Authentic Leadership Training
Comprehensive
Don’t lead lonely.
Leadership is in everything you do.
It’s the conversations you start. The directions you give. The way you raise a child or do your job. The tiny decisions you make every day.
It’s what you will be praised for, blamed for, seen for and remembered by.
To lead, you must balance your view with others' visions.
There is an African proverb:
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together
To hold this balance,
to be both expressed and connected,
seems to require supernatural skill.
This training is for that skill.
"I've been attending workshops literally for 30+ years and I think this was among the most organized and well structured that I've experienced. I love your transparency, willingness to give us you all you've got, and the fresh dynamic that you bring together as a team."
Sheri Kay
Dentist in Asheville, NC
"I was heading toward numbness and feel like I got re-directed back toward my actual self."
Wilde Parry
Guide at The Parent Hive in Austin
"I was able to experience a perfect balance of challenging discomfort and space to shine."
Sophie David
Doula in Boston
"This course was absolutely transformational. Today I am performing better in work, living better in life, and connecting better with my baby. There is something really special about the composition of your course: the balance between the pod, triads, and group/individual exercises; the room for both personal and professional development; and the je ne sais quio that finally brought my presence into the room. I am truly impressed. "
Bronwyn Green
Mother in Santa Barbara
"Training ordinarily gives you information that satisfies the intellect and helps you to understand a thing. Sometime, training fills your imagination with creative ideas about what you could do in the world. Some fills your heart with the energy and inspiration to go forth and actually do the work. This beautifully-crafted training weekend does all of the above, wrapped in an incredibly supportive, transformative experience."
Shelley Delayne
Founder at Orange Coworking in Austin
You:
A formal or informal leader of groups or community.
You’ve studied leadership models, taken trainings, mentored, or none of the above. You’re looking for the style that fits you.
This training will be especially useful if you’re stepping into a new form of leadership and want support, or if you find yourself pressed into leadership and want to make sure you hold it well.
Us:
A group of community instigators, facilitators, and teachers who have spent tens of thousands of hours experimenting on what works, with groups from festivals to funerals to executive teams.
We are guides in self-expression, lifelong learners, and utterly committed to your growth as well as our own.
Why take this program?
Leadership is time-consuming, challenging, and takes a long time to learn to do well. We’ll condense years of practice into just a couple of months, most of which you can do from home.
Most trainings offer you one or two models of leadership, so it’s hard to find someone who looks like you to model. Your core weekend will have 16-25 staff trained in many disciplines.
Learning happens through experience. You’ll be immersed in an environment where you get all the tools you need to start, but most importantly you’ll have a community to practice within, try things, ask questions, and get pushed to grow.
It’s impossible to predict all your needs in advance. We’ll change up our training weekends on-the-fly based on feedback you give. You never have to stay silent and bored.
You’ll get a world-class experience that balances fun and connection with intensive learning and personal development. 98% of our participants have said they would recommend our trainings to others in their life.
Uplevel Your Leadership
The ALTC covers both group leadership and life leadership. In the group section, you'll explore asking better questions, how to discover and communicate your own experience, how to enroll others in your ideas, and the magic tip to get a room of hundreds quiet in less than ten seconds.
In the life section, you'll explore how to set boundaries, make requests, have tough conversations, and develop emotional resilience - all in your own way.
Low-Consequence Practice
Relational conversations and leadership moments can be scary because it feels like we only get one chance to get it right. Here, you can practice over and over again. You will try new skills and role-play situations live, over video, and with people in your life. Then you’ll debrief what happened in a safe space and try again.
Build Community
We can’t create what we’ve never experienced. You’ll join a community of people going through similar questions, challenges, and hopes. You’ll be paired with two others as a triad throughout the course, so you’ll always have someone to check in with.
You'll also get a full experience of the Austin community, with a 1:1 staff-to-participant ratio at the first live event, and an ending weekend focused on how to build the kind of group you want to be part of.
Diverse Learning
We use a diverse array of techniques from all over the world of awareness, from Nonviolent Communication to Internal Family Systems to the latest research on group psychology.
Every part of the course has options for visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. Your core weekend will have 16-25 staff specializing in areas from business development to diversity education to self-awareness to raising a family.
What’s Inside:
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Five months of online life leadership training, with over 50 videos and weekly assignments. You'll practice with members of your cohort, with yourself, and with the people in your life.
