Landmark Education Makes Difference
Valley News Dispatch
By Trish Lindsay
Are you a leader in your community? Your church? Your school? Your family?
What are the qualities of a true leader?
On Monday, leaders from
The intention of this training is to have leadership show up in the people around us.
A true leader will forget his or her identity, or importance, to further the purpose of the project at hand.
The goal is to trust other people to take on a project, make mistakes, redirect the outcome, whatever, as the leader steps back and gives the project away.
Is this how we usually think of leadership? Giving up control?
A good example of such leadership is in a project taken on by a past participant, Tim Stevens of
He started B-PEP, Black Political Empowerment Project, during a Landmark seminar.
Last year, B-PEP registered 8,000 African Americans in
B-PEP has its own leadership, and Stevens is president of the
Stevens attended the first session of the leadership seminar to testify to the value of his training in Landmark Education.
Other long-standing projects that were started during Landmark seminars are The Hunger Project, to work with governments to end hunger in the world, and The Holiday Project, to bring visitors to people confined to institutions or hospitals during holidays.
I have attended Landmark seminars for the past five years and as an educator, I see the seminars as the most powerful, relevant program of adult education available.
The unusual thing about the seminars is that they assume we already have enough information jammed into our heads. What we discover is a new way to relate to what we know – and to what we don't know we don't know.
I am also enchanted by the wide variety of people who attend the seminars. Students from Carnegie Mellon and Pitt sit next to construction workers, teachers, doctors, mechanics, attorneys, musicians, homemakers, and financial consultants.
In my small group within the leadership seminar, Bruce Gordon, a cardiologist at
And my pastor, the Rev. Clark Echols, has created a New Testament curriculum for The Academy of the
Frankly, writing this monthly column is a direct result of a Landmark seminar I took four years ago. I moved from thinking that someday I would get around to writing.
My daughter paused in the middle of her college education to find a job in
So, I am inviting
The seminar at the Holiday Inn will offer guests the opportunity to ask questions and register for The Forum in
Landmark Education courses strike at the heart of the resignation and cynicism that creeps into our lives as we get older. That is why it is the best adult education around.
We don't need more information as we grow older; we need heart. Heart that will make a difference in our lives and in our communities.
Reprinted from the Valley News Dispatch,