Landmark Worldwide (known as Landmark Education before 2013), or simply Landmark, is an American employee-owned for-profit company that offers personal-development programs, with their most-known being the Landmark Forum.
As part of the Human Potential Movement, which was centered in San Francisco, Werner Erhard created and ran the est (Erhard Seminars Training) system from 1971 to 1984, which promoted the idea that individuals are empowered when they take personal responsibility for all events in their lives, both good and bad. In 1985, Erhard modified est to be gentler and more business oriented and renamed it the Landmark Forum. In 1991, he sold the company and its concepts to some of his employees, who incorporated it as Landmark Education Corporation, which was restructured into Landmark Education LLC in 2003, and then renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC in 2013. Its subsidiary, the Vanto Group, markets and delivers training and consulting to organizations.
Landmark has faced allegations of being a cult because of their attempt to convert participants to a new worldview and their recruitment tactics: they do not use advertising, but instead pressure participants during courses to recruit relatives and friends as new customers. However, religious experts have stated that Landmark does not meet many characteristics of cults because it is secular, has no central leader, and tries to unite rather than isolate their participants from the rest of society. Several sociologists and scholars of religion have classified Landmark as a "new religious movement" (NRM), while others have called it a "self-religion," a "corporate religion," and a "religio-spiritual corporation". It is one of several Large Group Awareness Training programs. A study published in a book named Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training compared the outcomes of participants in the Landmark Forum to a control group of non attendees. They found that participants had a short-term increase in internal locus of control (the belief that one can control their life), but found no long-term positive or negative effects.
In 1985, Werner Erhard (creator of the est training which ran from 1971 to 1984) renamed est to the Landmark Forum, and changed the content to be gentler and somewhat more business oriented.[4][1][6] He promoted the idea that all events (good and bad) of an individual's life were their own making, and that individuals would be empowered when they take personal responsibility for all events in their lives, an idea based in the Human Potential Movement.[1][4] Many individuals liked this belief, whether or not it is true, or simply works as a placebo.[1] The Landmark Forum's niche was for people who did not have major psychological problems, but were nonetheless seeking self-improvement; these people constituted a very large part of society and were not served by the medical psychological establishment, which concentrated on those with mental illness.[1][2]
In 1991, Erhard sold the intellectual property rights associated with the Forum's concepts to some of his employees, (including his brother Harry Rosenberg who became CEO) who incorporated into "Landmark Education Corporation."[1][4][2][3][7] Landmark paid Erhard $3 million as an initial licensing fee, with additional payments over the next 18 years not to exceed $15 million.[5][8] The new company offered similar courses and employed many of the same staff.[9][10] The Forum was reduced in length from four days to three, and its price is about 50% of the cost of the est courses.[11] In 2001, Rosenberg stated that Landmark had completely purchased the licenses to all of Erhard's concepts and all divisions of the company.[5]
In 2003, Landmark Education Corporation was re-structured into Landmark Education LLC, and in 2013 it was renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC.[citation needed] Landmark Worldwide states that it operates as a for-profit company, whose employees own all the stock of the corporation.[12] The company states that it invests its surpluses "into making its programs, initiatives, and services more widely available."[12]
The company reported in 2019 that more than 2.4 million people had participated in its programs since 1991.[2] Landmark holds seminars in approximately 125 locations in more than 21 countries.[4][13] Landmark's revenue surpassed $100 million in 2018, with profits of about $5 million.[2][4] The organization has 500 employees, and about 7,500 volunteers, an unusually large number of volunteers for a for-profit company.[2][5] Their use of volunteers prompted three separate investigations by the United States Department of Labor, which concluded without requiring Landmark to make any changes to their practices.[2]: 1
In 1993 Landmark started a subsidiary named Landmark Education Business Development (LEBD),[citation needed] (later renamed to the Vanto Group) which uses the Landmark methodology to provide consulting services to businesses and other organizations.[6] LEBD became the Vanto Group in 2008.[14]
