The Leadership Development Intensive (LDI) is a transformative experience designed to foster personal growth. To maximize its benefits, participants should attend for their own reasons and focus on their own development. The program encourages mindfulness, urging attendees to notice their thoughts and perceptions. Stretching comfort zones is key; feeling uncomfortable indicates genuine growth. Open communication about any detracting issues is vital. The principles learned are applicable in all life areas, ensuring that personal growth achieved at the LDI translates to broader change. With a history since 1987 and a global network of graduates, the LDI is a trusted and impactful process.
Transcript
How to get the most out of your LDI. This is very important because it’s important because this event is such a potentially significant moment in somebody’s life that if you can get there and then operate in in the best possible way you can, you can get the most out of it. So over the years, we’ve done research not only with our facilitators, but also with graduates of the program. And we asked them, what do you think would help somebody get the most out of the LDI? And this is the cluster of responses that showed up from the research. Let me show you. Here we go. So how to get the most out of your LDI? The first thing is to get here for your own reasons. Sometimes people are sent, you know, by a boss or a spouse you know, or a partner. Hey, we think you should do this. Sometimes a team has to come, okay? I don’t want to look like I don’t care. So people show up sometimes. Not because they really want to be there? But here’s the thing. The instant that you realize, you know, there might be something here for me, I’m going to be here for my own reasons. The instant that happens, that’s when the LDI actually starts for you. Which is one reason we do this pre-work so we can get you thinking about certain things in a fresh way, so that when you show up on day one, you’re already in the mindset of, I think I’m here for myself.
I think I’m here because I want to be here. That’s a very, very that’s number one. Number two is focus on your own development. This is not about coming here to learn tips and techniques for how to change somebody else, and forget that we have no ability to change anybody else. We can create conditions and invite somebody into the process, which is what we do in the LDI. We can’t change you. What we can do is create a safe space for you to come and explore who you are, and enter into your own development. This is the focus. Be here for yourself. Don’t be here to try to figure out how you’re going to manipulate somebody else. Another one is to notice what you notice. This one is very is very cool. Um, most people just experience the world. Most people do not have that. They have the capacity, but they’ve never learned how to step back in a sense, go up into the balcony, go up into the stands and look at themselves in the game, in the match, how to how to notice what’s happening inside, how to think about your thinking, oh, what am I thinking right now? What am I feeling right now? What are my plans right now? How to how to notice what it is that you’re noticing when you look out at the world? What are you noticing? And we like to use this example.
If a carpet salesman, a carpet salesman, walked into the space that you’re in right now, let’s hope there’s a carpet on the floor. If there, even if there was or wasn’t, what would the carpet salesman probably notice immediately? The age of the carpet, the thread count, the quality, the cost, maybe where it came from, all kinds of things. Probably a hundred things about that carpet, right? Without even thinking about it. If an electrician, if an electrician came into your space, what would they notice without even thinking about it? You know where the lights are, where the electric sockets are. What might the electrician miss completely? The carpet. Exactly. So here we are in our lives at this point, and we walk in a room, so to speak, and we notice this kind of person we’re noticing who’s interesting, who’s attractive, who’s strong, who’s weak, who’s rich, who’s poor, who’s tall, who’s short. Things I used to look for when I was a teenager. But it’s it’s impossible to see things that you’re not noticing until you notice what it is you’re noticing. And then you can say, I wonder what else is here that I’m missing. I wonder if I’m missing the carpet. What’s the carpet on the floor here that I’m not getting? Especially with your tiger. Next, stretch your comfort zone. During this four days or the whole experience, stretch yourself. Um, if you’re not uncomfortable at least 2 or 3 times during this experience, then we have failed you because we want you to get out of your comfort zone.
We don’t want you to just breeze through this and think, oh, that was interesting. We want you to be challenged. We want to provoke you. We want to push you. We want to invite you into a bigger space, not a we don’t want to change anything. We want you to discover new aspects to who you are, which might be uncomfortable at first, as you’ll see, but be willing to stretch your comfort zone. Why? Because you can trust this process. The first version of this was done in 1987, for goodness sake. Right now there are graduates from 55 countries. Men and women in 55 countries all around the world have graduated from, from from this from the five questions, the executive development or the leadership development intensive. You can trust this process. You know, get in and go for it. As we say, don’t take a shower and leave your raincoat on. You know, if you’re going to be here, be here. Take off your raincoat, get in the shower, get in the pool, get in the pool and splash around with the rest of us. The next one is don’t hold back if something is bothering you. Uh. The air, the chair. My, you know, the voice of your facilitators. Something that’s that’s that’s happening. That’s really detracting from your experience.
Bring it up and talk about it. We might not be able to change it, but if we can, we will. It would be a shame for you to go through this whole potentially life changing experience and go back and people say, how was he go? I was pretty good. But, you know, that chair was really uncomfortable. Or, you know, that guy talked really too fast. I couldn’t understand him. Talk about it. Bring it up. Don’t hold back. And then finally remember that the saying from Ram Dass, wherever you go, there you are. So don’t be thinking that the only place where you can practice this stuff is in an LDI, or in this particular group, or with these facilitators. No, you are the same you, no matter where you are, at home or at work. I know you may feel like I’m different at home or at work, but the same decision maker lives inside the same you is existing in here. So wherever that person goes, there you are. So, as we say in the LDI shifted here, you shifted back there. Change it here, you change it back there. Become more of who you are here. You’re going to be more of who you are back there. So I hope this gives you a sense of how to what kind of attitude to bring to this, this potentially extraordinary, uh, three and a half to four days plus more for yourself.
