Enguerran's Odyssey, Journey into Leadership (at the Thierry Graduate School of Leadership, Ardennes, and INSIL)

Enguerran's Odyssey is a collection of stories about the life-travels of a person who meets leaders, and who has become one as well. It is the ongoing journey into the vast realm of leadership. Created by Jean-Pierre Bal, the founder of The Thierry Graduate School of Leadership, the Odyssey includes the findings he compiled during more than fifteen years of personal study and research in leader practice and leadership development education. The Odyssey mirrors the life of leaders: it is a constant work-in-progress, in continuous learning, with its many travels into the meanders of the mind, the heart, the soul, and of our worlds-in-action.

Enguerran... What's in a name? Enguerran, a fictitious character, is the beholder of a long-lost name, the origin of which dates back to the early Middle Ages. Although the odyssey bears his name, Enguerran's female companion, Ermesind, brings in an equally important contribution. Both characters welcome and accompany their reader-learners into a leadership journey of a non-linear type, shifting back and forth through several millennia of civilisation and travelling in many parts of the world. Ermesind travels with her leader-learners, Enguerran with his, and vice-versa, if not travelling together. To the benefit of the journey companions - the students - our "heroes" allude to the "other" ways of learning how to learn, and how to lead. To know oneself and lead still better, that is one of the Odyssey's goals.

The Odyssey's style and format blend classical narration, or storytelling that stimulates implicit learning, with the explicit (direct) mode of knowledge-sharing used nowadays in education and training. Many fields are visited in the Odyssey's journeys: literature, history, philosophy, sociology, religion, science, strategy, psychology, education, the arts, nature, technology,... The interconnections coalesce, similar to a stream flowing through a large web in which all of the aforementioned fields are interweaved with other elements and tools, such as biographies, interviews, and audio-visual resources (blue marble @_THIERRY series).

With the aim of enlarging, or widening the learner's cognitive horizon, and intuitive abilities, the Odyssey also interweaves imagination, creativity, rejuvenation, growth, and change processes that take place in the personal, interpersonal, and organisational dimensions. The true Art (or artistry) of leadership is sought to be mastered, in finding its quintessence - each learning-leader's own personal quintessence.

Enguerran's Odyssey is embedded in the personal development and universal knowledge components of the SIRIUS, the master's and PhD curricula, and the other programmes offered at THIERRY, the Thierry Graduate School of Leadership of Belgium, and at INSIL, Institut Supérieur International de Leadership, the International Higher Institute for Leadership of France. A second type of odyssey is found in the Chronos, the exclusive top-leadership (CEO) programme of the school.

© Copyright 2005-2012, The Thierry Graduate School of Leadership, Outdoor Academy Ardennes (eco-campus), and Research units Europe mon. Insil International Higher Institute for Leadership, copyrights held on behalf of Jean-Pierre Bal. All rights strictly reserved for all countries, reproduction prohibited. Int. ref 11082005. NFP-to-NFP support. This page was updated on: 3 January 2012