Landmark does not use advertising to reach potential customers, but instead repeatedly pressures participants during their courses to recruit relatives, friends, and acquaintances as new clients.[1][2][3][4][5][11][15][16] This complete reliance on word-of-mouth advertising to market its programs has been described by reporters variously as: "evangelical",[4] having "a Ponzi taste,"[16] "a quasi-pyramid scheme,"[1] and including a "hard, hard sell."[3]
Landmark has faced accusations of being a cult.[2][4][17][18] Several commentators unrelated to Landmark have stated that because it has no single central leader, is a secular (non-religious) organization, and it tries to unite (and re-unite) participants with their family and friends (rather than isolate them) that it does not meet many of the characteristics of a cult.[2][4][17][19]
Landmark has threatened and pursued lawsuits against people who have called or labeled it such, including individuals (clinical psychology professor Margaret Singer), magazines (Elle, Self, and Now,) and organizations (Cult Awareness Network).[2][5][20] After Singer wrote a book, Cults in Our Midst, in which she mentioned Landmark as a controversial New Age training course, Landmark sued Singer.[20] The suit was resolved when Singer agreed to provide a sworn statement that Landmark is not a cult or sect.[20] Singer stated that she would not recommend the group to anyone, and would not comment on whether Landmark used coercive persuasion for fear of legal recrimination from Landmark.[20] In 1997, Landmark sued Cult Awareness Network (CAN) after they made statements alleging or implying that Landmark was a cult.[20] That suit was resolved when CAN stated that it has no evidence that Landmark is a cult.[20]
In June 2004, Landmark filed a 1 million dollar lawsuit against Rick Alan Ross's Cult Education Institute, alleging that postings on the institute's websites which characterized Landmark as a cultish organization that brainwashed their clients damaged Landmark's product.[19] In December 2005, Landmark filed to dismiss its own lawsuit with prejudice, purportedly on the grounds of a material change in case law after the publication of an opinion in another case, Donato v. Moldow, regarding the Communications Decency Act of 1996, even though Ross wanted to continue the case in order to further investigate Landmark's educational materials and history of suing critics.[19] Ross stated that he does not see Landmark as a cult because they have no individual leader, but he considers them harmful because subjects are harassed and intimidated, causing potentially unsafe levels of stress.[19]
Many large companies and government agencies have paid for and encouraged their employees to take Landmark's classes.[4][1]
Andrew Cherng, the founder and co-CEO of Panda Express, has said that Landmark aided his company's success.[4]: 1 [21] He has strongly encouraged his employees and all managers to take Landmark's classes.[21] Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon Athletica, is a follower of Landmark's principles, and has directed his companies to pay for employees to attend Landmark's classes.[22][23][3]
Some of Landmark's courses require participants to start a community project.[2]: 1 [24][25]
Landmark's entry course, the Landmark Forum, is the default first course for new participants and provides the foundation of all Landmark's other programs. The Landmark Forum takes place over three consecutive days plus an evening session (generally Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday evening.)[26] The Forum is attended in a group varying in size between 75 and 250 people. Landmark arranges the course as a dialogue in which the Forum leader presents a series of proposals and encourages participants to take the floor to relate how those ideas apply to their own individual lives.[27] Course leaders set up rules at the beginning of the program and Landmark strongly encourages participants not to miss any part of the program.[17] Attendees are also urged to be "coachable" (open minded to the course's concepts) and not just be observers during the course.[11][17][28]
Various ideas are proposed for consideration and explored during the course. These include:
During the course, participants are encouraged to call friends and family members with whom they feel they have unresolved tensions,[17] and to take responsibility for their own behavior.[32]
The evening session follows closely on the three consecutive days of the course and completes the Landmark Forum. During this final session, the participants share information about their results and bring guests to learn about the Forum.[31]
A 2011 Time article stated that "Landmark has been criticized for delving into the traumas of largely unscreened participants without having mental-health professionals on hand."[16]
Sociologist Eileen Barker and sociologist of religion James A. Beckford both classified Landmark and its predecessor organization est as a "new religious movement" (NRM).[33][18][34][35][36] Some scholars have categorized Landmark or its predecessor organizations as a "self religion" or a (broadly defined) new religious movement (NRM).[37][38][39][40][41][42] Others question some aspects of these characterizations.[43][44][45]
