The Santa Fe Seminar
A Recipe for Reflective Change-makers
By L+D Partner Crystal Land
Start with a window of uninterrupted time during the school year where one can truly take a break from the hectic pace of the day-to-day.
Mix together a small cohort of leaders who need time and space to examine what is most essential in order to navigate the future.
Then, add in the layer of place—Santa Fe, New Mexico—with its vast skies, stunning vistas, art-filled streets and the smell of piñon in the air. It’s one of the most luminous places where sky meets soul—and it’s often a place people are drawn to return to again and again. The painter, Georgia O’Keefe said about New Mexico: “I’d never seen anything like it before. It’s something that’s in the air, it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different”—and it’s exactly this “different” that sets the stage for deep and sustained exploration.
These ingredients lead us to L+D’s Santa Fe Seminar, an intentionally designed program for school leaders who desire the time and space to first look inward, and second, to connect with peers who are also interested in this kind of learning. What might three days during the Santa Fe Seminar actually look like and feel like? We might begin with a few of our signature L+D activities that allow the cohort to form and open up to the inner work of leadership: values exploration, time to reflect on one’s professional journey, and time for writing and conversation. In the spirit of creativity and risk taking, we also ask our cohort to do something that sparks the imagination: shoot a short film, create a personal “Manifesto,” practice improv skills— something that is ultimately joyful and, dare we say it, fun? Additionally, there is also time to integrate what the “Land of Enchantment” provides: perhaps a walking labyrinth, red and green chiles, and the inspiration of local art. And yet no two years of the Santa Fe Seminar are the same. We respond to the current moment as well as to the needs of our group.
Whatever we create, it’s always grounded in our desire to build capacity, create conversations, and make deep connections between and among school leaders and schools. Our team of facilitators, all experienced “school people,” are in tune with the current landscape in our organizations, and are poised to address and support the specific challenges of a changing world and school landscape.
As we try to define the impact of this program on individuals, there are no definitive metrics or outcomes to truly capture what Santa Fe means to leaders. What our participants share with us is that it’s often transformative—sometimes in quiet and internal insights, and other times in career-changing ways. Seminar participants leave the program with new skills: a protocol to approach a dilemma, specific vocabulary to work with a leadership team, an individual journal filled with writing and insights. And yet, we also hope they carry with them a special something that is just theirs. Some are ready to return to their schools with new focus and energy; others are ready to make a change to a different role, school or lifestyle. Many return again to Santa Fe a few years later to examine their paths through a fresh lens and perhaps from a new role. One of our L+D values is to “build the capacity of leaders and teams to navigate uncertainty and build a better future”— through this program we believe that leaders will not only build a better future for our schools, but will be filled with joy and purpose as they navigate the road ahead.
I can attest to the power of the Santa Fe Seminar. I attended as a participant in 2011– a school administrator in need of a reboot— and found, rather unexpectedly, a unique experience that served as a tool for me to approach an important professional and personal intersection. Now as I return to the program again and again as a facilitator, I continue to value the experience of taking stock of where I am today as well as the path ahead. The Santa Fe Seminar has made me more curious about the skills and mindsets of effective leaders, and as I co-facilitate the program, I take time to observe where participants are as they arrive, what they engage in while they are in the seminar, and then look forward to listening and learning from their reflections as they depart. One of the essential skills for any leader is to take time to be an anthropologist and carefully observe, not only what is unfolding within each of us, but also in our teams and school communities. The more curious we can be about our journey, the more we will be able to embrace change as an essential skill of leadership. As the Seminar concludes and I drive back down highway 25 towards the Sandia Range and the Albuquerque airport, I remember Mary Oliver’s simple but profound words: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” The Santa Fe Seminar allows us space to do just that.
