Generative Leadership Masterclasses

Dave Pendle
8 min readOct 13, 2022

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Photo by Saffu on Unsplash

What is Generative Leadership?
Generative Leadership is my distillation or synthesis of a lifetime’s lived experience of leadership, in it’s multiplicitous forms and dimensions. This is a relatively novel term to apply to this field so it is always good, to begin with dictionary definitions;

Generative — having the ability to produce or originate; “generative power”; “generative forces”

Definitions of Leadership abound, but I prefer a meaning derived from the Old English/Anglo Saxon word;

Laedan- To lead to bring forward or to travel

The combination of these two sentiments, to originate and to journey, are very pertinent to me, because humanity stands at an historic epochal forming crossroads. Our continued existence on the planet, is dependent on all concerned and caring people, to endeavour to be original, fully, alive, creative beings who intend to bring forth and travel towards, a saner epoch for humankind, irrespective of background, formal or official position, talent or specific skillset. For an extended overview of the Characteristics of Generative Leaders do read my article on Medium!!

Generative Leadership Masterclasses Series
The first masterclass Reinventing Leadership unravels this ubiquitous terminology and offers a creative and resonant reframing of this whole phenomena.The following session Awakening Super Powers of Attention investigates critical aspects of human beingness, and offers totally sensible pointers on how to amplify this absolutely essential leadership capacity.

Then Meta Narratives Sense Making and Story, will orient our natural human propensity to meaning making and story creation, towards the impending global catastrophe and should consequently help create a north star of meaning for chaotic times. The fourth workshop Consciously Responding to or Creating Challenge, examines the presence of unrelenting pressure in modern life. How pressure challenge and difficulty are essential to growth, yet hugely detrimental if undergone for trivial or non worthy reasons.

Our western neoliberal worldview, determines and exploits a very narrow constricted version of self or identity. My fifth workshop an Expanded Sense of Self, points to developing a multidimensional identity far more suited to the current emerging epoch. Finally the one major element missing to even hospice the planets declining systems, is activating human capacities towards collective action. My Cultivating Collective Awakenings workshop is crafted participants to begin to perceive the magnitude of collective human potential and even become bouyed by the possibility of it’s existence

Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash

Reinventing Leadership

Purpose: A Masterclass that repositions leadership from power over to power with.
Delivery: Saturday 5th November 2022

Leading and Leadership;
Continue to be broadcasted as the panacea for all planetary business political and social ills. This nebulous and evasive phenomena continues to be studied in enormous depth and yet;

‘Where are the leaders and leadership required in this moment almost preceding planetary collapse?’

The state of the planet, global economy, extreme poverty, species extinction are all challenges that are crying out for leadership of a different order. The plethora of books, scientific studies, and magazine articles add an overabundance of knowledge and information and skills to this field of study, yet where is the leadership coming forth that can even begin to facilitate addressing these challenges? If the field of leadership puzzles you, if you are curious and prepared to re-examine the ideas you possess on the topic, do attend this workshop. There are no easy answers to this issue, this presentation though, will point to areas that do merit further examination.

If you attend this workshop you will;

  • Discover a more rounded perspective on leadership and leadership development
  • Begin to align your own deepest intentions, with the desires of your best self to lead yourself in everyday life.
  • Discover that art and practice of leadership can offer you clear developmental pathway forward
  • Understand how a broader perspective on this field enhances your Generative Leadership capacities
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Photo by Leo Ching on Unsplash

Awaken Your Super Powers of Attention

‘Attention is nothing less than the way we relate to the world — Iain McGilchrist’..

Purpose: An interactive experiential learning journey that awakens you to your superpowers of attention

Delivery: Saturday 26 November 2022

Intended Benefits

If you attend this workshop you will

  • Establish a clearer purpose or clarify your motives and intentions for training your attention.
  • Access a simple framework that puts the meditation or mindfulness spectrum/marketplace into a navigable framework
  • Relax so deeply that you feel the unlimited potential that lies at the source and actually powers the phenomena of attention
  • Recognise the importance and significance of awareness and attention as a core component of Generative Leadership

Attending to Attention
This half day interactive workshop is designed to be a highly participative, reflective learning journey, through multiple domains of training attention. The workshop is intended to be a foundational corrective antidote to the plethora of confusing offerings that have inundated the mindfulness and meditation marketplace over the last 20 years. The content is sourced from the multiple dimensions of the lived experienced and deep enquiry of Dave Pendle the workshop facilitator

This session will offer groundbreaking propositions, that you can explore experientially to clarify for yourself the origins, purpose and existence of meditation and mindfulness. It will help you distinguish between technique process and purpose and the core experience of silence, stillness, peace and depth. The transparency offered in the workshop, should help advanced practitioners access source and express the core essence of these experiences. For people in the middle of an explorative journey it will enable you to make better informed purposeful choices, decisions about your development in the area. Plus for beginners it offers a clear navigational aid to reboot or to begin, on a journey towards a more fulfilling rewarding and productive life.
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Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

Meta Narratives Sensemaking and Story:

Purpose: Making sense in a dying polarised world is an extreme challenge. Meaning making is under siege. This class offers creative practical pathways onward.