Renee Lockwood, a sociology of religion researcher at The University of Sydney described Landmark as a "corporate religion" and a "religio-spiritual corporation" because of its emphasis on teaching techniques for improvement in personal and employee productivity, which is marketed to businesses as well as government agencies.[46] Sociologist of religion Thomas Robbins says that Landmark could be considered an NRM.[47] George Chryssides, a researcher on NRMs and cults said: "est and Landmark may have some of the attributes typically associated with religion, but it is doubtful whether they should be accorded full status as religious organizations."[48]
Stephen A. Kent, professor of Sociology and an expert in new religious movements, stated in 2014 that Landmark's business is "to teach people that the values they have held up until now have held them back; that indeed they need a new set of values and this group [Landmark] can provide those new sets of values ... I don't know of any academic research that verifies that kind of perspective" and while some individuals feel "cleansed" or "invigorated" by Landmark's training, others may feel violated by the pressure put on them to reveal their innermost secrets to strangers during Landmark's training sessions.[15]
Landmark maintains that it is an educational foundation and denies being a religious movement.[37][49]
In 1985, a group of psychology researchers studied participants of the Forum, (a Large Group Awareness Training course) and compared their outcomes to a control group of non attendees. They published their results in the book Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training. They found that participants had a short-term increase in internal locus of control (the belief that one can control their life), but found no long-term positive or negative effects on individuals' self-perception.
In his review of the Landmark Forum, New York Times humorist Henry Alford wrote that he "resented the pressure" placed on him during a session, but sardonically noted that "two months after the Forum, I'd rate my success at 84 percent."[6] Time reporter Nathan Thornburgh, in his review of The Landmark Forum, said "At its heart, the course was a withering series of scripted reality checks meant to show us how we have created nearly everything we see as a problem" and "I benefited tremendously from the uncomfortable mirror the course had put in front of me."[16]
Amber Allinson, writing in The Mayfair Magazine describes Landmark's instructors as "enthusiastic and inspiring". Her review says that after doing The Landmark Forum, "Work worries, relationship dramas all seem more manageable", and that she "let go of almost three decades of hurt, anger and feelings of betrayal" towards her father.[29]
Journalist Amelia Hill with The Observer witnessed a Landmark Forum and concluded that, in her view, it is not religious or a cult. Hill wrote, "It is ... simple common sense delivered in an environment of startling intensity."[17]
Reporter Laura McClure with Mother Jones attended a three and a half-day forum, which she described as "My lost weekend with the trademark happy, bathroom-break hating, slightly spooky inheritors of est."[3] Heidi Beedle, writing for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2019 said that "The tangible benefits of Landmark's courses may seem hard to pin down" though community projects do seem to be one, and "One thing is certain: Landmark is a program that is incredibly successful at making people feel good about Landmark."[2]
In 2004, the French channel France 3 aired a television documentary on Landmark in their investigative series Pièces à Conviction.[50] The episode, called "Voyage Au Pays des Nouveaux Gourous" ("Journey to the land of the new gurus") was highly critical of its subject.[51] Shot in large part with a hidden camera, it showed attendance at a Landmark course and a visit to Landmark offices.[52] In addition, the program included interviews with former course participants, anti-cultists, and commentators. Landmark left France following the airing of the episode and a subsequent site visit by labor inspectors that noted the activities of volunteers,[53] and sued Jean-Pierre Brard in 2004 following his appearance in the documentary.[54]
The episode was uploaded to a variety of websites, and in October 2006 Landmark issued subpoenas pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to Google Video, YouTube, and the Internet Archive demanding details of the identity of the person(s) who had uploaded those copies. These organizations challenged the subpoenas and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) became involved, planning to file a motion to quash Landmark's DMCA subpoena to Google Video.[55] Landmark eventually withdrew its subpoenas.[56][57]
And yet others who claim that it's a cult, brainwashing, and evangelical — about which more later. ... And now to that important question: is it a cult, brainwashing and evangelical? Cross out the first two; tick the third (but not in a literal, bible-bashing way — it's just that there's a lot of American hard sell). The party line is that evangelism is not a corporate approach: they attribute it to the individuals' passion. But I don't buy that. Whipping up the fervour and lurve is how they put bums on seats.
