Adaptive Leadership
Meta Retreat
Discover your answer at this weeklong retreat
What is the Meta Retreat?
An intentional journey that will deepen your capacity to lead meaningful change in times of transition and untold possibility.
A week of leadership insight, natural beauty, and leadership questing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, in the lush rainforests of the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica.
This gathering is about healing, but it is well beyond healing. It is about leadership, but well beyond that too. It’s a pause — a timeless moment away from the noise. A step into deeper questions about who you are, why you are here, and how you wish to meet the world’s call for greater leadership and authenticity.
The world is calling for leaders who are deeply rooted, awake and alive. This retreat is your invitation to step past the edge and to begin again.
Location
Here, in this remarkable place — at Encanta La Vida on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica — you’ll be guided not only by skilled facilitators and kindred spirits but also by the vibrant faculty of the land itself. The rainforest, the land, the ocean, the wildlife, flora, fauna and other inhabitants of the land, and the silence will be your companions in self-discovery and self-healing.
Who’s Coming
The “Meta” Retreat is open to all edge-walkers. People who exercise leadership on the edge, who abide in the outposts of normality, and glimpse something exciting beyond the horizon. Retreat-goers include, but are not limited to, people who’ve previously participated in workshops, retreats, and other gatherings co-hosted by executive leadership experts Eric Martin and John Kobara.
Why the Meta Retreat?
We will experience and explore questions of personal leadership and growth that go well above and beyond the typical retreat. The lead-up involves not only a journey to a place of great beauty. It’s an internal procession through thresholds of experience every person goes through toward any hard-won leadership edge.
Are you feeling a call to:
- Transition to a new path in your professional or personal life?
- Take the next courageous step toward that breakthrough your heart knows is possible?
- Deepen your sense of belonging and purpose?
- Discover, or rediscover, your unique gifts?
What to Expect
Before arriving, you receive high-touch executive coaching and structured guidance for deep self-reflection. You’re also welcome to join optional, monthly virtual gatherings tailored for each stage of the journey.
While at Encanta La Vida, short talks and curated experiences in the morning by leadership and change experts serve as a foundation for the day’s conversation and self-guided activities, followed by shorter intimate evening dialogues. You may go through moments of intense emotion, inspiration, or epiphany, but do not expect an intense didactive workout.
The flow of our time together will be easeful and free of judgment. There will be plenty of time to choose from a variety of activities in support of well-being and, most importantly, time for contemplation.
Schedule
October 11-17
Arrival and check-in at Encanta La Vida followed by an Evening Session 7-10pm. Daily sessions follow a rhythm and cadence of: 8am-10pm Morning Session, lunch and then plenty of open space for personal integration, self-directed activities, conversations and sessions hosted by other participants, sunsets and deep stillness. Evening Sessions culminate each day starting shortly after dinner. The final Morning Session is followed by departure.
A second set of dates may also be offered October 18-24 – stay tuned.
Fees
Fees are all-inclusive of program participation and three daily gourmet meals. Fees do not include airfare to/from Costa Rica. USD$5,000. Inquire for financial assistance.
Lead Facilitators
John is the wildest American dream of his immigrant grandparents who came to this country with nothing. A third generation Japanese-American. Married over his head to a woman he met on a plane. A proud father of three college graduates with no student debt. An activist who still is trying to change the world and not grow up.
John considers himself a facilitator of change. He founded Random Acts of Progress, to assist and coach organizations and individuals to align their work to their passions to fully express their potential to build a more joyful, equitable, just, and compassionate world.
His quest took him on a career traversing all sectors with an emphasis on education, equity, and equanimity. He survived three start-ups in three different decades. He worked in what he calls the “for-purpose” field, interrupted by for-profit and public-sector jobs. He held many big titles and important positions but usually not at the same time.
Eric Martin
An Adaptive Leadership expert, speaker and author, Eric’s quest to democratize leadership spans the globe—from the White House to the Himalayan foothills. After a brief stint as an engineer, Eric spent five transformative years in Japan as an international diplomatic liaison. This path eventually led him to The Synergos Institute, a Rockefeller-affiliated nonprofit based in New York focused on global human development and systems change.
After a decade working with Harvard faculty Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Eric founded Adaptive Change Advisors (ACA), the premier mission-based Adaptive Leadership organization worldwide. ACA puts leadership tools that drive change into the hands of anyone seeking meaningful outcomes.
Eric’s academic background complements his practical experience in leadership and change. Despite living away from his hometown of Detroit for years, Eric remains grounded in its grit and resilience, underscoring his belief that true leadership transcends identity, history and conventional access to power.
