Leadership Through Listening: A Blue Sky Journey

Most leadership training programs focus on what you do—your strategy, your vision, your impact. But the Blue Sky Leaders program at California Institute of Integral Studies asks a different question: Can you lead at all if you're not willing to be transformed?

For BSL 2025 graduates Jen Gerometta and Shannon Nothstine, that question became their capstone project: Connected with Jen and Shannon, a podcast exploring how deep attunement transforms leaders from the inside out.

The inspiration for their capstone project first crystallized during a full-day workshop with the Jazz Leadership Project. Watching a jazz trio communicate without words—musicians signaling through subtle glances and body shifts, weaving individual voices into collective possibility—Jen and Shannon suddenly recognized what they'd been cultivating throughout their program: the capacity to co-create meaning through what the Jazz Leadership Project calls 'Big Ears,' a practice of deep, soulful listening."

From Workshop to Podcast: Embodying Connection

The podcast itself embodies this principle. In their recent interview with Greg Thomas and Jewel Kinch-Thomas, the conversation flows with the kind of informed spontaneity that happens when people have moved beyond transaction into genuine connection. They explore how jazz offers a cultural technology for navigating difference—not by erasing disagreement, but by finding the intersection points where separate circles of perspective can create something new together.

"There's so much division in our society and our world," Jen reflects in the episode. "We need to have small pockets, small examples of what is possible." Her podcast, co-created with Shannon, is precisely that: a living demonstration of shared leadership in action.
 

Integral Education in Practice

What makes this capstone particularly meaningful is how it translates the Blue Sky Leaders program's integral approach into practical wisdom. The program doesn't just teach leadership concepts—it cultivates the embodied awareness that allows leaders to sense what's emerging in real-time. Jen and Shannon learned to recognize how communication happens in layers: through words, yes, but also through tone, rhythm, and the spaces between. They discovered that when leaders bring multi-dimensional awareness to their work—tuning into themselves, their colleagues, and the larger field—silos dissolve and new possibilities emerge.

Their podcast extends this learning beyond the classroom, creating space for listeners to explore their own capacity for what Greg Thomas calls "layered listening." Each episode invites audiences into conversations that honor complexity, integrate diverse perspectives, and demonstrate that the most powerful leadership happens when we recognize each other as co-creators of shared stories.

This is the promise of integral education: transformation that ripples outward. Jen and Shannon entered the Blue Sky Leaders program as professionals seeking deeper meaning in their work. They're leaving as practitioners who can facilitate the kind of connection our world desperately needs—one conversation, one moment of genuine attunement, at a time.

Explore how the Blue Sky Leaders program can deepen your own leadership practice.