A wise farmer from Vietnam once posed a simple yet profound question:
"Instead of asking what to grow here, we ask—what grows here?"
Traditional leadership teaches us to lead with force—to impose our agenda onto a shared field of possibility, deciding what TO grow here. This approach demands power, control, and extraction, reducing the sacred web of life to mere transactions and weakening the very connections that sustain us.
But what if we began from a different place—a place of deep knowing that we are not separate from this world, but intricately woven into it? Instead of marching toward predetermined outcomes, what if we learned to listen, observe, and amplify the wisdom already present in the fabric of our shared existence? What grows here?
If leadership is about managing an ecosystem of self-maximizing transactions, Laddership is about nurturing a web of relationships that regenerate and evolve together. Just as a gardener collaborates with the weather, soil, rain, and seasons, a good "ladder" works in harmony with an individual’s natural inclination toward personal, social, and planetary coherence. Rooted in the science-backed belief that people are wired for kindness and connection, a ladder cultivates inner resources to hold space for transformation—allowing nature itself to realign, reconnect, and reanimate collective potential.
By integrating our innate proclivities into our social structures—becoming, in a sense, "nature-funded"—Laddership teaches us to do less, but to see more, sense more, and hold more. In a gentle way, a ladder thus shakes the world.
Laddership training highlights a clear connection between who we are and what we create—where the impact of our external work mirrors the depth of our inner transformation and the breadth of our skillfulness in the world. It invites us to ask questions like:
- How do we hold space for a community with diverse motivations?
- How do we design systems that honor what is ours to do—without overstepping?
- How do we trust emergence, even when it does not follow our timelines?
- Who must we become to guide a collective toward an unknown destination?
Our 21-day journey, then, unfolds through three themes: Me, We, and Us.
- Me—a call to turn inward, discern our inner voice from the noise, and make space for new stories to emerge.
- We—an invitation to rethink scale, speed, and power in the context of diverse perspectives and forces.
- Us—a step back to witness the whole, recognizing how it shapes Me and We in ways greater than the sum of their parts.
In the sky, starlings dance in murmuration, each bird watching only the seven closest to it—yet together, they move in perfect synchrony, guided by an unseen rhythm that turns chaos into harmony. That is our task in these next three weeks—to thread the throughline between Me, We, and Us—to sense our rhythm, lean into our collective movement, and trust in the unfolding of our shared emergence.
NOTE: Every day, you'll see a "Heart" opener, "Head" readings, and a "Hands" practice to engage in for the day. After you complete the day's materials and practice, please enter your reflections and you'll be able to access a feed with responses of how your fellow podmates are holding the same inquiry -- and then be able to access the next day's materials.
Please remember to click on each of the 3 tabs below, "HEART", "HEAD" and "HANDS" and then submit your reflections below so that you are able to open the next prompt.