We often wonder whether leadership is innate or learned.What I know is that it is revealed.
In December 2019, I joined the Co-Active Leadership Program.24 people. 10 months. One week every 3 months. Sitges, near Barcelona.
On paper, this program is deceptively simple:Working on our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world.
But for me, it was a turning point: a definition of leadership that I had never been able to put into words before, and that made complete sense to me.
Everyone is a leader.And a leader is someone who is responsible for their world.
Not a stance.Not a title.A responsibility.
But above all, it did what few programs truly know how to do:it moved me from the idea… to the embodiment.
People told me I was powerful, inspiring.People told me I was assertive, self-assured.People told me I was a leader.
And it was the Co-Active Leadership Program that revealed my leadership.
This program makes us aware of who we are as leaders.Of when we have the greatest impact.Intentional and unintentional.
This program develops our ability to stay in relationship.To stay with when it is uncomfortable.To stay with contradiction.
We come out of it with both a permission and a precious commitment:To fully express our leadership… while taking responsibility for our impact.
As a facilitator, this program also transformed me.
It taught me that creating lasting transformation relies on three essential elements:Holding the frame.Contextualizing.Making learning experiential.
It also taught me to take into account what is happening in the emotional “field” of a group. What is ready, what is not yet ready, what resonates, what creates dissonance, and to sense that moment when a shift becomes possible.
In April 2025, I returned to Spain.Not as a participant: as an assistant to the two trainers.
And at the end of January, I was there again, supporting the fourth retreat.
With a very particular feeling: the feeling of witnessing the closing of a cycle.
This program, as we know it, is coming to an end.
A few programs are still running.For how long? No one knows.
I will say it: I feel sad.And at the same time, I am full of hope.
Because even if this program ends here, what it has sown will continue.
Either it will return, in one form or another.Or its ideas, its vision of leadership, its pedagogy will be taken up, carried forward, amplified… by the thousands of leaders who have benefited from it over the past 20 years.
Because in the end, that is what matters most:
A program can come to an end.But what it has awakened in all the people who have experienced it can continue.
It is up to us to keep its legacy alive.It is up to us to continue embodying and revealing committed and responsible leadership, in everyone 🙏