Authenticity and self-renewal is big business. With so many bad structured learning or self-help options out there, it can be tempting to dismiss the whole topic as nonsense. However, it truly does seem as if the difference between a fulfilled and unfulfilled life and career is nothing less than the courage to give it a go.

It’s tempting to imagine that we will be able to work out the shape of the workplace and our character on our own, simply through a process of pure reflection. But we need data to truly understand ourselves. We need to collide with the real world in the process of getting to know it and our own nature. Furthermore, authentic self-leadership, as stated by Bill George author of True North: Discover your authentic leadership, is inherently a developmental process that requires careful thought and deliberate planning. An endeavour that, even if we are equipped to do it, will be very time consuming to figure out on our own.

To leap means to jump from one point to another or to make a sudden or large movement. Metaphorically speaking, this is also something you would do when you become an authentic self-leader on The LEAP Journey and when you “self-innovate”[1] with each new life and career transition. At the LEAP Academy we use the word ‘LEAP’ as an acronym for “Learning Experience for Authentic Progression”. The word ‘leap’ in this instance thus also refers to the method of interaction we use to facilitate learning and development on The LEAP Journey.

It was Albert Einstein who said: “Learning is experience. Everything else is just information”. An experience, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, can be described as “any practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of, or participation in events or in a particular activity”. At the LEAP Academy we facilitate self-directed learning through carefully designed learning experiences. The focus is on our clients and the process that the client as learner goes through. Such learning experiences forges the mental link between knowledge (the head) and the way it is applied to situations (doing – the hands).

In addition, the nature of The LEAP Journey is such that in essence it involves affective learning (the heart). Affective learning is concerned with the formation, content, and role of emotions, feelings, values, attitudes, predispositions, and morals. We support the view that individual values develop through a cyclical process: the individual (1) interacts with the environment, (2) reflects on the meaning of that interaction, (3) formulates values or beliefs through reflective thought, and (4) applies those values or beliefs to new situations. Reflective thinking about those new situations may then lead to affirmation or revision of the original beliefs. However, we also support developmental and humanistic affective learning where we help our clients formulate values or beliefs through experience and reflective thought, while promoting fundamental values such as the right to search for personal meaning, to sculpture your own life and career, and to create a lasting legacy.

Robert Kegan in his book The Evolving Self says that our development as an adult is not about learning new things (adding things to the ‘container’ of the mind), it’s about transformation – changing the way we know and understand the world (changing the actual form of our ‘container’). At the LEAP Academy we believe that the learning experience we facilitate should enable real transformation, or as Kegan calls it, meta-rational development – a level of development with a much higher capacity for adaptation.

Some theorists see meta-cognition, broadly construed, as central to rationality, and therefore see the development of meta-cognition as central to advanced cognitive development. Broadly construed, meta-cognition includes “the achievement of increasing awareness, understanding, and control of one’s own cognitive functions as well as awareness and understanding of these functions as they occur in others” (Kuhn, 2000, p.320) or in layman’s terms: an awareness of how and why one thinks and learns as one does, as well as how and why others think and learn as they do.

The LEAP Journey is embedded within a unique worldview, that of the ‘100-Year Life’ and a ‘Future World of Work’ that will require hyper-specialisation and the ability to continuously learn and reinvent yourself to remain competitive in the job market. This necessitates meta-competencies that allow you to judge the availability, applicability and ‘learnability’ of personal competencies (Weinert, 2001). More specifically, you will need meta-competencies that equip you to learn from experiences and enable you to learn new competencies that will assist you in your pursuit of a more fulfilling life and career, and to take leaps when needed.

Our clients gain control of and accept responsibility for their own learning; while we structure their learning experiences and assist them to process and reflect on their learning experiences afterwards. The focus in our learning experiences is on developing personal understanding, and to assist our clients to become aware of their own learning processes and to undertake self-reflexive thinking to become engaged, reflective LEAP Thinkers. We don’t stop here. We encourage our clients to develop their meta-cognition. This is their capacity to recognise and evaluate the assumptions and limitations of different theories from different perspectives and to suggest workable shared solutions. This requires an ability to stand back from their own frames of reference and to recognise the validity of other ways of knowing. This process can challenge our clients to rethink their assumptions about values, ethics and social responsibility and compare them with those of significant others. It is this high level of reflexive contextualism that helps our clients to achieve self-innovation, i.e. the ability to develop complex notions of identity and citizenship and see connections between different things. Ultimately, we develop in our clients the ability to engage with and evaluate different theories of knowledge to deal with the complexities of human development beyond the safety of their current rationalism.

At the LEAP Academy we have identified four key meta-competencies that LEAP Thinkers need to possess. The first meta-competency relates to existential intelligence or being life smart. Existential intelligence is about the ability to pose questions and reflect on fundamental issues in ways that develop a mature ability to interpret the world and better understand other people. You also have to change your awareness of yourself, so that you internalise and value that change. Thus, the second meta-competency is intrapersonal intelligence or being self-smart. Intrapersonal intelligence is defined as having deep self-knowledge and being able to set clear life goals and make effective value-aligned decisions. Thirdly, you must develop the capacity to relate. Here, the meta-competency of interpersonal intelligence or being people smart, relates to the ability to notice, interpret, and anticipate others’ concerns and feelings, and to communicate this awareness empathetically to others. It also includes managing relationships effectively and building strong and supportive social capital. Just as well-known business guru, Tom Peters, encourages all organisations who want to be successful to learn and to innovate on a continuous basis, the final key meta-competency implies that individuals should do the same. To be professionally intelligent or work smart means to have the ability to successfully execute self-innovation and to understand the impact of communication on your new professional image, as well as the importance of acting responsibly during the process of self-innovation. In developing your existential, intrapersonal, interpersonal and professional intelligence, you learn how to learn, adapt, anticipate and create to effectively become a LEAP Thinker.

The following table summarises the four clusters of meta-competencies and lists some observable behaviours in each cluster that are developed on The LEAP Journey (Please note that these meta-competencies should not be viewed separately because each meta-competency is influenced by other qualities. They are therefore interdependent and to some degree sequential for becoming a LEAP Thinker.):

The Four Clusters of Meta-Competencies you will develop on The LEAP Journey