.
While there is structure to this program, each session is customized to the participant(s) in terms of preferred learning style and time commitments. Some sessions have been designed as 2 hours once per month for 3 months with “homework” in between. Others have been designed as off-site in-depth sessions over a 2-day period with “homework” done prior to the sessions.
An important element in this program is the use of profiles to better help participants understand themselves and to provide them with opportunities for reflection and insight. To get the most out of The Alchemical Leader, participants need to commit to doing the homework and reflection, which are essential to effectiveness of the program
Application
Raj is the HR Manager for Healthseez. During a recent M&A, his boss, Lisa, learns of his desire to develop his leadership skills and eventually run a business unit. Lisa provides Raj with the time and funding to work with The Alchemical Leader program from ALCEMIS. Through homework and one-on-one sessions, Raj uncovers the best of who he is and from where his leadership comes. He discovers his potholes as well and develops a plan for which ones to fill and which ones to simply avoid. Raj creates a personal mission and vision.
As he works through his fears and assumptions, Raj discovers all the ways that he has been holding himself back from success. One significant assumption and related fear that he has held is that “people are untrustworthy”. This assumption resulted from an experience in his childhood when close friends broke commitments they had made to him. Until going through The Alchemical Leader program, Raj had a hard time delegating and was a micromanager. He had received feedback regarding this in the past and often ignored it. Now that he understands the origins of his behavior, he makes new choices, focuses on how to build trust with others and develops steps to take when he feels trust is being compromised.
As Raj works on overcoming his fear and building trust, his personal relationships improve. He delegates more and begins to encourage individual development of his team members. As conflicts arise, he asks more questions to help him understand the facts first and then communicates both his feelings and the implications for the business to move forward.
