(Self)Leadership
Self-Leadership: Cultivating Conscious Life Practices
Self-leadership is the art of guiding oneself with intention, clarity, and accountability. It involves cultivating conscious life practices that align with personal and professional values, ensuring that our actions reflect the principles we hold most dearly. This workshop invites participants to explore fundamental questions:
What core values drive your professional activity?
How effectively are you integrating these values into your daily work?
What vision do you have for your professional future, and what concrete steps can you take to realize it?
By engaging in structured reflection, discussion, and practical exercises, participants will gain deeper insight into how they currently lead themselves and how they can refine and strengthen their approach.
A key focus of this workshop is understanding and organizing one’s “inner team.” Each of us plays multiple roles in life—artist, collaborator, mentor, entrepreneur, advocate. These roles can either pull us in competing directions or be harnessed into a cohesive, functional internal system. Through self-awareness and strategic alignment, we explore how to lead ourselves with clarity and purpose.
The workshop is structured around seven key aspects of self-leadership:
Self Discovery – Uncovering personal strengths and motivations with the help of a Leadership Insight Diagnostic tool.
Self Identity – Developing a unique leadership philosophy by exploring core values, guiding purpose, and behavioral patterns.
Self Development – Identifying strengths, maximizing their impact, and crafting a clear personal growth plan.
Self Direction – Defining a vision for the future while learning strategies to sustain motivation and inspiration over time.
Self Awareness – Practicing reflection and stress management to enhance resilience and adaptability.
Self Talk – Recognizing and addressing self-limiting beliefs and cognitive biases while developing strategies to manage negative internal dialogue.
Self Mastery – Gaining control over one's actions and habits by shifting from a reactive mindset to a proactive approach (moving to Cause in the Cause-Effect equation).
This workshop provides a highly interactive and experiential learning environment, allowing participants to engage in self-reflection, peer discussions, and practical exercises that translate insights into actionable strategies. By the end, participants will have a deeper understanding of how to lead themselves with intention, confidence, and resilience—both in their personal and professional lives.
About Heather:
Heather O’Donnell is a psychologist (M.Sc.), Artistic-Systemic Therapist (DGSF), and the founding director of TGR The Green Room. Drawing on her own transformative journey from professional pianist to therapist after career-disrupting injuries, Heather has spent years developing innovative approaches to support individuals seeking health recovery, self-actualization, and sustainable well-being.
Her academic path began with a B.Sc. in Psychology from Freie Universität Berlin, followed by an M.Sc. in Prevention and Health Psychology from SRH Hochschule. She also holds a certificate in Musicians’ Health from the Kurt Singer Institute / Universität der Künste Berlin and is trained as a mindfulness teacher (MTTC) by Christopher Titmuss and Ulla König and as an Artistic-Systemic Therapist (DGSF).
Heather specializes in helping clients move beyond dead-end situations, exploring the root causes of blockages and uncovering blind spots. She works with individuals navigating illness and health challenges, career transitions, and major life restructurings. Having lived across multiple continents, Heather also supports clients in understanding and navigating intercultural dynamics, providing guidance rooted in personal experience and cultural insight.
Beyond her one-on-one work, Heather advises organizations on systemic change and leadership development, fostering healthier, more sustainable workplace cultures. She has presented at international conferences, including the Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA) Symposium at University College London (2024) and Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City (2017, 2021), the European Network of Cultural Centers’ (ENCC) conference in Spain (2022), OTM On The Move’s forum on Mental Health & International Cultural Mobility (2023), the World Piano Conference in Serbia (2016), and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany (2015).
As a guest lecturer, Heather has worked with institutions such as Columbia University, the New England Conservatory, Rhodes University in South Africa, and the Lebanese Higher Conservatory of Music. From 2017 to 2019, she served as a faculty member at the Eastman School of Music, offering workshops on well-being and professional development. In 2024, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC).
Heather’s mission is to help clients (re)discover their potential, find resilience, and design ways of living that align with their values and aspirations.