What We're Reading Now
Strength & Rest
21 July 2026
Rachel enjoyed a healthy dose of "re" during her annual leadership retreat with Allison. Together, they took time to think big thoughts, contemplate powerful questions, and marvel at nature's majesty.
Tags: balance, development, leadership, rachel read, retreat
I spend a significant part of most weeks championing the benefits of deliberate development for leaders. Whether captured in a development plan or not, careful consideration of a desired future state and intentional action to get from here to there is the foundation of lifelong learning and growth.
At Allison Partners, Allison and I are fortunate that most years since 2012, one aspect of our deliberate development has been a retreat. It's not a hardship; usually we visit a lovely destination, we enjoy being both colleagues and best friends, and we include plenty of time for relaxation, restoration, and reimagining. Just because it's enjoyable, however, doesn't make it easy. We dedicate the time a full year in advance, we juggle calendars, we create the conditions. And then, well, then we turn on the out-of-office, quiet the noise, and enjoy.
This year found us in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Nature did its part and gave us a full moon. Our hosts gave us comfort and care. A guide, Jaia, spent time teaching us to make malas, choose an intention, and practice the recitation of a Japa. Luckily for me, that morning I'd been reading David Gate's A Rebellion of Care and was struck by a phrase in Bedfellows: "strength & rest are not strangers." That phrase became both my intention and my meditation.
When hearing about our practice of an annual retreat, it's easy to be caught up in the pleasure and fun of it. It can seem frivolous or unnecessary and, certainly, it is a privilege to be able to invest our time and money in this kind of experience. What strikes me, though, as I recite "strength and rest" in cycles of 108, or as I deepen my own practice of leadership, is that our retreat isn't that unlike the training programs, development initiatives, or advanced studies that I support for others. So cheers to another year of our leadership development, and the progress that it fuels as we pursue both strength and rest.
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