The Heart of Leadership
Dates TBD
“The Hull: the planks of listening and interpretation, where it all begins and keeps us afloat”
Our foundational program.
$2,695.00
The Joy of Being
Completion, Compassion, Creating
Designing, then Living, the Life that You Love
September 23, 24, 25, and October 16, 2025,
8:15 am – 6:15 pm each day
“The Rudder: the blade that directs us to our destination, our place of home”
This conversation provides you with the opportunity to discern your Core, your Essential Design — to remember what is hidden and real — and then, to shape a life which makes manifest and expresses that unique thread and purpose that is at the heart of who you are. Through this deep work, you 1) come to discern your own, individual, unique purpose in life, your “thread,” your Essential Selfhood; 2) come into communion with that Self and fall in love with that Self; and 3) design/author your own life in such a way that your purpose is realized on an ongoing basis. Your embodied purpose then becomes a homing device that allows your soul to “enter the gravity field of its own destiny,” as poet David Whyte says. Only in a relationship with silence and emptiness, two essentials, can the kind of depth of conversation occur. The Joy of Being, as a conversation, in tandem with a limited number of people, provides that environment. After engaging with it, you move into living “in your true inheritance,” that which is a Source of Joy, where “living” and “being” are one.
The Joy of Being: Designing your Life is truly a gift you give yourself, a gift of loving and honoring yourself.
$2,495.00
Leading Groups Effectively:
In association with The Heart of Leadership
“The place where we steer the vessel, direct the crew, play our part in reaching the destination as a community”
This is a “sleeper course.” By that, I mean that while you have a breakthrough in your capacity to lead groups, you get your life out of it. “We teach who we are,” as Parker Palmer says. One could also say, “We lead through who we are.” We offer this program from time to time in conjunction with The Heart of Leadership. This is an opportunity to have a breakthrough in your ability to lead groups such that the intent and purpose of any group you lead is realized. A breakthrough into your own ease and grace in leading, and in being a clearing for others to be engaged and inspired, this program allows you to “observe” the leading of The Heart of Leadership, from within the thinking of the leader, embodying the meta conversation of The Heart of Leadership, debriefing each day, and then engaging in multiple dialogues, inquiries, developmental exercises, and practice mocks (where you come into your own wisdom, and your own strengths in leading) during a three-day period following The Heart of Leadership, opening you into generating leading groups powerfully as a way to serve.
Pre-requisite is The Heart of Leadership
$3,450.00
The Art of Living Wakefully: Finding Peace Within, or Sourcing Peace: Simplicity, Compassion, Patience
For graduates of The Joy of Being
Following The Joy of Being, we offer a full curriculum of graduate retreats, to sustain and deepen our life pilgrimage of having life itself be the transformative power of the journey. While we meet in person for three days each year, the retreats are essentially yearlong conversations, conducted through email. In these graduate retreats, we deepen our embodiment of various distinctions. Having taken deep dives into reflective and thoughtful conversation and inquiry with each other, we travel ever more wakefully, mindfully, enlivened in our days. Some of our past retreats have included explorations that lead into the embodiment of various distinctions, such as Faith, Fierceness, Fluidity; Vulnerability, Equanimity, Intuition; Surrender, Open Heartedness, Intentionality; Love, Faith, Integrity; Passion, Presence, Play, Gratefulness, Possibility, Perspective, Presence
$2,250.00
The Heart of Accomplishment: Accountability, Empowerment, Integrity
“The Keel: provides an underwater balancing force that keeps the boat from tipping over”
The title of this program means exactly what it expresses. The Heart of Accomplishment is a four-day conversation which gives participants an opportunity to dwell, live into, explore, and delve into exercises, to research, intuit, and inquire into what is at the “heart” – the very soul and essence – of accomplishment and coordinating action well with others, particularly in the face of breaches. It is a n eminently practical course, a conversation whose intention is to allow each participant to be able to authentically say, and live, once they are back in life after the course, “I can and am committed to being responsible and accountable for generating coordinated action around me, with others, for creating partnership, collaboration, and workability, and fulfilling my intentions and accomplishments throughout my life, including both my personal concerns and my operational or institutional concerns.” This is a deep cut into compassion, specificity in requesting and promising, keeping one’s word, and holding people, including oneself, to account for broken promises, agreements, and breaches, in a way that restores integrity to the conversation of any project.
Pre-requisite is The Heart of Leadership
$2,495.00
The Power, Art, and Heart of Listening
While everyone knows the importance of communication, everyone thinks communication lives in speaking. When fully explored, we find out it lives in the listening. The Power, Art and Heart of Listening is a two-and-a-half-day program, that is a powerful entrance into communication that works. It gives people access to creating a safe space, to trust, to speaking straight, to being for each other, to honoring commitments, to acknowledgment and appreciation, and to listening generously and with compassion.
