Global Mayors Academy · Live Session

Are you feeling overwhelmed as a leader? Discover why.

The context in which you lead is becoming more complex. Is your leadership evolving fast enough to meet it? Join a revealing exploration of how the way you see, interpret and respond to complexity can change, what facilitates that change, and what becomes possible when you lead from a wider perspective.

Hosting the inquiry
Dr Paddy Pampallis
Academic Director, GMA
In conversation
Ferial Puren
CEO, GMA
In conversation
Lev Gordon
Co-founder, GMA
In conversation
Dr Darrell Gooden
COO, GMA
Monday, 17 August 2026 4 PM Zurich · 3 PM London · 7 AM Pacific · 2 PM UTC Online · Free
Reserve your place Free to attend · The recording is shared with all registrants
What will happen

The heaviness has a reason, and the reason has a map.

Understanding how we develop and grow over time is key to supporting the leader's intentional practice towards their role. Leadership that happened just by virtue of moving up a corporate ladder or through experience has value - but in today's context - it is not sufficient. We have the road maps - the challenge is to intentionally use them. For us leadership is a profession and its practice is important. Leadership by chance is not an option.

This webinar will bear in mind that across our life as a leader we are always growing - at different paces, across different competencies and utilising different intelligences. Our culture, context, timing, learning (formal and informal) impact on how we respond to these.

The question is - how do we intentionally utilise what we know about these stages of growth and purposefully attend to nurturing and fostering the capacities, capabilities, and potentials in meaningful ways.

This webinar will use the language of Vertical Development: not as a destination but as a necessary journey for conscious leadership - particularly if we are to cultivate the competencies that are needed for our complex world.

01

Why can leadership start to feel heavier - or perhaps even lighter - as complexity grows?

Explore why working harder, knowing more and taking on more may no longer be the answer.

02

Real leaders. Real situations. Three very different responses.

Paddy takes Ferial, Lev and Darrell back into challenging situations from their own leadership journeys, exploring how they responded then, and how they would meet those same situations today.

03

Discover what they developed in themselves that made the difference

Hear how they nurtured the skills, capacities and capabilities to meet the same leadership challenges differently, and how seeing more can help you carry less, step out of the need to manage everything, respond rather than react, and navigate complexity with greater resilience and choice.

04

The growth stages, with their upsides and downsides

Throughout the session the growth stages will be identified with their upsides and downsides, to identify what might be needed for one's role, situation, current capacity and learning opportunities.

05

Open Q&A

Bring your own leadership challenge and explore what you might see, and do, differently.

The frame behind the conversation

Leadership matures in stages, and each stage sees a different world.

Dr Paddy Pampallis
Holder of one of the world's first doctorates in executive coaching. For over twenty years she has taught the developmental frame this session draws on, working alongside Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter, a leading researcher of adult development.

Decades of research in adult development show that leaders make meaning of the world in recognisably different ways, and that these ways form a sequence.

One way leads through mastery: being the one who knows, doing it best, raising the standard. Another leads through results: goals, plans, efficiency, delivery. Both are real achievements, and organisations are built on them. Each also carries a built-in ceiling: the moment when the situation begins to ask for a wider way of seeing than mastery and results alone can offer.

The ceiling is invisible from inside. That is why it feels like overwhelm.

Past that edge, a more expanded way of leading becomes available: one capable of questioning its own frame, holding competing truths, reading whole systems and staying steady inside uncertainty.

In this session, Paddy helps you discover how you too can develop these capabilities, so you can lead more effectively without having to hold everything, carry everything or solve everything yourself.

Who this is for

For those who carry growing responsibility.

If the demands on your leadership have grown faster than the ease of meeting them, this session was built with you in mind.

The ceiling shows up differently depending on where you have invested your strength. Recognise yourself in one of these, and the session is for you.

Recognise yourself here? Bring the leadership challenge you are carrying. The open conversation is the heart of the session.

Your hosts

Four leaders, one honest conversation.

Dr Paddy Pampallis, a leading leadership development specialist, in conversation with Ferial Puren, Lev Gordon and Dr Darrell Gooden.

Hosting the inquiry

Dr Paddy Pampallis

Academic Director, Global Mayors Academy · founder, Integral Africa Institute and The Coaching Centre

A leading leadership development specialist. She brings the developmental arc of the leader into civic and business leadership across four continents.

In conversation

Ferial Puren

CEO, Global Mayors Academy

International consultant on leadership and organisational development, guiding leaders and institutions through deep transitions.

In conversation

Lev Gordon

Co-founder, Global Mayors Academy and Living Cities Earth

Thirty years in business, leadership development and the integral development of organisations and cities, across 35 countries.

In conversation

Dr Darrell Gooden

Chief Operating Officer, Global Mayors Academy

Educator and leadership developer, bringing decades of operational and academic experience from California to the global stage.

What you will take with you

A map, living examples, and your own next step.

A map of leadership maturity

Where mastery carries you, where results carry you, and what opens beyond them. A frame to place yourself on, in plain language.

Two ways to meet the same moment

Three leaders show the same hard situations met from two different stages of sight: then and now. The difference is the lesson.

A doorway into deeper work

If the question stays with you, the full Leadership Edge program continues it in person, two days of deep work in Marmaris this August.

Continue in person

Leadership Edge · Marmaris, Turkey · 29-30 August 2026

The webinar opens the map. The program walks it with you: two days of live developmental work with Dr Paddy Pampallis and the international faculty, a small group of peers, and your own leadership challenge at the centre. Set on the Mediterranean coast, right where summer meets the work of a lifetime.

Explore the Marmaris program
Reserve your place

Come and explore where your leadership wants to grow next.

Monday, 17 August 2026 · 4 PM Zurich · 3 PM London · 7 AM Pacific · Online · Free. The recording is shared with all registrants.

Free to attend. Your confirmation and the Zoom link arrive by email.