Holding What Remains:
An exploration of role, identity, authority, and systems
THREE BOOKS · THREE MONTHS · VIRTUAL INTENSIVE · COHORT-BASED · ONLINE · 1:1 COACHING
This concentrated three-month cohort questions our personal and collective responses to change — including loss and grief related to leadership challenges — making the work developmental, rather than purely intellectual or theoretical. This includes an exploration of how we see and hold our role, identity, and authority within the organizations and systems in which we live and work.
Drawing on adult developmental theory, systems psychodynamics, grief literacy, terror management theory, existential philosophy, and the adaptive leadership tradition, each session pairs a carefully chosen novel with guided reflection, live dialogue, and exercises designed to shift not just what you think, but how you see — yourself, others, and the systems in which we operate.
The program includes a Growth Edge Interview and two 1:1 coaching sessions to begin and enhance the cohort.
What does it mean to live and learn inside a system that has already decided who you are?
Three novels by Kazuo Ishiguro — The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and Klara and the Sun — trace one author's curious exploration of this question. A butler who gave everything to the house. A young woman who learned, slowly, what her life was for. A machine who watched more carefully than anyone around her. This course follows the stories of three characters who struggle to see and make sense of the worlds they're living in, and the role and authority they have within it.
Where we begin
Leadership is an art of seeing. And it begins where certainty ends.
Most of us have a role we've held so well, for so long, that it's hard to say where it stops and we start. We know how to be the steady one. The one who keeps the place running. The one who’s supposed to have the answers.
Then something shifts. A reorganization nobody wanted. A departure nobody explained. A job you’ve done well, but no longer believe in. And you notice, maybe for the first time, how much of yourself went into the role, and what it quietly cost you or others.
This cohort is a place to look at that honestly, with a small group of peers and three novels that have held these issues for decades.
Three Novels
We’ll explore one novel a month, read in order. Each one widens the frame and deepens the learning: from the role you're in, to the system around it, to what you choose to hold on to.
Month one
The Remains of the Day
Stevens, a butler, looks back, having spent a lifetime in service, inviting us to reflect with him. What happens when your identity is so woven into your role that questioning one means losing the other? What do we gain or sacrifice in service to our roles?
Month two
Never Let Me Go
Kathy, a carer, knows her role, what it demands from her, and what the world expects of her. How do we use our authority to live, learn, and help others find meaning within the institutions, societies, and systems that seem to decide for us?
Month three
Klara and the Sun
Klara, an artificial friend, gives unconditionally and notices everything; she was made that way. But what does it mean to hold, serve, and lead others through the difficult emotions related to change — including fear, loss, and grief.
Ishiguro creates characters who are capable, committed, curious…and a little blind. They tell their stories calmly, and the grief arrives underneath the calm, usually after it's too late to do much about it. Readers tend to see it before the narrators do.
Perhaps that's the point. It's often much easier to see what’s happening in someone else rather than ourselves.
The novels provoke us, while offering some distance.
We don't read or study the characters or their stories as leadership successes or failures. Rather, we read them to explore what they stir up within us — while reading alone or discussing what we read with others. What we project onto the characters. How we grieve for or with them.
Then, we can cross a boundary and explore together how and where this shows up in our own worlds — in our tasks, roles, identity, authority, and leadership.
You see it. You lead through it. You learn how to hold it, and what to let go of.
How we’ll work together
Before We Connect
To start, I’ll connect 1:1 with each participant for a Growth Edge Interview and confidential, developmental coaching session. This helps you see how you make sense of your world. And it helps me meet you where you are, so we can co-create a challenging and supportive space for you to learn and grow. Everyone will read the first novel, with my guidance, to prepare for our first monthly gathering.
Monthly Gathering
Each month, we’ll connect online for a two-hour session with the cohort, built around that month's novel. We’ll explore our learning with discussion, reflective exercises, as well as our own live dynamics in the here and now.
Ongoing Reflection
During the course, I’ll connect 1:1 with each participant for a coaching conversation to explore together what the novel or course is surfacing for you in your life or work. In between our monthly gatherings, a short reading/reflection guide deepens the learning, without turning it into homework.
Your Guide
I'm Brian Sano, an executive coach, consultant, and facilitator based in Malta, working with senior leaders across the U.S., U.K., and Europe.
Before this work, I spent more than twenty years in U.S. federal service, from prosecuting financial fraud to serving in the Senior Executive Service, leading organizations and advising Presidential-Appointed, Senate-Confirmed leaders on organizational health, culture, and strategy — including through crises. I know from the inside what it takes to serve and give yourself to a role and institution, and what it takes to leave one.
My practice draws on adult development theory, systems psychodynamics, adaptive leadership, and grief literacy.
I'm an ICF PCC coach, attorney (barred in DC and NY), a certified grief educator, and a teacher of Miksang Contemplative Photography, which is where I learned that most of leadership is learning to see what's actually here, now.
Your Investment
This weekend intensive cohort covers one evening and two half-days online — plus a follow-up session six weeks later. Written guided reflection is provided for each book and for the weekend overall.
Pilot Cohort: TBD (Spring/Summer 2027)
Schedule: 12 — 2 pm
Coaching: Growth Edge Interview (60 — 90 minutes) with a 1:1, 60 minute review; one additional 1:1 coaching session during the 3 months (60 minutes)
Maximum number of participants: 8
Investment: $1,950* (VAT included)
*Participants will be expected to loan or purchase the books to be read/listened to on your own. You can read/listen to the books in whichever language you prefer; coaching and class discussions will be in English.
Join the pilot cohort
Please provide the following information to submit your interest for this upcoming cohort. Once the course and your application are confirmed, you’ll receive a payment link and an invitation to book your coaching sessions.