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Centered on the Edge

Resource yourself to lead the emerging future.

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A six-month journey for learning to lead transformational change.

 

 

Small cohort · Place-based · Developmentally informed · Tasmania

 

Centered on the Edge

 

Resource yourself to lead transformational change

Register your interest ➞

A six-month developmental program in Tasmania

Small cohort · Place-based · Developmentally informed · Tasmania

Are you on the edge of something?

The edge of your capacity to keep working the hours you’re working.
The edge of how much time and energy you can keep investing in others.
The edge of your ability to cope — to continue the way you have been.

And maybe it’s not only the edge of endurance.
Maybe it’s the edge of discernment.

A quiet knowing that something is coming.
A new project. A new program. A new way of doing the work.
A new way of being in your life.

But you can’t quite land it yet.

If that’s you, it may not be a sign that something is wrong.
It may be a sign that something is right.

Sometimes the discomfort is the moment your inner life starts telling the truth:
the old way can’t carry what’s emerging now.

Purpose

Centered on the Edge is for people helpers and community/service leaders who want to create space — not to escape the work, but to meet it differently.

This is a six-month journey designed to help you:

  • slow down enough to hear yourself again

  • strengthen your capacity to stay present under pressure

  • listen for what’s emerging — in you, in your relationships, and in your work

  • develop the inner steadiness to lead from clarity, not just urgency

Because the future doesn’t usually arrive as a clear plan.
It arrives as a signal. A tension. A restlessness. A pull.

This program gives you space, community, and developmental insight so you can sense what’s next — and take your next steps with more honesty, more stability, and more courage.

Not by forcing an answer.
But by learning to stay centered on the edge long enough for the next way to reveal itself.

A Crisis of Capacity

As leadership environments become more complex, the inner capacity required to lead well must also grow.

Many leaders today are highly competent. They know what to do. They carry responsibility with care. And yet, under sustained pressure, something begins to strain.

More training does not resolve it.
More effort does not resolve it.

This is not a crisis of belief.
It is a crisis of capacity.

When the complexity of leadership outpaces the inner structures that once made sense of the world, leaders can feel stretched, reactive, or quietly alone — even when they are deeply committed to their work.

Why "Centered on the Edge" Now?

People helpers are navigating real conditions:

  • increasing complexity and acuity

  • workforce constraints and constant change

  • vicarious stress, compassion fatigue, moral distress

  • pressure to “hold it together” while carrying the system’s edges

For many leaders, the strain isn’t because they don’t care.
It’s because they care so much — and the role has outgrown the strategies that used to work.

This is often the moment where a deeper question appears:

How do I keep showing up with heart — and lead well — without being run by urgency, reactivity, or my personality’s default patterns?

That’s the work.

What Makes This Program Different

Most leadership programs add skills.

Centered on the Edge grows the inner capacity from which skill is expressed.

This program integrates three strands: 

Insight into your patterns

We use the Enneagram as a map of automation — the predictable personality patterns that keep you caught:

  • how you react under stress

  • what you avoid

  • what you overdo

  • the roles you unconsciously take on (rescuer, controller, achiever, pleaser, fixer, withdrawer, etc.)

  • how conflict and pressure narrow your options

This isn’t about labels.
It’s about freedom — learning to recognise the pattern while it’s happening and returning to choice.

Developmental clarity

We also use a stages-based assessment to support a different kind of insight:

Not just what you do…
but how you make meaning of what you’re living.

This helps you locate:

  • where you are developmentally (your current “centre of gravity”)

  • what your next edge is asking of you

  • what capacities are trying to emerge: discernment, complexity-holding, integration, moral steadiness, relational maturity

In plain terms:
where you are, what’s next, and what practices actually help you grow.

Contemplative practice

We draw from meditation and contemplative practice — not as a spiritual hobby, but as a leadership technology:

  • strengthening attention

  • stabilising the nervous system

  • widening perception

  • sensing what’s here (and what’s coming)

  • developing the capacity to stay present with discomfort without reacting

This is the ground for:

  • better facilitation

  • clearer decision-making

  • stronger relational leadership

  • and the ability to “read the room” from a regulated, steady centre

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN TO DO

You’ll strengthen the capacities that matter most in people-helping leadership:

  • self-regulation (less reactivity, more stability)

  • discernment (hearing what’s true beneath noise)

  • relational leadership (staying connected through tension and difference)

  • facilitation (holding groups through complexity, not just managing agendas)

  • room-reading (noticing system dynamics, not just content)

  • transformational influence (being an agent of change without force)

This is about participating in a larger unfolding of capacity and consciousness — not as theory, but as lived experience.

THE ARC OF THE PROGRAM

 Wake Up

Seeing Your Patterns

  • Enneagram insights into your default strategies under stress
  • Mapping your “caught loops”
  • Learning to interrupt automation and return to presence
  • Establishing simple centering practice

Grow Up

Developing capacity

  • stages-based assessment and debrief

  • clarifying your current edge and next capacities

  • practices for complexity-holding and relational maturity

  • learning to lead without collapsing, forcing, or over-functioning

Show Up

 Facilitation + transformational leadership

  • deep listening and group presence

  • reading the room and sensing system dynamics

  • facilitation skills rooted in regulation and awareness

  • applying it to real workplace scenarios: conflict, culture, change, leadership under pressure

Waking Up

Expanding awareness and presence

This dimension focuses on helping leaders become aware of their inner state and how it shapes perception, decision-making, and relationships.

