Relational Leadership Circle For Women
Learn to Lead in the Moments
that Matter Most
At The Art of We, we believe that how we relate is how we lead. The moments that shape our partnerships, teams, and communities are often the same moments that shape our leadership. This program focuses on building the relational capacity to navigate those moments with clarity, courage, and connection.
This six-month, bi-weekly small group program is designed for women who want to become more skillful, courageous, and effective in the moments that matter most in relationships. It builds on the core principles of The Circle while adding a deeper layer of practice, intimacy, and applied relational skill.
Many leadership programs focus on ideas. This one focuses on practice.
Participants bring real situations from their lives—difficult conversations, moments of tension in teams, family & relationship dynamics, leadership challenges, or situations where they felt stuck, reactive, or unsure how to respond. Together, the group works with these moments in real time, applying a set of relational leadership practices that develop clarity, courage, and connection.
Through guided dialogue, triads, and full-group learning, participants practice navigating high-stakes relational moments with greater awareness and skill.
This Program is Grounded in Three Pillars of Leadership:
INNER AUTHORITY
Developing the capacity to stay grounded and self-aware in the midst of pressure. Participants learn to notice their internal reactions, clarify what matters most, and respond from choice rather than habit.
RELATIONAL AUTHORITY
Building the ability to engage others directly and skillfully. This includes learning how to give and receive feedback in ways that strengthen connection, address impact without blame, navigate hard conversations, and stay in relationship even when things are tense.
COLLECTIVE AUTHORITY
Understanding the dynamics of groups and teams. Participants learn to read group energetics, recognize patterns of silence, power, and alignment, and intervene in ways that help groups move toward greater honesty, collaboration, and shared purpose.
Work Through Real-Life Challenges In Real-Time
Throughout the six months, participants repeatedly work with real-life challenges, experimenting with practices such as:
- Addressing impact and misunderstanding
- Giving and receiving developmental feedback
- Navigating difficult conversations without collapsing or attacking
- Recognizing and shifting unhelpful relational patterns
- Understanding one’s impact in groups and teams
- Reading group dynamics and intervening skillfully
- Staying connected while holding difference
Sessions combine whole-group learning with triads and small-group practice so participants can try new approaches, receive feedback, and refine their capacity in real time.
"I stopped 'performing' leadership and started inhabiting it. I now am able to speak with more clarity and presence—not to prove something, but because I know who I am. The ripple effects on those I work with is tangible."
— Natalie
Who This Program Is For:
This program is designed for women who want to deepen their relational leadership capacity in their work and lives. It is particularly valuable for:
- Women leading teams or organizations
- Coaches, facilitators, and consultants
- Women navigating complex workplace dynamics
- Entrepreneurs and community leaders
- Women who want to become more skillful in relationships, conflict, and collaboration
It is also for women who are curious about how their presence and behavior shape the systems they are part of—families, teams, partnerships, and communities.
"Personally it feels like a deeply transformative learning lab to help me connect more deeply with myself and see my tendencies, strengths, vulnerabilities and blind spots while providing a real ground to experiment with growing my range, strength and authenticity."
- Circle Participant
"Nothing has given me clearer visibility into my relational patterns. I can actually witness my old strategies—like hiding or shrinking—in real time. That awareness is what’s allowing me to choose differently and lead with more agency, sovereignty, and self-trust."
- Circle Participant
The Kind Of Outcomes You Can Expect
Participants leave the program with:
- Greater confidence navigating difficult conversations
- Increased awareness of their relational patterns and impact
- The ability to give and receive feedback without damaging trust
- Stronger skills for working with conflict and tension
- A deeper capacity to read and influence group dynamics
- Practical relational practices that can be applied in teams, families, and communities
- A community of women committed to growth, honesty, and meaningful leadership
Most importantly, participants become more able to stay present and skillful in the moments that shape relationships and outcomes—the moments where leadership actually lives.
Why Women Chose This Work
Many women carry significant responsibility in their organizations and communities but rarely have a space to practice the relational side of leadership.
This program offers a place where women can bring the real challenges they face, experiment with new ways of responding, and develop the kind of relational intelligence that transforms teams, families, and communities.
It is not just a conversation about leadership.
It is a practice field for becoming the leader you want to be in relationship with others.
Interested In Joining The Relational Leadership Circle?
New Circle Cohorts are starting Spring and Summer of 2026.
Request a discovery call and let's explore if the Relational Leadership Circle is for you!
About Your Facilitators
Barbs Edwards
Barbs Edwards is a longtime facilitator, coach, and guide who has spent the past three decades helping people come home to themselves and one another.
With a background in psychotherapy and a career shaped by work with global organizations, women’s leadership programs, and top executive teams, she brings fierce compassion, deep listening, and a gift for creating spaces where truth can emerge. Knowing we teach what we most need to learn, Barbs has led programs such as the Remarkable Women’s Program, Self-Authorship, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Whether she’s on stage, in a boardroom, or sitting in circle, she tracks what’s most alive and what’s ready to shift.
At the heart of her work is a longing to help women reclaim the parts of themselves they’ve set aside in the push to be perfect, productive, or strong. She believes that when women gather in circle with courage and realness, something profound is awakened—shameless brilliance returns, and new choices become possible.
This offering is the synthesis of her life’s work: a space where honesty meets tenderness, laughter and grief coexist, and each woman is invited to rise into her fullest expression.
Krista Van Derveer
Krista Van Derveer is a leadership and relationship coach who helps others find their voice, step into embodied leadership, and create relationships that expand what's possible. With over 20 years of experience in executive coaching, consulting, and transformational group work, she supports women in leading from their deepest truth—personally and professionally.
Her journey began in male-dominated corporate spaces, where repeated experiences of gender bias and crossed boundaries sparked a fire to challenge unconscious power dynamics—both within herself and the systems and people around her. That fire became a lifelong commitment to helping women heal their injured self perceptions and perceived limitations, and start living and leading their lives from a sense of wholeness, authentic clarity, real courage, and deep presence.
Krista's led retreats, executive off-sites, and women’s leadership programs including High Impact Women, a stage-speaking journey for women to articulate and embody their calling. She has coached C-suite leaders, emerging visionaries, and women in life transition who are ready to grow their leadership and impact from the inside out.
She is also the co-host of The Art of We podcast with her husband, Dr. Will Van Derveer, where they share their 24 relationship agreements and the tools they use to build a purpose-driven marriage that fuels their individual and shared missions.
Interested In Joining The Relational Leadership Circle?
New Circle Cohorts are starting Spring and Summer of 2026.
Request a discovery call and let's explore if the Relational Leadership Circle is for you!
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