Some Landmark graduates also volunteer for the company, which has approximately 500 employees and a reported 7,500 unpaid "assistants" (though Landmark puts this number much lower) who answer phones, sign up recruits, and cater to the Forum leaders. ... Though it was rumored that Erhard sold his system for $1, it was later revealed that he received an initial payment of $3 million in addition to an eighteen-year licensing fee that was not to exceed $15 million; Erhard kept the Mexican and Japanese branches of the operation. ... Last year, Landmark had revenues of $58 million, and Rosenberg says the company has bought outright Erhard's license and his rights to Japan and Mexico.
But outreach was clearly part of the agenda. Pupils were assigned to call or write people with whom they "want to make a breakthrough," thereby introducing others to Landmark. On graduation night participants were encouraged to bring guests, who were then led away to learn more and sign on. From Day 1, attendants were told that for a limited time, the Forum's tuition included a $95 follow-up, "The Forum in Action." The crowd was also repeatedly invited to sign up for the $700 "Advanced Course." Act now and get a $100 discount.
Landmark is a for-profit company 100% owned by over 600 employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and similar international plans. The organization's executive team reports to a Board of Directors that is elected annually by the ESOP.
"They are manipulative, they are controlling, they involve coercive persuasion," said Steve Kent, a University of Alberta sociology professor. Kent is an internationally recognized expert in deviant ideological and religious groups who has studied Landmark and similar organizations for decades.
By the end of the course, almost all of us felt giddy with exhaustion and catharsis, but there was a fair amount of pressure to sign up for additional instruction. If we were serious about our transformation, we were told, we would enlist friends and family and even co-workers to take the $495 Forum themselves. It had just enough of a Ponzi taste that I stepped firmly and finally back outside the Landmark circle. (A Landmark executive later told me the company is "committed" to toning down the hard sell.)
Since its creation in 1991, Landmark Education has been described variously as a cult, an exercise in brainwashing and a marketing trick cooked up by a conman to sap the vulnerable of their savings. ... Landmark has faced accusations of being a cult, but I saw nothing of that. Far from working to separate us from our families and friends, we were told there was no relationship too dead to be revived, no love too cold to be warmed.
Erhard Seminars Training (est) and other examples of the human potential movement joined indigenous new religions, such as the Emin, Exegesis, the Aetherius Society, the School of Economic Science, and the Findhorn community in the north of Scotland, and a number of small congregations within mainstream churches were labelled 'cults' as they exhibited some of the more enthusiastic characteristics of new religions and their leaders.
[...] Landmark vigorously disputes the cult accusation and freely threatens or pursues lawsuits against those who call it one ... Landmark also boasts numerous letters from experts stating that it does not meet cult criteria. One such letter comes from Dr. Margaret Singer, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, and an expert on cults. Landmark sued Singer after she mentioned the company in her book Cults in Our Midst. Singer says she never called it a cult in her book, but simply mentioned it as a controversial New Age training course. In resolution of the suit, Singer gave a sworn statement that the organization is not a cult or sect. She says this doesn't mean she supports Landmark. "I do not endorse them -- never have," she says. Singer, who is in her 70s, says she can't comment on whether Landmark uses coercive persuasion because "the SOBs have already sued me once." "I'm afraid to tell you what I really think about them because I'm not covered by any lawyers like I was when I wrote my book."
Cherng is an avid consumer of self-improvement programs. ... He has since 2003 been a participant in Life Academy, a Taiwanese organization that follows a "life manual" dedicated to the "advancement of the human spirit." He is a devotee of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements. Recently, Cherng has become passionate about the Landmark Forum, a program that utilizes Werner Erhard's EST methodology, which Psychology Today described as one that, "tore you down and put you back together."
A cult following is the most coveted accessory in retail, and Lululemon's is even more lustworthy than its Velocity Gym Bag. It wasn't built on the work of some Jobs-ian swami, however, but on the sources of Lulu founder and chairman Chip Wilson's own spiritual awakening. Wilson has mixed a heady self-actualizing cocktail from equal parts Landmark Forum (seminars based on the philosophy of Werner Erhard), the books of motivational business guru Brian Tracy, and Oprah-endorsed best seller The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. He is now hard at work formalizing them in a Lululemon "internal constitution."
