Leadership & Management
With Supercycle
Our courses and workshops emphasize refining your inner perception while simultaneously making investments in awareness and experimentation in your surrounding environment.
This harmonization process between self-development and well-calibrated action can be very potent and effective in leading teams.
To help provide bursts in perspective, we strategically introduce social & interactive dynamic, sociological, psychological and other models inspired from the natural sciences.
Inquire here about Supercycle running a one-off workshop for your group or organization.
Course Sampler
Below you can get a feel for our Leadership & Management content with two courses:
This includes an intro video, highlight clips, video activity (with an accompanying worksheet), and written outline
Energy Management & Flow Course Outline & Activity Worksheet
Background
This module is designed to help you understand where your energy is going throughout the days, weeks, and seasons of your life and move into a position to be proactively designing and cultivating the energy economies you move through. Though there are a lot of ways to invoke the concept of “energy” in a mind-body context, we will start with the typical concept from physics of “the capacity to do work” as a way to help us more systematically and accurately recognize and account for transformations of energy throughout our lives. After exploring some important theoretical ramifications of this approach to energy, we’ll concretely survey the living forms of energy that most frequently make up our lives, and look for ways to improve the quality, harmony, and appropriateness of the systems of transformation of energy that we participate in. Through all of this, we will be pursuing a deeper understanding of how skillful energy management helps us access experiences of flow and other forms of non-depleting productivity.
Outline
Session 1: Energy as Capacity for Work & How This Shows Up Throughout Your Day
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Flexibility and value of energy as a concept
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Variations in quality of energy
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Reversible and irreversible investments of energy
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Fungibility of different forms of energy
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Mapping a typical day’s energy
Session 2: Where the Work Happens — Systems of Transformation of Energy
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Identifying and accounting for work
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Hidden forms of work throughout your life
Session 3: Cyclical Transformations of Energy
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How maintaining the capacity for work allows results to compound
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Higher order complex structures that store energy and momentum
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Retaining the capacity to “steer” the momentum as energy builds
Session 4: Maintaining & Managing Physical Energy
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Life basics: nutrition, sleep, exercise
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Systemic indicators: Gut health, inflammation, chronic stress
Session 5: Forms of Social & Emotional Energy
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Draining and rejuvenating relationships
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Social maintenance of motivation
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Morale and group cohesion
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Personal charisma and reputation
Session 6: Money & Near-All-Way Transformations of Energy
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What money can and can’t buy
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Connecting systems of physical, social, and monetary energies
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Revisiting your typical day
Example Exercises
( 1 ) On a piece of paper, make a rough diagram of your overall energy throughout your typical day. Set up the x-axis to represent the time of day, starting when you wake up, and ending around when you go to sleep. Then have the y-axis represent a rough or subjective expression of how “much” energy you have at different points throughout the typical day. For this first pass, you don’t need to get too precise about the types or forms of energy — aim to represent relative proportions. You might start by noting the place in your typical day when you have the most energy, and the places where you have the least, and then fill in rough gain and loss curves between them.
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For example, you might find that you have a decent amount of energy in the morning when you wake up, and then after you eat, get some coffee, and read the paper, you get a little bit more energy. Next, you go off to work, and maybe on a typical day, it’s fair to say that your energy slowly decreases (though it may actually be that some specific things decrease it a lot, while others decrease it very little), such that by the end of the day, you’re pretty tired. Then, when you get home, maybe you stay pretty low until you go to bed, or maybe after dinner you get a little burst of energy and use it to work on a hobby until it’s time to go to bed. This would be a pretty simple example, but it can be good to start simple when starting out, especially if this kind of tracking is relatively unfamiliar for you. If you did have a day like this, you might end up with a diagram like the following:
If you find that you have a few different “typical” days (e.g. in-office days, work-from-home days, and
weekends, or, alternatively “normal days” and “days where my manager criticizes me”, or if you work different jobs on different days), you may want to make several of these diagrams to capture the different major trends.