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Two live long weekends focused on leadership training, practice, and connection in Austin, Texas (shared housing included)
- One exclusive half-day with Sara Ness in Austin, Texas
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A skilled coach available throughout the course to answer any questions
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Twice monthly connection and exploration group calls with your coach (9 total)
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Monthly Q and As by the creator of the courses in this training, Sara Ness (4 total)
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Monthly 90-minute Skills Labs with Sara (4 total)
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Six month membership to our online practice platform, COnnect, with relating events led every day by facilitators from all over the world
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Discounted 1:1 coaching sessions
Investment
Our current financial system rewards the production of products rather than growth or community. Most people are forced to choose between pursuing societal and personal health at the expense of financial stability, or giving up some stability in order to make ends meet. It's not a fair system. We're working to develop pricing models that address this disparity, and to that end, are trying an experiment with the ALTC. For more details, read the "Investment Information" section at bottom.
Program Dates
All Modules are held online
All live weekends are held in Austin, Texas
Kickoff Zoom Call Tuesday June 4, 7-9 pm CT
Module 1 - June 4-17
Module 2 - June 18-July 1
Live Leadership Training - June 28-30
Half-day with Sara Ness - July 1st
Advanced Leadership Training (optional, additional fee) - July 3-7
Module 3 - July 2-15
Module 4 - July 16-29
Module 5 - July 30-Aug 12
Module 6 - Aug 13-26
Module 7 - Aug 27-Sept 9
Module 8 - Sept 10-23
Module 9 - Sept 24-Oct 7
Community Immersion - October 11-14
Take a Tour Inside...
About the Facilitators
Sara Ness
A highly-experienced community leader and facilitator most commonly described with the adjectives intuitive, transparent, powerful, tiny, and benevolent. Sara has worked with over 500 leaders in sectors ranging from education to the Coast Guard on the art of authentic leadership. Her writings and teaching have led to the foundation of 15+ authentic relating communities, as well as performance troupes, nonprofits, several independent businesses, and at least one baby. Initially trained in conflict resolution and the study of intentional living communities, she now teaches authenticity, empathy, and culture-building worldwide.
Jennifer Ott
Jennifer Ott is a facilitator, coach, and mother-of-all-things. She uses Authentic Relating practices to facilitate gatherings where the possibility to learn and grow through connection, vulnerability and intimacy blooms. Jennifer works with Authentic Revolution as our Happiness Officer and helps manage and lead events on the COnnect online circling community.
When not working with hearts or communities, Jennifer is most happy in her own backyard. Accompanied by her beautiful partner and their four amazing girls she loves to grow food, flowers, is an avid chef, baker and loving practitioner of all ways nourishing.
Investment Details
With previous trainings, we discovered that people fall into roughly three categories:
- Financially broke while attempting to pursue their dreams
- Financially sustainable and struggling to find time for their dream
- Making a sustainable income while living their dreams, or
- Living in San Francisco, where the laws of nature do not seem to apply.
Although we’d love everyone to be in category 3, that seems to be the rarest group, especially in younger age brackets who often have more creative energy but less resource to apply it. Whether it’s explicit or not, categories 2-4 tend to sponsor those in category 1, either through direct financial or knowledge mentorship.
Authentic Revolution has always been a nonprofit business aimed at founding communities whose members can, as much as possible, experience connection without having to compromise their basic needs. We want to bring the neighborhood back and to create self-empowering systems, not just individuals. This is not very profitable. We struggle with whether to support category 1 - those who are most likely to create good groups in the world, because they burn for it - or to pay our own bills.
To address this disparity, we have developed two pricing tiers.
- Category 1 Subsidized - by application - $1500 unless more fully sponsored
- Category 2 or 3 Full-Price - $3200
- San Francisco - You may pay in start-ups.
If you have the resources to give more than the full price, please consider sponsoring someone who may be high in social capital, energy, and creative resource, but low in income. We will send you the applications for scholarship participants and you may decide if there is one you would like to support.
SUBSCRIPT: If you feel slighted or missed in this consideration, please message us! This is an experiment in applying the tools we teach of encouraging honesty and making the implicit explicit, even when it comes to financial systems. We’d love feedback.
Cost breakdown:
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Authentic Leadership Training
(3 days, incl. all food and housing): $650 -
Community immersion weekend
(4 days, incl. housing and some meals): $1000 -
Authentic Life Course online, 6-month version: $900
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6 months on COnnect ($40/month): $240
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6 Skills Labs with Sara ($150/hour value): $900
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Exclusive half-day with Sara: $500
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Discounts on coaching and advanced training