“Survivors? No, they’re thrivers!”
Those were Jim Rowell’s first words after spending an evening at Good Ground Coffeeshop on June 18, conducting a session on Emotional Intelligence with an extraordinary group of leaders. But allow me to start from the beginning of this journey.
In Spring 2024, Patty Seaman, Executive Director of Client Services for Peace Promise, enrolled in Rising Sun Consultant’s Certificate in Influential Leadership program. This course was designed specifically for building up servant leaders through collaborative learning across sectors—applying leadership concepts to real-world challenges while building transformative relationships and organizational foundations.
Over six comprehensive sessions, participants dove deep into critical leadership areas: Change and Transition, Dealing with Difficult Conversations, Emotional Intelligence, and more. What struck us most about Patty wasn’t just her engagement during the program, but her forward-thinking vision. Before we’d even completed the course, she was already thinking, planning, and praying for opportunities to bring this same transformative experience to her entire team at Peace Promise.
This is the kind of visionary leadership that truly makes a difference. Patty’s commitment to investing in and building up her team of survivor-thrivers demonstrates the heart of servant leadership in action.
Now, we’ve been doing this work long enough to know that sometimes, despite the best intentions, we encounter participants who aren’t fully engaged or interested in the learning process. That was absolutely not the case with the Peace Promise group on that Wednesday evening. Their level of engagement was exceptional—their questions were insightful, their comments thought-provoking, and their eagerness to learn and self-reflect was genuinely inspiring. What was so refreshing was their candor and honesty throughout our time together.
The feedback we received speaks volumes about the people and the culture at Peace Promise. One of the participants reflected, “It was phenomenal. It was so interesting to learn about ourselves and others.” A leadership staff member shared, “The DISC assessment and this workshop offers me a launching pad for personal development—it’s a great tool for me to look inward!”
Serving the Peace Promise team was truly a blessing. It brought this quote by St. Francis of Assisi to mind, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” Their commitment to growth, their openness to learning, and their dedication to serving others is an inspiring reminder of why we do what we do at Rising Sun Consultants – investing in servant leaders.
If you are interested to learn more about bringing this course to your organization or area, feel free to reach out to us. At Rising Sun Consultants, we exist to help raise up the next generation of servant leaders passionate about pursuing purpose-driven ventures. We partner with organizations to build high-performance cultures that drive sustainable growth rooted in servant leadership.
