Background and Research

"Presence We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and ... making choices to serve the evolution of life."

Presence (2005) p.11 P. Senge, C.O. Scharmer, J. Jaworski, B.S. Flowers

Designing the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge was a collective response in 1999-2000 to the observation of what I now call presence in a young man of 12 years of age. The man who was so struck with what he saw that he put this young man on a plane and sent him to his friend, who was orchestrating a seminar on inspired leadership admitted he didn't know what to make of it. I was prone to call it magnificence when I first observed it. But now, having observed it countless times, I prefer to call it a profound "showing up"- which occurs or can occur on the most ordinary of people. Yes, it is magnificent when we see it, and in the next moment it can be profoundly ordinary.
Brian C. Bailey M.D. 2008

A single experience of encountering presence - and the journey it led to - has influenced greatly the choice of authors and their writing which the reader will encounter below - and so, one could say that the research and background material I looked at became a a library devoted to understanding the phenomenon of presence as it arises and develops - particularly among young people throughout adolescence.

But presence occurs in adults as well - in inspired moments. Sometimes it sticks around to direct the rest of one's life. It led to the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge - one way to cause presence to arise widely among youth in the "stickiest" way possible.

Fortunately, technology has now provided a way to capture presence, and so we can show it on video. In the background of the following video we hear 12 year old Chris Howell in a radio interview two months after coming to our first weekend program ...

What stands out on the surface as markers of presence are the clarity and unwavering articulateness ..... which is also seen in a video taken of a volunteer adult, Gary Kellam at a subsequent event ....

The surface markers are just part of the profound "showing up. "If you are interested in how resilience, self-respect, authenticity and initiative became the results we aimed for and produced, and how our process both integrated and benefitted from the work of the authors below, please visit our page on Applied Research

The Young Canadian Leadership Challenge was carefully designed to optimize results for all participants through six prototype presentations with much redesign between each prototype. We are grateful for the work of many prominent researchers who have studied human dynamics and youth development in painstaking detail. Here are some of publications by authors whose work has been incorporated into our program. To learn more about an author's work, click on their name.

Physicist Dr. David Bohm “The Undivided Universe, Wholeness and The Implicate Order”

Psychologist Dr. Reid W. Larson, University of Illinois, “Toward A Positive Psychology for Positive Youth Development”

Psychologist Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Flow” and “The Evolving Self”

Anthropologist Victor Turner "From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure"

Psychologist Dr. Martin E. Seligman University of Pennsylvania "The Optimistic Child" "Learned Optimism"

Communications specialist Dr. Paul Stoltz " Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities" and "Adversity Quotient @ Work"

Futurists Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers "Presence"