Holding
Authority
What happens to you when the authority you hold is tested?
When the decision cannot wait.
When conflict enters the room.
When something is ending.
When you don’t know what comes next.
When things go remarkably well.
When more eyes are suddenly on you.
Who do you become?
What happens to your relationship with yourself?
With the authority entrusted to you?
With the people within your reach?
What is Holding Authority?
Holding Authority is a small-cohort leadership lab for leaders who want to examine and strengthen how they remain in relationship with themselves, their authority, and the people within their reach, especially when that authority is tested or expanded.
Across nine live sessions, we will explore what seven conditions - loss, transition, urgency, conflict, ambiguity, success, and visibility - reveal about the person holding authority.
This is not about learning the “right” way to lead.
It is about becoming more conscious of who you become while leading and expanding your capacity to choose how you want to hold the authority entrusted to you.
Who is Holding Authority for?
Holding Authority is for people who hold meaningful responsibility, influence, or decision-making authority and who are willing to examine themselves, not only the people and systems around them.
It may be especially resonant if you:
Are navigating or regularly responsible for navigating complexity, transition, competing demands, or change.
Notice that certain conditions bring out patterns in you that you want to understand more clearly.
Are curious about how your authority affects your relationship with yourself and the people within your reach.
Can make room for questions that may not immediately resolve into answers.
Want a developmental space with other experienced leaders rather than another collection of leadership tips.
What will we actually do?
Holding Authority is live, experiential, and conversational.
We will work with the leadership you are actually living - not hypothetical case studies detached from your reality.
Depending on what the developmental purpose of a session requires, our work may include:
“Returning to Yourself” practices that help you become present to yourself.
Facilitated inquiry that moves beneath behavior into the stories, truths, and possibilities shaping how you exercise authority.
Real leadership situations brought into the room through participant experience.
Individual reflection and inquiry.
Cohort dialogue, witnessing, and shared learning.
Integration that helps you carry what you discover back into your leadership.
The experience is responsive rather than scripted. Loss may ask something different of the room than urgency. Conflict may require a different practice than visibility. The work will respond to the developmental purpose of each condition and to what emerges within the cohort
What will we explore?
Identity + Behavior Patterns
Returning To Yourself
Thresholds: Transition · Culture Change · Succesion
Demands: Urgency · Conflict · Ambiguity
Endings: Loss
Expansion: Success · Visibility
Practice Integration
What does participation require?
Holding Authority is not something one simply consumes. It is a practice you participate in.
Making meaningful space for nine live, two-hour sessions.
Arriving and participating as fully as you are able.
A willingness to examine yourself honestly.
Making room for different perspectives and experiences.
Protecting the confidentiality of what others entrust to the space.
Participating rather than performing.
You do not need to arrive with the right answers. You do need to arrive willing to practice.
FAQs
Are sessions recorded?No. Holding Authority is designed as a live, participatory experience. Because participant dialogue and facilitated inquiry are integral to the work (and because we want to protect the confidentiality and candor of the space) sessions are not recorded.
What happens if I miss a session?If you need to miss a session, you will receive the relevant session materials and post-session Integration Brief.
These resources will help you remain connected to the journey, but they are not intended to replicate the live experience. Participants should plan to attend all sessions as fully as possible.
Will there be work between sessions?Sometimes. There may be an inquiry, practice, reading, or invitation to notice something between sessions when it supports the developmental purpose of the work.
There is no interest in giving you work simply to keep you busy. Sometimes the most useful thing will be to let what emerged continue working on you.
What happens between sessions?Participants will have access to a private Heartbeat community where program resources, session materials, Integration Briefs, reflections, and cohort conversation can live between gatherings.
The intention is not to create another platform you have to constantly manage. Heartbeat is simply the shared home for the learning and community between live sessions.
When and where does Holding Authority meet?Format: Live, virtual gatherings via Zoom
Sessions: Nine (9)
Length: Two (2) hours per gathering
Start: Friday, September 11, 2026
Time: 10:30 AM Central Time
The full session-date schedule will be shared at the Expression of Interest stage.
What makes you different?How do I join?
Entry into Holding Authority begins with short application form, followed by an Alignment Discernment Conversation.
This is not about determining whether you are “good enough” for Holding Authority.
It is an opportunity for both of us to discern whether the experience, timing, and container are aligned.
If there is mutual alignment, you will receive an invitation to join the cohort.
If something in you recognized itself while reading this, begin there.