Essential Conversations

In March 2020, CPL re-launched the weekly Essential Conversations Series, rooted in convening and purposeful action, to activate leaders in response to the massive disruption we and the world were experiencing. To meet the urgent needs of these disruptive times we created transformational conversations and events for our expanded community to collaborate and support one another. The invitation: Begin your week, in a community of support and collaboration, by setting your intention to have a positive impact and bring people together for the highest possible outcome of whatever you are engaged in.

Our weekly ZOOM program of provocative and evocative conversations, interactive breakouts, and community conversations will inspire you and equip you with strategies, inspiration and ideas to create change and innovation needed to being coherence, resilience, and positive impact.

Exciting themes we’ve explored with amazing Conversation Starters

  • The Great Reimagining: From Founder-Led to Community-Powered

  • From Dream to Living Legacy: 3 voices living the dream (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

  • A New Model for Leadership: Purposeful Leader as Convener

  • Purposeful Leader as Elder: Coming of Age at the End of an Age 

  • Peacemaking from a Rwandan Perspective: Truth and Reconciliation Work Movement

  • Voices from Ukraine

  • Weaving Threads of Grief and Joy in Times of Unraveling

  • A Call to Community: conscious technology for authentic engagement

  • COP 26: Initiative on Closing the Investment Gap in Sustainable Finance

  • Convening in China: Expanding our worldview through on-the-ground stories

  • Climate and Indigenous Wisdom

  • Rewiring Leadership: Connecting the Dots for Sustainability and Equity

You can find all Zoom archives in CPL Communities:

Essential Conversations: Recordings

  • Humanity Awareness Initiative

  • Purposeful Aging

  • Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old?

  • From Separation to Belonging

  • Who Do We Choose to Be?

  • Illuminating Fields: Personal, Social, and Noetic Ways of Knowing, Co-Creating and Leading

  • The Meritocracy Myth: What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

  • Welcome to the Third Reconstruction (by investing in a more perfect multicultural, equitable, and prosperous union)

  • Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit

  • Build Trust, Examine Systemic Racism

  • Heartful Leadership in the Heart of COVID-19

  • Whole Person Leadership in the Time of COVID in the Navajo Nation

  • Rage, Love & Transformation: A Report from Minneapolis

  • Doing the Right Thing (even when it hurts)

We organize the conversations around four facets or lenses:

  • Convening the Inner Life   Convening is an “inside job”. The question at heart of the matter is “Who am I?” This is an area where we can explore the inner work of convening. “The success of any intervention is dependent on the interior state of the intervener (convener)."

  • Convening Relationships  All transformation is relational. At the Heart of the Matter is, “Who am I in relationship?” Who are we called to be together? In this topic we will explore the challenges and opportunities presented in relationships.

  • Convening in Organizations & Systems   Here is where The Art of Convening really shines! Designed for “the gathering and holding of people in essential conversation for the best possible outcome,” Convening is a powerful tool in organizations to help generate effective and efficient co-creation and to address systemic change.

  • Convening in the Environment   “Our relationship with the earth involves something more than pragmatic use, academic understanding, or aesthetic appreciation. A truly human intimacy with the earth and with the entire natural world is needed. Our children should be properly introduced to the world in which they live.” (Thomas Berry, “Human Presence,” in The Dream of the Earth, 13).