A Leadership Collage

SEALA 1, DAY 9

At their morning meeting the facilitators have sought to put into words SEALA's special and heady atmosphere, and to describe the role they have aspired to play in shaping that atmosphere during the last nine days. 

The credo they have drafted deserves to be shared: part mission statement, part testimony to the unique chemistry of the program, that makes us feel like we're breathing pure oxygen...

Andrea guides the group through an exercise in which they imagine their future aspirations, then work back in time to craft a realistic path towards achieving those goals.

Images in old magazines stimulate ideas and ambitions, refresh memories and intentions.

Combining them in a personally meaningful collage is a powerful, pictorial way of bringing one's life trajectory into focus.

Such a torrent of images can flood even Anthony's capacious brain: how to prioritize, how to choose?

Different people....













...have different interests.

          

            

(Some people have different interests, but identical shirts.)

But what is a collage, if not an assemblage of different forms to create a single artistic whole? And according to that definition, what is SEALA, if not a collage?

Sajjan and Asha Agarwal are welcome guests at SEALA.

A few moments of levity in the ballroom, to clear the air for a final, emotionally crunching exercise of clarity and insight. The closing session of the day is rooted in gratitude to our peers for the leadership lessons we have shared at SEALA, and an ongoing personal commitment to live in integrity.

But to friends who have not gone through the wringer and lived the intense SEALA experience, these things are hard to share or explain; so in a public blog of this nature, we discreetly draw a curtain over this session. 

Beachside lunch and afternoon excursion to Pancha Rathas ("Five Chariots") monument complex, Mahabalipuram. The temples portray events described in the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata.

Five chariots – thirteen charioteers.

Our SEALA heroes gather in preparation for their own grand epic.