As a leader, nearly all of your time is spent taking care of everything and everyone else. Your meetings, your decisions, your energy – all focused outward on the work and the people depending on you.
But here’s what we know: your health and balance are the foundation of your leadership effectiveness. When you’re depleted or out of balance, everything becomes harder. The decisions feel weightier. The patience runs thinner. The capacity to hold space for others diminishes.
And right now, as we push toward year-end goals while already thinking about what’s to come in the new year, this matters more than ever.
What if you gave yourself the gift of dedicated time to focus on your own health and balance? Not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate practice that strengthens your leadership capacity for the marathon ahead?
What is Individual Health and Balance?
Individual Health and Balance (IHB) is a Genuine Contact Way learning module that equips you with a holistic framework for sustaining your health and balance as a leader.
The discipline of authentic self-care means looking at your health and balance through four essential perspectives: mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. This approach takes self-care beyond surface actions and brings it into the deeper realm of understanding what you’re already doing to take care of yourself and what becomes possible when you attend to all four dimensions.
Through participatory processes in a small group setting, you’ll create a regenerative plan you can use throughout the coming year. More importantly, you’ll learn how to monitor and adjust that plan so it continues to support you through whatever changes life may bring.
This isn’t about adding more to your already full plate. It’s about building sustainable and regenerative capacity that makes everything else more possible.
Why This Matters for Leaders
Leadership is a marathon, not a sprint – in life and in business. You need the capacity to operate at your best over the long haul – making good choices and decisions that require your attention at almost every moment.
When you’re out of balance, leading authentically can become extraordinarily difficult. The very approach to leadership that creates the most value – creating conditions for people to empower themselves – requires you to be grounded, present, and resourced.
Your health and balance isn’t separate from your leadership effectiveness. It’s foundational to it.
By participating in this workshop, you’re not taking time away from your leadership. You’re investing in the capacity that makes your leadership sustainable and genuine.
Your Complete Learning Journey
This workshop is structured around six phases of learning, based on the Evolutionary Spiral – one of the multi-use tools in the Genuine Contact Toolkit. Each phase builds on the previous one, creating a complete pathway for developing and sustaining your health and balance.
Discernment: Understanding Your Current State
You’ll begin by establishing baseline measures that capture your current state of health and balance from a holistic perspective. This includes identifying what you already know and do to maintain your health and balance – honoring the wisdom and practices you’ve already developed.
- Complete baseline measurement tools to assess your current health and balance across multiple dimensions
- Examine your conscious awareness of how you learn and what supports or limits your learning
- Identify what you already know and do to maintain your health and balance
- Explore your personal story of what brought you to this learning
Readiness: Examining Core Beliefs
You’ll examine five core beliefs and consider their implications for your health and balance. These beliefs inform five significant paths for expanding your capacity in a complex world, preparing you to engage more deeply with the material ahead.
- Explore the five beliefs that inform the Genuine Contact way of working and living
- Consider how each belief impacts your approach to health and balance
- Identify which beliefs feel most aligned with your current perspective
- Prepare yourself for deeper engagement with the tools and practices ahead
Engagement: Building Your Capacity
Through a series of participatory activities, you’ll engage with your health and balance using multiple lenses. Each activity provides unique tools and techniques to increase your capacity for greater health and balance across all four dimensions – mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical.
- Experience simple-to-use techniques to support mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health
- Discover tools for recognizing when you’re in or out of balance
- Learn practices for realigning yourself with health and balance when you notice yourself slipping
- Develop increased capacity for making good choices and decisions
- Explore the relationship between your inner growth and the changes you’re seeking in your life and work
Construction: Creating Your Personal Plan
You’ll review everything you’ve learned and develop a plan that is uniquely yours for attending to and regenerating your health and balance daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, and annually. This plan builds on your existing strengths and addresses the areas where you notice you need support.
- Review all tools and techniques learned throughout the module
- Identify which practices resonate most with your needs and preferences
- Design a comprehensive plan for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual practices
- Create structures and reminders that support implementation of your plan
- Develop strategies for staying committed to your health and balance practices
Implementation: Turning Your Plan into Practice
You’ll begin implementing your plan during the workshop itself, enhancing your learning through immediate application. The weeks between sessions provide dedicated time for reflection on what’s true now in your life and what’s becoming possible as your health and balance come into your awareness differently.
- Start implementing specific elements of your plan immediately
- Practice new behaviors and patterns between sessions
- Notice how your awareness of health and balance shifts through implementation
- Identify what conditions support successful implementation
- Refine your approach based on real experience
Monitoring and Adjustment: Sustaining Your Practice
You’ll learn how to monitor your progress using the baseline measures you established at the beginning, and how to make adjustments to either how you’re implementing your plan or to the plan itself. The module includes follow-on mentoring circles to support your ongoing learning and adjustment over time.
