Camelot's Leadership Program focuses on leadership skills and understanding followership.  Participants learn the importance of personal vision and how to integrate it with their organization's goals. It is nine modules spaced over 36 months and includes an internship.  Participants in this program have made a decision to lead, are ready for advanced training in the Person Centered Approach and have the support of their organization.

Camelot is dedicated to developing leaders with the integrity, understanding and vision necessary to move organizations into the 21st Century.

Moral and Philosophical Grounding: Prepares leaders to answer the moral and philosophical queries of their followers.

Camelot is accountable for bringing each participant to clarity and confidence with regard to their own moral and philosophical beliefs.

Camelot believes that people devote their best, their most creative energy to the workplace, but that energy is often eroded by unsatisfactory interrelationships among colleagues.  The skills we teach dramatically reduce these unsatisfactory encounters and so frees energy for more creative uses within the organization.

When powerful people come together the results can be unpredictable. When they have effective interpersonal skills and understand that the most creative solutions are reached when "the good of the group" is not seen as a reason for sacrifice, but as the result of including the diversity of everyone's input, then the potential is unlimited.

When leaders feel their power -- know what they want and have the skills to pursue it -- they will take the initiative, dedicate themselves to a vision, enhance their followers, and bring vitality to their organizations.

Leadership is an extraordinary development of a person.  It demands a vision, a calling, a grasp of the future as well as the capacity to carry people along.  Leaders need high quality business discussions concerning real issues and real results.  Leaders need relationships strong enough to gain dedication from others in making their vision a reality.
 

CAMELOT LEADERSHIP is a dynamic process designed to allow learning to take place as and when the participant is ready.  This is accomplished by creating an environment where it is possible to be open to new concepts and experiences, while at the same time being challenged to probe for answers and seek insights.  This is not strictly speaking a training approach, it is a learning experience.

CAMELOT LEADERSHIP is a three-year program consisting of seven, nine-day residential components at six month intervals.

Each component is an intense experience.  Camelot has spaced them at six-month intervals to prevent overload, to allow for as much absorption as possible between components and to interfere as little as possible with participant's work schedules.  It is an established fact that adult learning is a relatively slow process -- new skills and understandings may not be accessible at will for as much as twelve to eighteen months after the learning has taken place. It is to be expected that a little awkwardness will result from participants experimenting with new behaviors and strategies before they have completely internalized them.

The program design includes individual, small group and large group events. The content places emphasis on experiencing situations confronted daily by leaders, but this experiential aspect is balanced and complemented by theoretical and practical discussions, short lectures and speakers from the world at large.  Reading assignments include the latest thinking on leadership as well as some more time tested classics.

CAMELOT LEADERSHIP objectives are simple and clear, but not quickly achieved. The program is designed to lead participants through a series of smaller steps and learnings.  Each of the seven components has a focus and an objective.

  Component 1: Advanced Skills

The first residential session focuses on Person Centered Approach (PCA) skills: congruence (what you want); empathy (what your organization wants); empathic listening (what the other wants) and unconditional positive regard (helps to integrate the skills).  A high level of personal skill in these essential conditions is the basis of leadership.  

As well as deepening skills abilities, the participants in this module will begin to develop a personal vision; understand how they relate to their organizations; learn to take responsibility for themselves and their own situations; and learn the importance of dealing with things as they are, not as they might have been, or would have been if...
 

 Component II: New Community - New Paradigm of Collectivities (Groups)

Participants are offered the opportunity of developing a new kind of community, a community demanding total involvement and yet requiring them to maintain their own individuality, to give nothing up for "the good of the greater number".  

This kind of community is made possible through the use of congruence, empathy, empathic listening and unconditional positive regard.  Setting it up and making it work provides participants with practical experience in followership, participation, roving leadership and diversity.  The demands this new community makes upon the leader will be thoroughly discussed.  

Participants will learn to extend individual responsibility to a larger community; to be proactive as well as reactive; to identify and include the boundaries between group members; to value and use people's differences rather than their similarities, in order to create more satisfying options and solutions.

