Today, leadership isn’t about control or prediction – it’s about navigating complexity and facing wicked problems – the kind that resist change and do not respond to traditional leadership approaches.
Leadership is not just title or position – it is also a process that emerges from how young those you lead perceive, engage, and shift the systems around you.
Often what keeps us stuck isn’t the problem itself, but the assumptions and conversations we bring to it – it’s like shining a torch in a dark room, if we keep shining the torch in the same direction we miss much of what else is around us, including more useful ways of engaging with the problem.
Adult developmental approaches challenge us to grow vertically – learning to see differently, think differently, and act differently. Think of it this way: we’re not filling your cup with more techniques – we’re growing the container so you can hold greater complexity.
This intensive, and focused course is designed specifically for those who wish to expand and deepen their knowledge and practice of leadership. Participants will typically be:
- Mid-to-senior leaders driving change and transformation.
- Owner-leaders balancing vision and daily operations.
- Mentors and coaches who develop other leaders
- High-potential leaders seeking wider influence.
- Academics and professional influencers shaping leadership thinking and practice
The course takes a trans-disciplinary approach that combines the theory and research with an experiential and hands-on approach in which participants are invited to learn by doing, reflecting, adjusting and experimenting. It is heavily informed by complex adaptive systems theory and adult developmental psychology and explores what is enabled and constrained by the assumptions underpinning our approaches to leadership. In particular, the course will focus on developmental challenges in complex environments and includes a Subject Object Interview (Kegan, 2003; Lahey et al., 1988) and debrief for each participant.
The course is conducted over 4 days face-to-face with a number of structured follow up sessions to be conducted on-line. The 4 days are split into 2 x 2 day blocks separated by a 4-6 week break in which participants are invited reflect on learning and attempts to apply it.
Topics Covered Include:
- What is “leadership”? What are the assumptions underpinning the major leadership theories? What do they enable and constrain.
- Managing in complexity. The failure of reductive models, the role of tension and unpredictability.
- Core coaching models – what do they enable and constrain?
- What is adult developmental theory – and why might it be important?
- What supporting others developmental journey look like?
- Leadership and leadership coaching?
- Models of leadership and leadership coaching
- Leadership in complexity
- A model of leadership and leadership development
- Dialogue and leadership
- Leading in systems – engaging with complexity: What is required from leaders?
- My developmental journey
