Start Your Power Journey At Omega With Take The Lead This Summer
“This is the meta moment.”
Gloria Feldt leads a Take The Lead workshop at Omega Institute in 2016.
It is a ”potent time” for women to examine their life, leadership and power journey and Take The Lead is prepared to navigate that journey for women in partnership with Omega Institute.
“The current climate is challenging on one hand and great news on the other, as women are stepping into their power,” says Carla M. Goldstein, Chief External Affairs Officer at Omega, a nonprofit, mission-driven educational organization that for 41 years has hosted more than one million people at its Rhinebeck, NY campus.
“We are done being relegated to not being treated equally at the table of meaning-making, decision-making and future making. The phase of documenting what’s wrong is moving beyond that to taking action,” says Goldstein, cofounder of the Omega Women’s Leadership Center, where from July 27-29, Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead will lead “Your Power Journey.”
“Omega Women’s Leadership Center will partner with @TakeLeadWomen President and Co-founder Gloria Feldt for the ‘Your Power Journey’ workshop from July 27-29. #powerfulwomen”
“There’s a quickening now of women running for office, women speaking up about how we are going to step in and play leadership roles in environmental movements, Black Lives Matter, Time’s Up and #MeToo,” says Goldstein, also directing the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
”The goal of the workshop is to help women identify their source of power and help them catalyze the next step of their own growth wherever they are on their leadership journey.”
The three days of workshopping on site at Omega are “an exploration of your life and leadership,” says Feldt, who will delve into the topics of imposter syndrome, leadership effectiveness, authenticity and also help participants identify their own assets and roadblocks to advancement.
“@TakeLeadWomen will partner with Omega Institute for the July workshop, ‘Your Power Journey,’ exploring topics such as imposter syndrome, leadership effectiveness, and authenticity. #womenleaders”
“We’ll dive into our journey to find points of power that brought us to today,” says Feldt. Mapping intentions for a future journey, Feldt says participants through the workshops will identify their own “stuck places” and learn techniques to move forward. This is a return visit for Feldt to Omega, as she ran a Power Tools Workshop there ins 2016. This is the first time for “Your Power Journey” workshop.
“I created the Power Journey process when I was planning a three-month 50 Women Can Change the World leadership development program,” Feldt says. “I intended it to be an hour long icebreaker. Instead, the women found such value and insights in the exercise that we ended up spending the entire first day doing, sharing, and learning from it.”
Feldt continues, “That’s why I have now built out this unique Power Journey workshop to take the insights women gain from probing deeply into their own journeys to the next level where we will also create our future Power Journey. And I am so excited to be doing it at the Omega Institute.”
Read an interview with Gloria Feldt and Omega at Take The Lead.
Goldstein, a former public policy advocate for women’s issues for 25 years, says, “You are not a leader 9-5 and a person 5-9. At Omega, we like to address everything holistically, that’s’ the difference of taking a workshop here. This is a model of doing power differently.”
Working at Omega since 2005, when she became communications director, Goldstein says, “Women don’t want to mimic kinds of power we have observed. We want to transfer power as we see the nature of power as collaboration, connection, compassion and caring. That is instead of power as extraction, domination and greed. Power with others instead of power over others.”
In 2003, Goldstein was working in the New York legislature and went to an Omega conference on power, “Bringing The World Into Balance,” featuring speakers Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Marion Woodman, as well musicians and artists.
“It was the first time I had ever heard women’s issues so fully addressed in the round. I was so energized,” says Goldstein, who two years later was working at Omega. “I was an activist looking for more wholeness and that was missing in my public life. “
For the first 30 years of its 41-year existence, Omega “worked in personal growth connecting dots between mind, body, spirit and holistic health,” Goldstein says. After she joined, she was director of what was called the Women’s Institute. In 2012, she co-founded the Women’s Leadership Center, “creating programs that lean into this space of recognizing the interdependence of things and creating curriculum for our whole selves along with social change.”
The Power Journey Workshop offered for the first time in July at Omega will be helpful to women looking to the future with a new vision.
“The Power Journey Workshop offered for the first time in July at Omega will be helpful to women looking to the future with a new vision. #thefutureisfemale”
“Most of us know the feeling of coming to an end of a cycle when you know you have had it. You want to so something more and can’t quite figure out next steps,” says Goldstein, whose move to Omega was followed by a personal health crisis—she is fine now—that helped her reshift her priorities and mission.
Advising that anyone at any stage of leadership levels looking for the next move will benefit from the workshop, Goldstein says, “A person who has that hunger will benefit.”
The idyllic setting, the cohort of other women on similar journeys, and the expert skills and guidance offered by Feldt, work to make this enormously important for participants, Goldstein says. “One of the most powerful ingredients is having a cohort of people saying similar things.”
Omega is committed to personal and social change, Goldstein says. “This is camp for grownups. Down time is just as important as up time. How you source your power has a lot to do with down time. Life impedes the capacity to tap that deep well of resource of power.”
Retreats and workshops such as this one at Omega are energizing and incentivizing for many women.
“Going on a retreat takes you out of your routine and changes your perspective,” according to Aeracura Leadership. “Ideally it will also present a bit of challenge to you. That might be trying something new, doing something all by yourself, or going somewhere you’ve never been before. It might be as simple as challenging your usual ways of thinking.”
Goldstein adds, “Women don’t want to mimic kinds of power we have observed. Women have discomfort with the word power. But the relationship to power is that most women are uncomfortable with the abuse of power.”
This workshop, Goldstein says, “can help find pathways to lead the way back to a more full humanity.”
About the Author
Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take The Lead, an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project. @micheleweldonwww.micheleweldon.com