Antoine de Saint Exupery once said, “if you want to build a ship, don’t (just) drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather (also) teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.” 

We might not be building ships, but we are challenged to prepare our organizations and ourselves to set sail on a vast and endless sea of possibilities.  By adding the words “just” and “also” to this quote, we capture the full nature of the challenge we all are facing today.  There is a time when we have to collect wood, assign tasks and work – perform what we call “manager work”.  We have to stay afloat in day to day practicality, but in our busyness we have eliminated the time and space necessary to understand and engage in our leader work and be present together as human beings with a broader life perspective. This time and space we see as a metaphorical “front porch”.

Leader work is about creating front porch-like meeting stages for training, education, consulting, coaching and cross organizational learning where people can come together in ways that invite their natural leadership potential to emerge.  The view from the front porch gives us new eyes on how we think about leadership development, change, communication, education and our lives.  On these new stages we need to remember why we choose to set sail in the first place – what is the beauty, purpose and meaning that calls us to risk losing sight of the shore?  All this feeds the spirit of what we call “leader work”.

LeaderWork Inc. supports individuals and organizations in creating their own front porch meeting spaces in their daily lives in the spirit of creating a better world that works for everyone.   In his book, The Front Porch Revolution: Reclaiming the Time and Space to Slow Down, Talk to Each Other and Lead in an Over-Managed World, Dr. Robert H. Lengel offers a first person account of the historical evolution of the theoretical underpinnings behind  LeaderWork programming and the power of the front porch metaphor.  It is the textbook for engaging our leader work and offering an invitation to join us on our LeaderWork Front Porch to support a revolution in thought and practice.

“If the question is ‘what is next in leadership and organizational development’, The Front Porch Revolution invites an intriguing answer.  An engaging story of possibility.”
– Ron Kertzner, Founding Partner, ChoicePoint Consulting

“You have invaluable material in these pages that is so impactful. You have brought emotion and empathetic truths to business, and rethought the entire mainstay of corporate process. I am moved beyond words.… this is remarkable and MUST be shared with the masses.”
– Christina Hess, CEO-Hess

“Over 200 years ago Henry Thoreau helped start and lead the Concord Lyceum, a community for sharing local knowledge and engaging the art of conversation. Within a short time the idea of the Lyceum proliferated – with fifteen hundred across the country, the Lyceum inspired America’s first intellectual revolution. In his engaging and challenging narrative, Dr. Robert H. Lengel envisions The Front Porch Revolution as fertile ground for a new lyceum and a second intellectual revolution – a revolution of the heart – in which beauty, art, conversation and the power of place offer a unique perspective and new language for seeing the same intractable issues that confront leaders today with fresh eyes and fresh ears.”
– Michael Jones, Author of The Soul of Place

“The Front Porch Revolution is a breakthrough and insightful read authored by a gifted learner/educator. Bob’s powerful personal story as the founder of an innovative Executive MBA program, a respected professor, and successful leadership consultant reveals critical metaphors and images at the heart of effective conversational leadership during these challenging and divisive times. This book provides signposts that any leader can use to transform their own thinking about organizations and the results they can achieve through changing the metaphors they live by and the conversations they enable.”

– Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, Co-Founders, The World Cafe

Under Development – In meantime please join our Facebook group to get involved.

We offer customized programs and strategic partnerships designed to develop your leaders, a work culture that supports them and to actually do your leader work. These programs and partnerships offer an innovative blending of consulting, training, facilitation and coaching services based on a new level of thinking inspired by the view from the front porch. They address such topics as:

Small and large scale meeting and conference design and/or facilitation – we can help you:

• Design and host more effective strategic planning retreats
• Facilitate meetings around critical issues where there is strong disagreement
• Make board meetings more constructive and engaging
• Design and facilitate meetings to scope new projects and create positive movement around stalled initiatives
• Employ real-time graphic recording of conversations and graphic response generation
• Design and facilitate strategic futuring conferences around visioning, culture change, culture merging in acquisitions, new leadership, dysfunctional work environments, building community among stakeholders and other aspects of leader work

Leadership and organizational development – we can help you:

• Inspire employment engagement
• Create more meaningful and effective on-boarding programs
• Assess needs and define organizational leader work
• Develop complex systemic thinking and creative capacities
• Improve leader communications
• Create leader-friendly cultures
• Assure leadership succession
• Address work-life balance
• Define and do your leader work