The PRL courses are no longer being offered as they are replaced by Practical Relational Leadership in Community (PRLC). PRLC’s run every two months approximately
The reason for this change is that its twice as fun and four times more effective for me to co-lead with Sophie. I am retaining the prior PRL course description and context-setting below as its basically the same context as the (new) PRLC courses.
Table of Contents
- Summary
- History and Development of the PRL courses
- Expectation setting
- Overall context for the PRL courses
- How the PRL format differs from other styles of Relational Meditation and Circling™
- Follow-up to the course
- What you can do with this course, practically
- Requirements
- Course Leaders
Summary
Practical Relational Leadership through Authentic Relating (or “PRL”) is a deep-dive into Relational Inquiry (similar to Circling™) within the Authentic Relating tradition. We meet over zoom in a small group (6 people) for 2 hours x 4 consecutive weeks.
The latest version of this course, the “train the trainer edition”, will teach you a powerful model for building an Authentic Relating community in your home town, and among your friends. The course is particularly applicable to intentional communities (residential or not) and/or to people with pre-existing relationships who want to operate a joint project with more love and more effectiveness. As an added bonus, you will receive free lifetime membership in the PRL graduates community, currently a group of about 30 people exploring peer-led relational intelligence practices and business models for successful AR leadership.
PRL courses very reliably drop a group of 6 people into deep connection spaces over 4 weeks. And from there, magic happens. Experience with Circling™ is not required to attend, but of course will help. If you have never done Circling within the Authentic Relating tradition, join the free plan at Relateful Company and attend, at minimum, an introduction circle and a focus circle there.
Upon “graduation”, you are welcome to run your own courses, for fee or not, which you can brand “Practical Relational Leadership” or whatever you choose.
The curriculum for the course is laid out in my draft book, Relational Power, in the Context-setting for the PRL Courses. and now in (new) the TSL and TSL squared models. Students are requested to read (or listen) to the introduction and first three chapters of Relational Power prior to attending the first session. I also recommend listening to the TSL audio, as you will probably have questions about that in the course.
Introducing Transformation at the Speed of Light (TSL) and its extension, TSL2
We believe that love and sex are very powerful forces for human transformation. Thus, for the first time, at the next round of PRL courses we might introduce a powerful lifestyle practice called Transformation at the Speed of Light (TSL), and its extension called TSL2. TSL is good for amplifying the quality of love in your relationships. TSL2, which is an extension of TSL, is effective for creating deep love between men and women and/or attracting an opposite-polarity partner.
History and Development of the PRL courses
The history of this course goes back to my discovery (and falling in love) with Circling at the Boulder Integral Center in 2016. I immediately started running private (committed, returning, invitation-only) circles to my friends, which were very successful. I have run about a dozen separate groups over the years (hundreds of meetings), both short- and long-term, which include a men’s group that has been going strong now for 6+ years. The last 6 course iterations which I ran in 2023 (three online and three on the ground in Mexico) have all been powerfully connecting and developmental. Typically, the groups don’t want to stop after 4 weeks. I offer to all my groups the option to self-organize after 4 weeks.
It wasn’t however, until I landed in Mexico in July 2023 and started leading on the ground here, that I realized the real transformative potential of the practice to create and deepen community and increase organizational effectiveness, especially inside existing communities. That story is told in the article 2024: The year I finally landed in my life.
Fundamentally, the PRL courses take Relational Inquiry to where it needs to go (to where it always needed to go): to an open-source, peer-to-peer (and hence potentially infinitely scalable) model for increasing love, transparency, and relational effectiveness in a group, thereby activating collective intelligence.
Teaching Relational Inquiry and building community through AR (Authentic Relating) practices in a sustainable business model has proven itself to be very difficult. Getting trained in high-level AR skills has also been difficult, particularly on a budget. The PRL courses offer a possible solution to these two very thorny problems.