- Use baseline measures to track your progress over time
- Develop monitoring practices free from judgment and criticism
- Learn to recognize when adjustments are needed and make course corrections
- Identify what aspects of your plan need refinement based on your experience
- Connect with ongoing mentoring circles for continued support and learning
How the Workshop Works
Who This Serves
This workshop is for leaders and individuals who:
- Feel depleted or out of balance, especially as year-end demands intensify
- Want sustainable approaches to health and balance that last beyond the short term
- Are seeking practical tools and frameworks, not just inspiration
- Recognize that taking care of themselves is necessary for effective leadership
- Are ready to invest dedicated time in their own health and balance
- Want to build capacity that will serve them through the demanding work ahead
- Are willing to look at their well-being holistically across mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical dimensions
- Value learning in a small group where diverse perspectives enrich the experience
You don’t need to be in a formal leadership role to benefit from this workshop. If you’re taking leadership of your own life and work, this module equips you with essential capacity for the long term.
Your Facilitators
Upcoming Workshop Details
Dates: November 27, December 4, 11, and 18, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM Eastern Time (check local time zone)
Format: Live online via Zoom
🤓 Pre-Work: Approximately 6-7 hours of self-study (videos and readings)
Investment:
- Early Bird: $997 USD (register by November 7, 2026)
- Regular: $1,197 USD (after November 7)
- Genuine Contact Organization members receive 10% off both rates
All pre-work and workshop materials remain available for one year after the workshop concludes.
Ready to Begin?
You deserve this time. Your work will benefit. So will you.
The early bird rate is available until November 7. If you’ve been feeling depleted or out of balance, or if you simply know that investing in your own health and balance will strengthen your capacity for the year ahead, this is your invitation.
Registration is limited to 20 participants to ensure everyone receives maximum benefit from the participatory process.
Questions about your registration? Contact us!
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I miss a session?
Each session builds on the previous ones, and the participatory nature of the learning means your presence contributes to everyone’s experience. If you must miss a session, contact us as soon as possible. We’ll work with you to determine the best way to stay connected with your learning, which may include reviewing session recordings (when available) or additional support. However, we encourage you to attend all four sessions to receive the full benefit of the module.
Do I need prior Genuine Contact experience?
No prior Genuine Contact experience is required. This module stands on its own and provides a complete learning journey. If you’re already familiar with the Genuine Contact Way, you’ll find this module deepens your practice and connects with the broader framework. If this is your first Genuine Contact module, you’ll gain foundational tools and understanding that serve you both in this work and in your ongoing leadership development.
Is this appropriate for teams or only individuals?
This workshop serves both individuals learning on their own and people learning together. While each person works on their own health and balance plan, learning in a group setting enriches the experience through diverse perspectives and insights.
This workshop can be particularly beneficial for:
- Individual leaders from different organizations learning together
- Friend groups wanting to support each other’s health and balance
- People in partnered relationships (of any kind) attending together
- Parents and their adult or young adult children
- Team members from the same organization who want to develop this capacity together
When people who live or work closely together participate in this learning, they often find they can better support each other’s health and balance practices in daily life.
How much time will I need between sessions?
The weeks between sessions are designed for reflection and beginning implementation – this is when your health and balance come into your awareness differently. Homework will be assigned at the end of each session and you can expect to spend 1-2 hours completing it over the week. Beyond that, most participants find that the practices naturally integrate into their existing routines. The key is paying attention to what’s emerging and noticing what’s true now, which can happen throughout your regular days. Some participants choose to dedicate specific reflection time, while others weave the awareness into their existing activities.
What are mentoring circles and are they required?
Mentoring circles are optional follow-up group sessions facilitated by a Genuine Contact Trainer, typically held a few months after the workshop concludes and then on a regular basis (approximately once a year) after that. These circles provide space to discuss what you’ve learned through implementing your plan, share insights about maintaining health and balance, and refine your approach based on real experience. They’re not required, but many participants find them valuable for sustained learning and ongoing support. Information about upcoming mentoring circles is shared during the workshop.
Part of the Genuine Contact Way
This module offers a complete set of skills and knowledge that creates value on its own. It’s also part of the Genuine Contact Way – a modular approach designed with intention. You can engage with specific modules to meet particular goals in your work and life. When you’re ready to expand your learning, comprehensive Learning Paths are available, including Simplifying Leadership, Participatory Methods that Get Results, Designing Thriving Organizations, Aligning with Your Genuine Self, and Train the Trainer.
A Global Network of Authorized Trainers
Birgitt Williams and Rachel Bolton are authorized Genuine Contact Trainers. They are part of a global network of professional trainers and facilitators who teach the 19 learning modules included in the Genuine Contact Way of Working – including this one. You’ll find a complete listing of upcoming workshop dates – online and in-person and offered in several languages to suit your learning preferences in the International Genuine Contact Organization’s upcoming events calendar.
