How the Aspen experience makes a difference: feedback from the participants of the Responsible Leadership — 23 seminar

Aspen leadership seminars have been taking place in Ukraine for almost 16 years. The events bring together leaders from various fields at a round table. At the seminars, participants conduct moderated dialogues during the week, leaving the boundaries of their usual environment and having equal opportunities to express their opinions. Such experience is difficult to obtain under typical conditions.

We also remind you that registration for the seminar “Responsible Leadership – 24” continues until February 10. Register at the link: https://aspeninstitutekyiv.org/event/vidpovidalne-liderstvo/

How the Aspen seminars of the Kyiv Institute take place and why the Aspen experience can be life-changing are told by the participants of the last “Responsible Leadership” seminar in 2021.

• The constructive diversity of the participants makes it possible to look at the world and the issues surrounding the dialogue from a wider angle. And also — to calibrate your values. In the future, the Aspen experience is intended to contribute to the development of good society by leaders in Ukraine:

— 5 days together, actually around the clock, all on the same wavelength. It’s like notes forming a single melody, and Aspen’s magic is simply fantastic: she knows how to build a team that can play this melody. During the seminar, the attitude towards the world that surrounds you, towards people, and how you are covered does not change. But you start to hear people differently and talk to them differently. Since childhood, from physics lessons, I have remembered Huygens’ principle: every point to which a wave reaches becomes a source of secondary waves. And probably this is also about Aspen: all the people at this seminar became the sources of such secondary waves. They gained new experience and have already begun to give a completely different energy to the surrounding world and environment, says Serhii Sukhomlyn, Mayor of Zhytomyr.

— Communication in the circle of outstanding personalities, natural leaders are ready to listen and hear each other simultaneously. Communication in an atmosphere of crazy energy, creativity, and creativity. “Responsible leadership” is about those who want to listen and hear, look and see and make the world a better place every day, says Kateryna Rozhkova, First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine.

— Aspen. In my life, I decided a long time ago that philosophy is not for me because I am a person of action, not of thoughts. I did not understand why I should sit and discuss something for hours instead of doing something effectively for hours. But when the clock of life showed that for 5 years, I had been engaged in state building and food, I thought. I wanted to look at people in an informal setting who are also involved in state building. Aspen is like borscht; it combines all the best ingredients in the country and allows them to cook together to influence the nation’s development positively, says Yevhen Klopotenko, co-founder of Klopotenko LLC.

• Seminar participants note that the Aspen experience changes their attitude to life and the environment, and for some, it is also a new acquaintance with themselves:

— Aspen gave me a specific model of new life creation and new tools to create my life and the life around me. My self-expectation sensors have reset so much that I get to know myself as uniquely and accurately as possible every day. There was less noise in life, and silence turned into a valuable state. In practical activities, my actions have become more transparent and more understandable for myself and those around me. At the same time, the environment has become narrower, – notes Lilia Litkovska, fashion designer and owner of Studio Litkovska LLC.

— The seminar “Responsible Leadership” is about transforming real leaders and better awareness of their purpose and values, which will help in everyday life. First of all, this is an opportunity to hear and understand one’s opinion. The uniqueness of the methodology makes it even more interesting, and the depth of immersion in the texts through collective activity is impressive, – says Darya Gerasymchuk, the authorized adviser to the President of Ukraine on children’s rights and child rehabilitation, the executive director of the NGO “Feel.”

• At the Aspen Seminars, leaders discuss current issues of today based on the texts of classical and modern thinkers. The methodology of moderated dialogue allows you to hear the opinion of others. In addition, shared Aspen experience can become a basis for further cooperation.

— At the beginning of the seminar, I expected that its most significant benefit would be analyzing the texts of the proposed books and works. However, in the end, I realized that the experience of interaction and organization of joint work of entirely different people resulted from the course for me. To see leadership from different angles, to understand the problems of various fields, to get a new circle of acquaintances, to learn to negotiate with solid personalities – all this is about studying at Aspen, – noted Dmytro Derevytskyi, chairman of the board of directors of ALLO.

— Ukrainians are a nation with significant potential, the entire development, and application of which, in the future, will undoubtedly lead Ukraine to leadership positions in the world. But being a post-colonial and post-totalitarian nation, Ukrainians suffer from a low level of mutuality of trust and unity, which is a significant restraining factor of social development. Seminars “Responsible leadership” unite those who have passed, for the most part, a difficult path to success and whose interaction can give a powerful synergistic effect. Worldview synchronization and joint calibration of values, which is provided by the methodology of selection and conducting seminars, allows you to quickly build a community, eliminating the problem of trust and other entrenched mental features. For me, this was the most tangible and highly sought-after effect of the seminar, said Oksen Lisovy, director of the National Center “Small Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.”