Core practices and tools include:

  • Conscious Leadership principles to recognise reactivity and return to presence

  • Enneagram exploration to distinguish personality patterns from deeper essence

  • Contemplative practices (silence, centering prayer, awareness of breath, body, and emotion)

  • Guided reflection on inner state, attention, and leadership presence

What this develops:
Greater self-awareness, reduced reactivity, and the ability to pause and respond rather than react under pressure.


Growing Up

Increasing developmental capacity

This dimension focuses on how leaders make meaning — the form of mind through which they interpret authority, faith, complexity, and responsibility.

Core practices and tools include:

  • Developmental stage assessment (adult development / meaning-making)

  • Individual debriefs to identify current centre of gravity and growth edge

  • Teaching on stages of adult development and the evolution of leadership and culture

  • Individual growth-edge coaching to support vertical development over time

What this develops:
Greater capacity to hold complexity, integrate multiple perspectives, and lead without relying on certainty, control, or external validation.

Cleaning Up

Integrating shadow and reactivity

This dimension supports leaders to work with unconscious patterns that undermine leadership impact, particularly under stress.

Core practices and tools include:

  • Enneagram-based exploration of blind spots, defensive strategies, and edge emotions

  • Conscious Leadership tools for working with blame, avoidance, over-control, and responsibility

  • Peer dialogue and reflective inquiry to surface blind spots in a safe relational context

  • Contemplative practice to remain present with discomfort and emotional charge

What this develops:
Emotional maturity, relational freedom, and greater compassion for self and others — reducing the likelihood of reactive leadership patterns.

Showing Up

Embodying leadership in action

This dimension focuses on translating inner shifts into visible leadership practice and cultural impact.

Core practices and tools include:

  • Leadership-in-practice reflection on real, live leadership challenges

  • Individual coaching to integrate awareness, capacity, and action

  • Facilitation and coaching skill development to support growth in others

  • Final integration and prototyping of a leadership practice that embodies formation

What this develops:
Leadership that is grounded, credible, and generative — capable of developing others and shaping healthy organisational culture.

Who this program is for

This program is for you if you’re a “people helper” who:

 

  • Leads or influences others in community services, health, education, local government, social services, or not-for-profit work
  • Carries emotional load and responsibility daily
  • Feels stretched by complexity, urgency, and competing needs
  • Wants to keep making a difference — without losing yourself in the process
  • Senses there’s a “more” emerging, but it isn’t fully formed yet
  • Wants to grow your capacity to lead with presence, discernment, and relational intelligence

This isn’t for you if you’re looking for:

  • A quick fix
  • A purely technical training
  • More information without inner change

This is formation-level work — practical, grounded, and deeply human.

Program Overview

Duration: 6 months
Cohort: 8–14 leaders
Program dates: March – September 2026

Commitment includes:

What's Included

Over six months you’ll receive:

  • 3 in-person cohort intensives (full-day, offsite)

  • Monthly 1:1 coaching sessions (focused on real scenarios)

  • Enneagram assessment + debrief (automation + growth path)

  • Stages-based adult development assessment + debrief (where you are + what’s next)

  • Guided contemplative practice (simple, doable, repeatable)

  • Program materials + tools to support integration

  • Small cohort community (the depth you can’t get alone)

Investment: $2,500 - $3,500
The final investment depends on whether participation is self-funded or supported through organisational sponsorship.

 

What changes for Participants

You won’t leave with a binder of strategies you never use.

You’ll leave with:

  • clearer inner authority and steadier presence

  • practical ways to regulate and recover under stress

  • better conflict capacity (less avoidance, less escalation)

  • stronger boundaries without shutting down care

  • increased facilitation confidence and room-reading ability

  • deeper discernment about what’s next for you and your work

  • the felt sense of being able to participate in change — without force

This is what it means to be centered on the edge:
able to stay present with what’s emerging, rather than reacting from what’s collapsing.

Cohort + Details

Duration: 6 months
Group size: [8–14]
Location: [Forth / North West Tasmania]
Dates: [Add dates]
Time commitment: [Simple estimate – e.g., “1 cohort day every ~8 weeks + 1 coaching session monthly + small practices between”]

Small cohorts are intentional. This work requires enough safety for honesty, and enough difference for growth.

Register My Interest ➞

About Your Facilitator

Ben Pangas is a leadership development specialist, counsellor, and certified developmental coach with more than twenty years’ experience working across construction, education, and community development.

His work sits at the intersection of professional leadership practice, adult developmental psychology, and contemplative formation. Ben specialises in supporting leaders who are navigating complexity, responsibility, and change — particularly within values-driven and faith-informed contexts.

Ben holds a Master’s degree in Coaching Psychology and a Bachelor’s degree in Counselling and Coaching, along with qualifications in youth and community work, training and assessment, and counselling. He is also a graduate of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s two-year formative Living School program.

Before moving into leadership development, Ben spent more than a decade working in the construction industry. This background gives him a grounded understanding of operational realities, accountability, and the pressures leaders face in complex, real-world environments.

This combination of practical experience and developmental expertise shapes Ben’s approach. He does not work by offering quick fixes or techniques, but by supporting leaders to grow the inner capacity required to lead with clarity, maturity, and integrity in demanding contexts.

Ben has facilitated leadership development, coaching, and formation programs across community services, health, local government, and faith-based organisations. His work is known for being thoughtful, rigorous, and deeply human — integrating reflective practice, developmental insight, and practical application in ways that translate into lasting impact.

The Retreat

Transformational Learning

  • Space
  • Solitude
  • Silence
  • Spirit