Punctuality is a central focus of Wilson's. It is also a key principle espoused by the Landmark Forum, a leadership development program based on Werner Erhard's EST curriculum. When Wilson was running Lululemon, the company paid for employees to attend Landmark seminars; Kit and Ace employees enjoy the same benefit. One of the main lessons of Landmark is that punctuality is a strong indicator of personal integrity.
Irene has undertaken the charity event as part of her Landmark Education Self Expression and Leadership course. "I had to set up a community programme of my choice that would make a difference," Irene said.
The majority of NRMs [New Religious Movements] are, however, not indigenous to Europe. Many can be traced to the United States (frequently to California), including offshoots of the Jesus Movement (such as the Children of God, later known as the Family); the Way International; International Churches of Christ; the Church Universal and Triumphant (known as Summit Lighthouse in England); and much of the human potential movement (such as est, which gave rise to the Landmark Forum, and various practices developed through the Esalen Institute).
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The prospect of a new global order is also central to many variants of the Human Potential and New Age movements and Scientology. All these very different kinds of NRM nevertheless share a conviction that human beings have, perhaps for the first time, come into possession of the knowledge required to free them from traditional structures of thought and action. Hence, the confidence of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation, and of Werner Erhard, the founder of est (now largely re-configured as the Landmark Trust)
Incorporating several eastern spiritual practices, the highly emotional nature of the Landmark Forum's weekend training is such as to create Durkheimian notions of 'religious effervescence', altering pre-existing belief systems and producing a sense of the sacred collective. Group-specific language contributes to this, whilst simultaneously shrouding Landmark Education in mystery and esotericism. The Forum is replete with stories of miracles, healings, and salvation apposite for a modern western paradigm. Indeed, the sacred pervades the training, manifested in the form of the Self, capable of altering the very nature of the world and representing the 'ultimate concern'.
Like the [New Age Movement], many of the Self-religions (Heelas 1991) have been heavily influenced by Asian, and more generally Eastern, ideas of spirituality and divinity and do not acknowledge an external theistic being but rather, use spiritual and psychological techniques to reveal the god within and/or the divine self. The Forum and/or est, whose origins are in the United States (Tipton 1982) holds to the belief that the self itself is god.
[...] the founder of est (the highly influential seminar training established by Erhard in 1971) observes that, 'Of all the disciplines that I studied and learned, Zen was the essential one.
[p111] Yet perhaps a more salient manifestation of this phenomenon exists in the form of corporate religions, groups with a specific religio-spiritual function that are established, managed, and presented as corporations. Representing the ultimate fusion of the sacred and the economic, corporate religion may be interpreted as the latest manifestation of the Human Potential Movement, with groups and practitioners such as Anthony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, and Landmark Education. Within corporate spirituality, the late-modern concept of the internalised sacred is paramount, with the "Self" offering epoch-specific modes of salvation in the form of seminars and spiritual products. The philosophy and praxes of corporate religions are predominantly bound by the ethics of market capitalism and the values of Western consumer culture. To this end, they are often tailored towards improving productivity amongst individuals and employees, and are subsequently marketed not only to individuals, but also to companies and government agencies. [p125] For religio-spiritual corporations such as Landmark Education, all previous ideas and beliefs must be dissolved and washed away in order to create 'nothing,' a clean slate from which truth may arise.
[...] many other types of groups have emerged that could fall under the purview of NRM study. We have suggested some of these in the above paragraph. Others might include [...] religio-therapy groups such as Avatar, Mindspring, and Landmark Forum [...].
[...] est and Landmark [...] have addressed human problems in a radical way, setting super-empirical goals, and addressing what some may regard as a spiritual aspect of human nature (the Core Self, the Source, which is at least godlike, if not divine. est and Landmark may have some of the attributes typically associated with religion, but it is doubtful whether they should be accorded full status as religious organizations.
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