Leadership Challenge: Signal Presence As leaders we are challenged to develop an attitude of consciously being there, ready to act, paying attention to the details while operating from a posture of gratitude. This attitude requites an internal discipline of calm affirming respect and confidence, and persistence in the face of challenges while being open to unexpected possibilities. By simply being our care, leaders are making the world a better place. We are challenged to engage in a way that when we show up in a situation we create a significant positive difference. – pg. 198 Chapter 9: Signal Presence from The Courage to Lead by R. Brian Stanfield The Courage to Lead engages participants to consider leadership from many perspectives.  It challenges us to lead from our current situation, not only later when we have time or money or position available to us. It teaches us to ‘lead from where we stand.’ How Much Is Our Membership Fee? In 2017, we are offering an annual membership for $20. The fee covers some of the cost of

Annual General Meeting ICA held its AGM last Thursday, June 16th at ICA’s training facility in Toronto. We thanked outgoing board member Mohamed Khaki for many years of support and service and we moved to include Virginia Kanyogonya as our newest board member. Welcome aboard! With our hard work out of the way, the group of 20 members participated in a World Cafe around the question: What can we do to make the most of our 40th Anniversary event on Saturday, November 12th in Toronto? A lot of creative energy went into this and we formed four categories of activity: Event Planning, Highlighting History, Outreach/Marketing, and Interactivity. Through these four areas we took in loads of exciting ideas for an interesting event and we even found a couple volunteers in our group. We could still use more and all of our members are welcome to participate in our purpose to: engage people in the future of ICA CANADA based on the passion that originally caught them up in ICA. How Much Is Our Membership Fee?

A Few Remarks From The Courage To Lead Participants The Courage to Lead is a hard course to capture in words. Rather than transfer information about leadership strategies, it is a course developed to encourage new ways of personal reflection as a means to moving things forward. As one of our participants put it, the course “doesn’t teach Leadership Skills” but emphasizes “Leadership Development.” You, me, all of us, can “lead from where we stand.” Instead of trying here to describe The Courage to Lead, I have excerpted a few phrases shared by our most recent course participants at the University Health Network. These explain something of the experience of the courseand how it benefit them: I was feeling skeptical that the course would be “fluffy”, but was surprised how “real” the concepts were and that they truly could be applied to our everyday and work lives. Asking the question of what is necessary and acknowledging that things I may have viewed as bothersome tasks (i.e. laundry, groceries, cleaning etc.) are part of care and that there is no

AGM 2016 ICA Canada turns 40 this year and YOU are invited to help us celebrate during the Annual General Meeting on June 16th at ICA Canada’s office from 6pm to 9pm. We wish to bring our staff, board, volunteers, supporters, members and new course grads together to contemplate 40 year’s building leadership across communities across Canada and in the wide wide world. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to ica@icacan.org. If you can not attend but would like to send in your questions or comments please follow us at https://twitter.com/ICA_Canada?lang=en

The Courage To Lead As many of us know, leadership is the number one factor in an organization’s success or failure. According to a Gallup study, only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. No doubt, leaders greatly influence employee engagement. In fact, researchshows that people leave managers, not companies. In the words of Kofi Annan, “the world is experiencing a crisis of leadership, not a crisis of knowledge”. Have you ever considered what the concept of leadership means to you? Have you ever thought about what motivates you to lead? Have you ever thought about what it takes to affect positive change? If some of these questions have ever crossed your mind, this course will certainly have great insights to offer. Starting on Thursday, March 31st to Thursday, May 19th, from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m ICA Canada will be offering an eight-week Leadership series titled The Courage to Lead. This non-traditional leadership program has an emphasis on personal growth and reflection and will be of interest to anyone seeking to develop themselves as leaders in all walks of life. ICA Canada continues to do great transformative work with the

Register Now For The Courage To Lead SPRING 2016 This Spring is ICA CANADA’s first public offering of the Courage to Lead study series in five years and you are invited to . The course dates are March 31st to May 19th. That’s 8 Thursdays in a row, meeting from 6 to 9 pm at ICA CANADA’s training room 409 at 401 Richmond St. W. in downtown Toronto from 6 pm to 9pm.