 Component III: Application to Work and Organizations

Participants will use situations and systems from their own organizations and learn to apply the skills we teach for successful, satisfying and productive relationships.
 

 Component IV: Power Lab

This is a nine day course in Power.  The first three days will be a Lab experience.  Participants will divide themselves into three groups through an interaction simulating real world factors: skill, bias and luck.  The three groups are: a powerful in-group, a powerless in-group and a powerless out-group.  They will act out their roles using real resources and causing permanent consequences.  We will extract the learnings of the lab, with the participants, for the remaining six days.

A resource-based power lab, with emphasis on congruence, empathy, empathic listening and unconditional positive regard, immerses participants in an environment where the issues of power will be lived out.  This experience provides the basis for in-depth discussions on the impact of power on individuals, organizations and especially leaders.  It provides the opportunity to direct previous visioning activities toward integration with the organization's mission. 

Objectives: Participants will understand how they handle themselves in relation to power -- how they use it most successfully and under what circumstances and why they abdicate it.  They will understand accountability; know what is required, from both sides, to make agreements that stick; know what it takes to influence others; and know how they themselves can be influenced.

 Component V: New Community - New Paradigm of Collectivities (Groups)

This is the second component of working with the New Community [see Component II  -  above].  Experience has shown that participants will gain much by this second opportunity to learn about this paradigm shift after having experienced the Power Lab in Component IV.  They are expected to use their experience here in the developing new work communities in their leadership situations after graduation.

 Component VI:  Philosophical Grounding

This component will be used to tie all of these learnings together in the development of a leadership strategy for each participant in his or her own work situation.  Congruence, empathy, empathic listening and unconditional positive regard will be used to plan, strategize, test, probe and validate each strategy. 

Participants will return home ready to lead others towards their vision.  They will know what it takes to be a leader and be able to choose to lead; they will have initiative and a vision; they will have learned to take full responsibility for their vision and its integration with the organization's vision; for their task in the organization; for their learning and development, their judgements, decisions and results.

The work of Mortimer J. Adler will be used for the philosophical grounding part of the session.  Leadership graduates are expected to know their own position regarding what is a human being and the leadership consequences of such knowledge.
 

Component  VII:  Moral Grounding

The work of Soren Kierkegaard will be used for the moral grounding part of the session.  Leadership graduates are expected to know their own position regarding what is moral and the leadership consequences of such knowledge.  They are expected to be able to answer morally to their followers with great ease.
 

The nine-day sessions are held at a variety of locations selected to further the learning objectives of the particular session.  Participants should expect variety in environment and activities, including shared and private rooming, sites with catered restaurant meals and sites where participants do much of their own meal preparation.
 

CAMELOT LEADERSHIP participants are selected on the basis of two criteria:
 

They have made a decision to Lead -- people of personal energy, people who follow a vision of something they want to accomplish with their lives.
 

 They are ready for the intensity of advanced training in the Person Centered Approach.
 

In addition, participants will make a commitment of time and resources and they will be clear about what they want to accomplish.  Where necessary, they will have the support of their company.
 

Participants can expect to experience a whole range of reactions -- the program's intensity is not always easy to handle -- but mostly to enjoy and profit from the challenge.
 

CAMELOT LEADERSHIP fosters creativity and many of our participants have found creative ways of joining the program.  If you are interested and you need support, we'll help.
 

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP
 
 

. . . intelligence, credibility, humanity, courage and discipline.
 
 

. . . leaders motivate people to their highest levels by offering them opportunities, not obligations.
 
 

. . . consists of doing less and being more.
 
 

 . . . is the ability to work effectively with almost anyone, through knowing when to listen, when to act and when to withdraw.
 
 

. . . because leaders see clearly, they can shed light for others.
 
 

. . . consists of facilitating process and clarifying conflicts.
 
 

. . . leaders know that style is no substitute for substance.  
 
 

. . . leaders know that the reward for doing the work arises naturally out of the work.