Once you have your overall diagram, the next several steps will be to make a series of refinements to capture more and more information about the day. If you find your paper getting cluttered at any point, feel free to redraw your diagram or list the information organized by time, activity, or category of energy rather than adding it directly to the graph. Please also do this if you have a less visual processing style or are finding the diagram clunky for any reason!
( 2 ) The first refinement is to start annotating the different forms or feels of energy throughout the day. At minimum, try to come up with 2-3 words for each major feature of your graph, each up-slope and down-slope, each minimum and maximum. To find these words, ask yourself to feel into the quality of energy at these different points. Is it expansive, buzzy, sticky, flat? These words may be more visceral, more poetic, or more goal-related. You might find that you find it natural to notice impatient energy, glorpy energy, and triumphant energy throughout your day. You might also find that it’s not just one quality or “type” of energy at a time. Maybe you have a bunch of types in the morning, and get worn down to a single tired-out type by the end of the day.
Part of the goal here is to notice the variation in your own experience of energy.
( 3 ) For the different qualities of energy that you’ve named, do you notice any differences in what kinds of work or effort those energy-qualities are “for”? Can you do certain things with some energies and not others? When you get to the end of the day, for instance, maybe all you can do with your tired-out energy is sleep, while in the morning you have the ability to do lots of different things with your energies. Do any constraints or tradeoffs stand out? Do certain things in your day produce radical changes in the quality or availability of your energy?
It’s not uncommon to notice that some energy is good for doing lots of different things, while some is pretty specific in what it can be used for. As you look at your day, does anything stand out in terms of these more fungible and more narrow energies?
( 4 ) The next refinement is to start noticing whether transitions in your energy throughout the day are reversible or not. When you’re spending energy, could you get it back if you really needed to, or is it effectively lost to the void? When you’re gaining energy, could you give it up if you really needed to? If you’ve put a lot of work into a project then ends up getting cancelled, it would be pretty hard to get that energy back! But if you have a difficult and energetically draining conversation with a coworker, but then ask for help resolving it, you might be able to get the energy “back” in the form of satisfaction from having navigated a tough situation competently.
As an extra layer, you might also ask whether you notice any feelings that come up around these transitions. Do you notice any correlations in your feelings between more reversible transformations of energy versus more irreversible ones?
( 5 ) So far, we’ve been mostly focused on looking at your baseline patterns of energy throughout your typical day. As you’ve gone through the prior refinements and reflections, have you notice any important anomalies in your energy fluctuations throughout your day or week? These might be things that don’t happen regularly, but which have a large impact on what’s happening with your energetic equilibria. For any anomalies that stand out to you, see if you can describe them in terms of the three groups of concepts we’ve just been looking at: the qualities of the energies involved, the types of work that these energies can be used “for”, and whether the transformations these energies are involved in tend to be reversible or irreversible.
As an extra layer, you might ask: what kinds of feelings tend to come up in conjunction with these anomalies?
( 6 ) Given all of these reflections, is there anything about your typical daily energy flow that you would like to change? Anything about your approach to particular anomalies that you would like to change? Further sessions in this module will start to unpack some of the mechanisms that might be available to you for making changes, but for now, you can simply reflect: how might you go about making these changes? What would be required? What help might you need, and where could you get it?
Group Dynamics Course Outline & Activity Worksheet
Background
This theory-forward module will introduce a framework for modeling, anticipating, and guiding the behavior of purpose-driven groups. We will look at how individual actions and choices by members contribute to the overarching behavior and effectiveness of groups, and how the creation of shared beliefs (and coordination of non-shared beliefs) becomes an important task and function of the narrative(s) held by the group. In light of these key terms and concepts, we will see how certain roles and individuals can come to have disproportionately large effects on the group, and how people in different positions throughout a group might act to influence the people in these roles to improve outcomes across the group. We will also look at ways groups can fall into dysfunctional equilibria, and considerations relevant to risk-opportunity assessments around staying or leaving. Finally, we will look at key preparation and choices worth prioritizing when forming your own groups.
