When Our World Ends

A Journey of Role, Identity, and Beginning Again

Two Novels · One Weekend · Virtual Intensive · Cohort-based · 1:1 Coaching

Great novels can help us see a path forward, even in the darkest days. They create the conditions to clarify what we normally defend against — including with others who carry similar weight. But this is not a book club. It's a structured developmental experience that uses literature as a lens for the inner work of leading ourselves through change. It can help develop more self-awareness, while seeing the larger systems we operate in, and how those influence — consciously or not — our authority, identity, and role. It can help deepen our understanding of who we are, inviting us to explore who we are becoming…and even who we need to let go of in the process.

This weekend intensive uses two novels — Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men — to examine a single question:

How do we continue to move forward when the world ahead is unknown and uncertain?

Many of us meet this question at some point, usually where our professional and personal lives run into each other:

• Being RIF'd or laid off from a job or work we loved.

• Stepping into a promotion or leadership position that puts us outside our subject matter expertise or what we know how to do well.

• Retiring from or ending a long and meaningful career.

• Starting over — in a new organization, a new field, a new city, a new country.

While these changes are professional, the losses inside them are personal. Some we don’t see. Most go unwitnessed.

And if we’ve spent years struggling to separate who we are from what we do, the ending of a role can take on a different, deeper meaning. It might result in shame, making it even harder to speak about it with anyone.

I know because I've been there.

I spent twenty years investigating, studying, and exercising leadership in the U.S. government, much of it in temporary organizations and roles that were not built to last.

I know what it feels like when things we love or commit deeply to end. When what I saw as my life’s calling suddenly went silent. With that came a loss of authority, power, and the ability to make a difference – or so it seemed at the time. I also felt like a part of me ended in the process. 

I've also led teams and organizations through it. Watching and holding brilliant, talented, and experienced people see and make sense of the path forward, through a reorganization, a departure, a mission or strategy changing shape around them – all while the need to deliver and drive results didn’t change.  

I saw the same thing in my coaching. Executives and senior leaders in the weeks before or after a promotion, an exit, or a retirement announcement all echoed similar thoughts and feelings. Behind "what do I do now?" I saw "I don't know who I am anymore."

I noticed a new way to help myself and others: storytelling. Storytelling about vision or strategy is often a powerful instrument within the leadership toolbox. But I learned more here from another source: novels. 

As I read novels and listened to my clients and friends talk about what they were reading, the books, stories, and characters seemed to provide a unique kind of container – a transitional space in which people could explore their own emotions and feelings, especially related to change and the losses that come with it. And, something magical happened when I moved beyond reflection and shared that experience with others, especially when I listened to what they read, shared, and learned. 

This intensive weekend offers another space to explore these topics, together.