Delivery Date: Saturday 3 December 2022

Intended Benefits

  • Take part in radical non-technical approach to meaning making, through story and narrative creation
  • Realise the importance of how narratives or stories shape our existence in the world
  • Develop and frame a meta narrative that most is most resonant with your current world view
  • Understand how self authorship contributes to and is a critical element of Generative Leadership

Stories

Humans are made up of stories, in the private space of our own minds as we give language to our experiences. We invent interpretations, formulate conclusions and explanations of whatever occurs in our lifeworld. We consequently relay this to our family, peers, work colleagues, tribes and communities. Likewise communities, organisations, even nations, generally develop narratives that rationalise and make sense of their motivations actions and beliefs.

Yuva Noah Harari in his bestelling book ‘Sapiens’ develops a convincing postulation that all brands, companies and corporations are fictive entities. Mostly because you cannot point a single element that fully represents the entirety of a Nike, Peugeot, or Renault for example, all of which are largely united in a shared purpose, bound together by a common narrative.

Narratives

With a world breaking down and nearing collapse, the agreed narratives of the current paradigm are in meltdown. Many of the most prominent story makers, largely offer biased, fragmented unintegrated or even ostensibly or subliminally doom laden visions of the world in which we live. To lead a life that makes sense , full of purpose meaning and coherence in these moments of flux, we need to reach beyond the obvious and source our own narrative of this moment. One that makes compelling and fulfilling sense while empowering us to take wise, purposeful action in circumstances in even where this is becoming increasingly difficult.

This workshop will look at some of key metanarratives that might be currently consciously or unconsciously shaping our behaviours. We will share, cocreate and explore, how participants are making up our own meanings in this problematic era. We will study examine research and share a breadth of possibilities of meaning making and meta narrative creating in this moment.

Sensemaking

From this rich menu, each participant should leave this workshop with a reinforced sense of what is meaningful, hopeful and realistic for them, in this disruptive epoch. While experiencing an increased sense of how engaging consciously in meta narratives making can bring, inform and encourage a resonant and sensible response to present day life conditions.
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Photo by Christophe Hautier on Unsplash

Consciously Responding to or Creating Challenge

Purpose; Develop familiarity with your limits, edges and boundaries taking risks in the journey of becoming to definitely enhance your personal evolution.
Delivery Date: Saturday 21 January 2023

Likely benefits of this workshop include:

  • Distinguishing between those challenges that support or detract from personal evolution and or leadership
  • Explore and discover those individual edges where most promise potential and possibility exist
  • How to fully embrace risk and adventure while taking smarter empowering decisions to decline those challenges that undermine that do not serve the best self.
  • Understand how a conscious relationship to challenge, contributes to and enhances your Generative Leadership capacities

Challenging Times
A life without challenge adventure and exploration on whatever sphere or scale is one that would inevitably be colourless, lifeless and flat. Without the excitement of risk and venture we might default to myopia, compromise, stuckness and inflexibility.

Nevertheless, overwhelming pressure at work, in mostly inhumane and inhospitable enviroments, plus with minimal mental downtime, as well as the advent of social media and digitalization. The best we can hope for our rest recovery and recuperation, is to refuel us, to cope with the next onslaught of unrelenting work demands and and accompanying target setting.

An Evolutionary Relationship to Challenge?
It begs the question in today’s life circumstances ‘What is a healthy and evolutionary relationship towards challenge?’ In this highly interactive, experiential workshop, we will explore and identify those challenges that promote and serve our best self and personal evolution towards a thriving livelihood. We will also examine share and discover those seeming challenges and mistaken paths that burn us out, detract and lead to us losing our trust and faith in ourselves as well as each other. With end result being a sense of freedom to make better choices that serve our ongoing development in search of the more beautiful world.
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  • An Expanded Sense of Self
    Saturday 11 February 2023
    We usually define our identity in narrow terms. As our race faces possible extinction our relationship to self now needs radical revision.

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  • Cultivating Collective Awakenings
    Saturday 11 March 2023
    The magnitude of collective human potential is largely unknown. This workshop will introduce you to some of these higher future possibilities

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Check out the links above sign up for my very engaging masterclasses. Additionally you like the post, please comment or clap multiple times up to 50 claps are very welcome!
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About the author Dave Pendle; I am synthesising almost 30 years experience in non profit enterprises with over 40 years of deep personal development experience. Passionate about enabling others’ sense of fulfillment, impact and trust, to engage wholeheartedly with inspiration and commitment to 21st century work and life. My new website Generative You, is just about to go live, so do sign up for my newsletter or express and interest in my services, or share there how you best like to connect with me and or subscribe on Medium to stay in touch with my articles.

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Dave Pendle

Navigating this civilizational moment of disruption to usher in the more beautiful world…