Outline
Session 1: Unpacking the Complexity of Group Participation
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Noticing the relationship between group identity and action — when is an action undertaken on behalf of or as a member of a group?
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How conditions of group membership and identity are established and taught
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Contrasting individual goals pursued through group participation with the collective goals of the group
Session 2: Group Coordination Through Narrative
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Difficulties in assessing what a group “should” be doing, difficulties in determining whether a group is on track
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Narrative as a way to coordinate local actions and goals with the overarching goals of the group
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Choosing strategic relationships to narrative as a way to increase your agency and opportunities within a group
Session 3: Problems with Narrative, Problems with Performance
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Internal and external pressures on narratives
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Narrative and legitimacy
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Internal schisming
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Relating to groups in crisis
Session 4: Considerations in the Creation of Groups
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Reasons to start your own group
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Creating a novel narrative
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Inspiring early members
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Anticipating and navigating conflict with neighboring groups
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Groups as vehicles for social improvement
Example Exercise – Session 1
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Pick a group that you are connected to that has at least a few members. You need not be a member yourself, but that would be a natural relationship to have with it. Ideally, you’ll know some of the members of the group somewhat well, though if not, you can either try to do some additional background research on them as you go (if available) or otherwise make your best guesses. As an initial reflection question, spend a few minutes writing down your best guess of what this group is “for”. What is its purpose or goal, what is it doing for its members?
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Choose 2-4 people within the group to consider more deeply, ask the following questions about each of them:
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What does being in the group mean for this person?
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Of the different projects or actions this person is undertaking, which are undertaking on behalf of the group? Which are most plausibly about other things, other goals and life priorities that they have?
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What is their standing or role within the group? When answering this question, keep in mind that these terms might not refer to official positions — someone might have the role of a caregiver or peacekeeper, or the person who cooks everyone dinner Friday night, or the one who knows where the best bands are playing in local bars. Though more clearly defined roles are also certainly possible.
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Does it seem like there’s a relationship between their actions and their standing within the group? If so, what is the relationship? If not, does it seem like something else is more decisive regarding their standing within the group? What determines it?
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Have you noticed any changes in behavior or changes in standing that this person has undergone within the group? For any changes in behavior, how did these affect their standing? For any changes in standing, how did these affect their behavior?
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Having answered these questions for other people within the group, take some time considering the same questions applied to yourself. What does being in the group, or holding whatever relationship it is that you hold to this group, mean to you? Which of your actions or projects are undertaken on behalf of the group? And so on, for the rest of the questions above. If you are not a member of this group, instead of giving answers about your membership, consider how the group views and judges you on the basis of your actions, how it accords status or value to what you’re doing as an external actor.
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Taking all of this together, you’ve gathered a lot of individual data points for considering what participation in this particular group looks like. Take some time to see if you can generalize to what participation in this group is like as a whole? How do people enter the group? How do they learn what kinds of behavior the group values? How do roles, standing, and status get allocated within the group? How does the group function as a source of meaning for its participants?
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As you consider these questions, you might notice that your initial survey of people within the group missed important roles or important aspects of the allocation of standing or status within the group. You are welcome to go back and go through these questions again for other group members of the group (or influential outsiders, if relevant) to fill in missing pieces.
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You might also consider if anything you’ve learned changes anything about your answer to the very first question, the question of the goal or purpose of the group. Does that answer still seem true, or do you have a different answer now?
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In light of your reflections from the prior question, how does it seem like the group is doing, overall? How is participation in this group going for the people in it? Do people like what they’re doing and the opportunities it creates for them? Is the group tending to grow? If so, how does the growth create challenges and opportunities for participation? Is the group staying roughly the same size? If so, what maintains interest and commitment to the group in the absence of growth? Are people leaving the group? If so, is there a way the group might not be meeting the needs of its members especially well?
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Finally, taking all of your reflections into account, do you see any opportunities for the group to make important changes to itself to better fulfill its goals or purpose? How might these changes be implemented? Or if they are blocked, what’s blocking them?