Expectation setting
Authentic Relating is, by its very nature, a socially disruptive paradigm (read my new substack Trauma is good for you: Authentic Relating and “karma acceleration”) and hence it is very possible, or even likely, that things will happen in the group that are going to be challenging to you and/or upsetting. Even so, and perhaps surprisingly, my experience is that about 80-85% of groups are profoundly nurturing and deeply transformative. Another 10-15% of groups are difficult (or maybe kind of flat), but ultimately also very transformative. About 5% of groups are total shit-shows, such as when a participant is heavily triggered (or blows out) and the group can’t handle it (or I can’t handle it).
Please do not join a group if you are not confident of your ability to stay in connection through anger, if you can’t tolerate your perspectives being challenged, or insist on being spoken to in a certain way (i.e. NVC. This is not an NVC group, although NVC is very helpful as I write about). Also please be aware that I am pretty good at doing these things (staying in connection through anger and being challenged) but that I am also a flawed human being. Which is perfect, because circling in this style is ultimately pushing one’s edges and making “mistakes”, which we then grow from. Fortunately for me, Relational Inquiry is, by its very nature, a collaborative leadership model. This means I don’t have to be the world’s best leader to make magic happen. I just have to surrender to what is actually happening, and name it.
Overall context for the PRL courses
[More info on this in the Podcast, Context-setting for the PRL course. This (along with the first 3 chapters of Relational Power) is strongly suggested reading (or listening) for anyone joining a PRL, and covers additional topics including the current business opportunities]
By way of overall context, Circling within the Authentic Relating tradition is a presence practice. “Presence” is a way of being and an attitude towards life and towards other people. Presence is non-verbal (it’s the act and the felt-experience of being emotionally available to another person) and it cannot be faked; however it is rendered much more powerful by learning and applying the structures of effective emotional communication. Circling courses normally don’t teach this, they expect you to learn by modeling “presence” (Circling cannot be taught, exactly, it can only be modeled). NVC (Non-Violent Communication) provides valuable distinctions related to good emotional communication (they call it “learning the language of feelings and needs”), but my work extends NVC in various ways. More info on this in Relational Power, Chapter 2.
80-90% of the course will be experiential. We will simply drop-in together and explore what is alive in the space, communicating our thoughts and feelings with truth and care (similar to other Circling courses) and unpacking / revealing our personal challenges in so doing. We will know that we are doing this effectively, by how much fun we are having together. We will also know that we are doing this effectively, by the results we are generating between-classes with the people in our environment.
10-20% of the course will either be direct instruction in the form of lecture / presentation, or else my naming what I see happening in the field and coaching / suggesting ways to make it better.
The fundamental goals and context of the course are as described in the book, Relational Power. The goal here is to start winning in all your relationships. How to make people want to be your friend and hang-out with you, while being authentically you. Ultimately, the goal is to end affective, intellectual and sexual scarcity, not just for you (should that be the case), but for all the people that you touch and people in your sphere of influence.
As told in the book, it is highly probable that this skill will be monetizable by you (given that in a highly connected and inter-related world, the skills of relational leadership are very useful in business). However the immediate goal is relational value-added, harmony and clarity and fun with the people around you, and happiness. This course is a training on becoming an effective relational leader.
In addition to winning with the people in you environment, you may learn various types of events that you can bring to your community and lead people into fun, depth and connection.
All of this probably won’t happen in your first 4 weeks (it took me 40 years). Relational leadership is a lifelong game. However, a little bit of good emotional communication (which includes kindness, humility, empathy/appreciation, and what we call “own your experience”) goes a very long way. You should get from this course, the basic information to get you started. If all goes well, once you get started you will never stop. It will just keep on getting better.
How the PRL format differs from other styles of Relational Meditation (or Relational Inquiry) and Circling™
The PRL process is like Circling™ within a strong structure or container. It’s a kind of “yang variant” of Circling, meaning that “developmental intent” (or problem-solving orientation) is more permissible than in traditional Circling. Compared to traditional circling, in a PRL there is more permission for story-telling and coaching, with the caveat (as in all Circling) to name what we’re doing (and hopefully to ask permission if we are coaching). Meaning that: we name the feelings and needs that are driving our communications, while being sensitive to the impact we are having on other people. This is called “context-aware”.
