During a 10-month journey, participants at LEAP YOUth experience the Inner Development Goals framework in 5 modules to explore the main dimensions of conscious leadership: Being – Relationship to Self; Thinking – Cognitive Skills; Relating – Caring for others and the world; Collaborating – social skills and Acting – driving change. Besides input webinars and workshops, they are supported by 1-1 coaching sessions, peer groups, are invited to engage in personal reflections and can enjoy 2 main onsite meetings.

Continuing our LEAP journey, from September to October participants went through the COLLABORATING MODULE – social skills. In this module they explored how to develop trust and constructive communication, and to mobilize and engage others with an inclusive mindset in co-creation. 

During these 2 months they could dive into different tools and/or frameworks that supported learnings towards building fundamental skills to positive and win-win relationships.

The first webinar was held by Yannick Wassmer, introducing his work with Social Labs. The Social Lab is a model that supports groups to put collaboration at the center of problem solving to drive impact on complex challenges. While applying it, people can design, facilitate, and guide processes that enable different stakeholders—even those who don’t understand or agree with or trust one another—to make progress on their toughest challenges. They are an excellent way to work in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, since it: a) follows a systemic perspective, identifying leverage points for change; b) fosters collaborative processes that enable genuine dialogue and collaboration, and c) allows generative experimental solutions applying innovative and creative responses.

Participants could get a better understanding of why it is important and how to mobilize different groups in this kind of process facing our complex sustainability challenges, what are its main characteristics and steps and to learn and practice listening skills, one of the key methods used within the Labs to build trust and deepen communication between people.

For the COLLABORATING workshop, participants continued learning to deepen listening and communication skills gifted with the facilitation of our LEAP founder Adriana Troxler. Adriana is a professional coach and Trainer of Non-Violent Communication (NVC). She hosted the session around the NVC topic with the aim of guiding others in building trust and managing conflict.

Following a very interactive and dynamic process, Adriana first shared about the process of how we connect with each other and how conflict arises and then presented the method of Non Violent Communication and guided the audience in an internal investigation for dealing with personal triggers practicing the 4 levels of NVC. A simple, yet powerfully transformative model for cultivating conscious leadership as it strengthens self and others awareness, connecting us to our own needs and those of others and stimulates compassion, through its emphasis on deep listening and to awaken our common humanity.

Some thoughts of participants during this module were:

“Every time coming back to the LEAP session is like a breeze of fresh air. You get inspired, you get warm inside seeing beautiful people learning, you get open space to share your thoughts and to ask questions. I’ve never been a person to speak up – but when it comes to LEAP, I am fully there, present, curious, so I ask questions and speak up. In this module I learned the importance of diversity and the value of different perspectives everyone brings!” – Patricija, participant

“This module provided me with a lot of knowledge and had surprisingly many impacts on my personal and professional life. It affected me to see change as possible when we put it in pieces and combine these really unique pieces together in order to create the most sustainable solutions for different challenges”. – Nea, participant“I really loved the insights I got from the workshop with Adriana! We had to think about a certain phrase that triggers us (a phrase that some other person(s) said to us) and how that makes me feel and why. Talking about those sentences within the breakout rooms was awesome and it really encouraged me to show honest empathy and understanding”. –Antonia, participant

“I found the Collaborating Module very interesting. I learned to develop skills that help me to understand the relationships in my personal and professional life. I learned a lot about opening to other people, listening carefully and having a feeling of being in a safe space, to develop trust, and tools to learn avoiding and managing conflicts. I now have a deeper understanding about the five social skills and will apply my knowledge at oikos Graz where I am working and in the program that I currently lead there, “chapter LEAP”,  and in my daily life. I see and love that all LEAP modules are very connected”. –Noemi, participant