We have added two new, special programs. The Joy of Being is now also being offered as a 4 day, private one-on-one coaching session with Amba, and a new “in house” program, The Power, Art, and Heart of Listening.
Joy of Being: One-on-One
The Joy of Being is now available as a one-on-one coaching conversation, where, working with Amba, you create completion with your life thus far, and design your life from your commitment to fulfill your Core purpose.
One-On-One and Individually Designed Work
Amba delights in providing one-on-one and small team executive/life/personal development coaching. Amba also available to design in-house work in behalf creating a culture inside a business or organization based in trust, communication, integrity, authenticity, accountability; generating transformational leadership in your organization, including The Heart of Accomplishment, The Heart of Making a Difference, The Heart of Leadership, Vision/Mission/Intentions/Value work.
To hear what clients have said about about the work they have done, and openings they have accomplished, in their one on one coaching sessions with Amba, please click the “explore” link.
The Heart of Leadership for Business
Date: Dates and location to be designed in collaboration with the client
As a firm oriented around developing people, we are dedicated to the possibility that one’s work and all other aspects of one’s life can be a source of joy, inspiration, ongoing development, contribution and meaning. In the past thirty years of developing people, we have observed that living well and working well are related; that accomplishment, productivity and satisfaction are related; and that forwarding people’s development over time ever increases the power of people to fulfill their intentions and to create environments around them that nourish themselves and others.
The Heart of Making a Difference: Being of Service, Coaching Others, Enrolling Others, Speaking UP
“The Mainsail – the component that catches the winds that propel us”
A long title, which captures the substance of this program – taking us into the very heart of making a meaningful difference in the lives of others. This rigorous, senior course explores, discerns, reveals, and distinguishes what is at the edge of Being-of-Service for you, as you maximize your possibility of affecting, impacting, influencing, shaping life, and making a difference in the productivity, performance, being, actions, and development of others. The course shines the light on three fundamental distinctions of fulfilling your contribution, which allow for a breakthrough in Service – developing others through coaching, training, and mentoring; enrollment (which includes creating a new space of possibility for others); and speaking up, transcending your fears, and bringing your own voice out of hiding.
Pre-requisite is The Heart of Leadership
$3,450.00
Building an Extraordinary Culture in your Organization
…A culture in which your people thrive, are engaged, called to participate fully and wholeheartedly their passion released, their skills and gifts and talents are a fit with the accountability they have, and profoundly experience being able to be of Service in the world.
What are the key ingredients that foster such a culture, a culture of joy and aliveness, where results are consistent, retention is not only not a problem, but great people flock to your company because the buzz about it is so great?
It is our view that while integrity, collaborative partnership, communication (without communication, nothing works!) authenticity, vulnerability, transparency, and leadership borne from people’s heart and wisdom are at the center of such a culture, the one word that best captures the spirit of such a culture, and embodies all the other principles, is Development.
Development releases people to their own Power…. power like the ability to Empower..,power, like the ability to fulfill intentions while leaving everyone around them enlivened and honored, becoming acquainted with their own Power.
A company that cultivates Development – that insures the development of people, through its offerings, its teachings, its structures, and its practices – grows: grows the business, grows the people, and grows organically into a business that is successful – successful in its contribution to the larger whole, including its customers, its stake holders, its vendors, its share holders, and to the larger community.
The transformational offerings, both public and in house programs, which allow for ontological breakthroughs (Breakthroughs in being) sustain themselves through time, and transform the very nature of the organization. Those rigorous and profound conversations, combined with the partnership and commitment of Gale Leadership Development with their client organizations, through time, allow for the growth of an internal culture that results in Awareness, Awakening, and access to ongoing Generativity.
The Heart of Leadership, The Heart of Accomplishment, The Heart of Making a Difference, The Joy of Being, Generating Vision and Mission, One-on-One executive leadership coaching, Thinking with Internal Development creators, are all offerings the Gale Leadership Development core leaders make to insure a viable, healthy, nurturing, Alive culture, that results in everyone that is touched by that company being served.
I delight in designing, with you, and providing one-on-one and small team executive/life/personal development coaching.
I am also available to design in-house work in behalf creating a culture inside a business or organization based in trust, communication, integrity, authenticity, accountability; generating transformational leadership in your organization, including HOA, HOMD, The Heart of Leadership, The Power of Listening, Vision/Mission/Intentions/Value work.