Another frame is that a PRL is a “conversation for transformation” held within a Circling container. The invitation is to address the fundamental problems of our humanity (particularly the human needs to belong and to be a contribution to other people), but to do so with more honesty, more self-awareness and more other-awareness.
A PRL is what we call “emergent” (it adapts to the people in the room rather than following a set script). Typically, however, we go through four processes, while being guided always by “what’s alive”. Like all circling, we also make a great effort to accurately and lovingly communicate our truth in the moment, and to name what’s happening.
The four processes are the following:
- Check-in: each participant gets a (roughly) 3 minute check-in, followed by an impact / reflection round.
- “Aliveness round”: we name what is alive in us and how we want to use our time together (as in: which people will get focus circles, what topics we’ll address, etc)
- Main-round: we spend our time circling, roughly following the plan jointly created in the aliveness round.
- Check-out: each person checks-out with how they are feeling and any particular take-aways or highlights of the session
Follow-up to the course
As follow-up to the course, I strongly encourage you to start a weekly Authentic Relating circle with your friends and/or business associates. This is THE single most powerful relational developmental practice that you can do. There is also an option for groups to continue on their own. Finally, graduating a PRL qualifies you to register for the new PRL Level 2.
What you can do with this course, practically
- You will acquire the skill and learn the structure for starting a private Authentic Relating circle with your friends or business associates.
- You will learn to skillfully lead both organic circles in my style, and focus circles.
- I may teach you some basic Authentic relating games (hot seats in particular) that you can use to lead connection-focused events for meetups, churches, or community organizations that you belong to.
- In partnership with my friend David Garrison in Austin, we may teach you an AR event format called Open Mic Playground that is a kind of Authentic relating creativity / self-expression workshop that you can bring to your community.
- You will be invited to our free Monthly check-in and Circle of the PRL Community.
- There may be income opportunities by running a city franchise for the Authentic Singles project. Authentic Singles is a startup designed to disrupt the $7B dollar a year online dating industry, which is not effective and is financially incentivized to keep you single.
Requirements
- Some experience in Circling is desired. If you have never circled before, see the instructions above about joining Relateful Company.
- Experience in NVC is highly desirable. NVC is a pre-cursor to Circling and teaches the language of feelings and needs, which is necessary to know in order to Circle effectively. To understand the distinction between NVC and Circling, read Relational Power Chapter 2.
- Please read, skim, or or listen to the Introduction and first 3 chapters of Relational Power prior to the first class (about 60 pages or 2 hours of audio). It is also recommended that you read or listen to the 20-minute context-setting for this course here or listen to my recent interview on Authentic Relating.
- Bring an open heart and open mind as we will attempt to create “family” among us, that would be the AR family you never had. Results here cannot be guaranteed, as family is challenging, as you know. However, the attempt is a glorious one, and will likely be hugely developmental to you whatever the outcome.
- A willingness and desire to go deep, as in all Circling.
- This is a leadership training course. People who express an interest in leading Authentic relating in their community, either formally or informally (“Authentic Relating on the street“) will be given preference.
Course Leaders
Marco Beneteau is the author of the Circling Guide, the most popular book on the practice of Circling within the Authentic Relating tradition, along with its draft sequel Relational Power. Both books are offered on the gift economy. He has been running these groups for 7 years, representing about 1500 hours of practice to date. Many of these groups were ongoing, including a weekly men’s group that has been running continuously for 6 years. Marco is also the author of a love and sex manual for men entitled As Lovers Do, and a memoir entitled Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: the Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict. Marco is also the founder of Authentic Singles, a startup designed to disrupt the $7B dollar a year online dating industry.
Interested?
See “Registration & Logistics” above.
3-minute Introduction to Circling within the Authentic Relating tradition
Listen to my interview on Authentic Relating!
Listen to the podcast, Authentic Relating with Lisa Larson and Marco Beneteau