Yesterday (May 1) marked 20 years since we established Global Leadership Foundation. We’ve previously – on our tenth anniversary! – shared the circumstances that led to the establishment of the foundation, so there’s no need to retell that story this time.
What we didn’t talk about so much in that earlier blog post is what happened after we set the organisation up.
Has Global Leadership Foundation gone where we expected? The short answer is no, however not at all in a negative way. From the outset, we saw the Foundation as an experiment in the quantum world. We opened the business guided by the QuantumThink® Distinction of ‘infinite possibility’.
What we can say is that over two decades we have been blessed to work with a wonderful array of people in the corporate, government and not-for-profit worlds, as well as in the community. We have been able to grow a network of friends and colleagues that is truly global. And we are grateful in knowing that our work has had a positive impact on a great many, while our philanthropic fund has enabled us to support our stewardship efforts.
Originally the two of us brought clients into Global Leadership Foundation with whom we had been working in our own individual consulting businesses. In many cases, we had already brought each other in to help with some of that work. Over time we built up an ever-growing group of clients, with the breadth of the work and the great people we worked with continuing to help us develop an approach to leadership and organisation development and transformation that we can truly call our own.
We also continued to integrate ideas into our work that we had been introduced to prior to working together: concepts like emotional intelligence, vertical development, QuantumThink® and the Enneagram (especially in a business context). All the while we deepened our thinking and developed a model around emotional health levels that is recognised globally today.
At this time in our history, it’s worth reflecting that while we continue to refine our ideas (we never stop learning), the central motivations that inspired us to create Global Leadership Foundation all those years ago remain at the core of our work.
The shared interest in leadership, culture and change that brought us together in the first place is as strong as ever. Our original mission – to raise emotional health levels across the globe – is unchanged. Our work continues to be underpinned by our guiding principles of self-realisation, collaboration and stewardship, and guided by the principles of QuantumThink®.
As for the future, needless to say there is still plenty of scope to further raise emotional health levels across the planet. We continue to work to build the capacity of our Global Fellows to support that effort for many years to come.
What will it look like? We can be no more definitive about that than we could twenty years ago!
Gayle and Malcolm
