Workshop on Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics

Program Overview:

The overall aim of this course is to provide participants with the competencies required to make their organizations thrive in a changing world. Participants on this interactive course will have the opportunity to strengthen their practice of adaptive leadership no matter what role they play in their organizations. Also, this course presents tools and tactics to help participants lead and mobilize people and tackle tough problems while reaching high.

For Whom:

This program is designed for Managers, business professionals, and individuals who have decided to master the tools and tactics of adaptive leadership in a world where change has become the only constant.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the program, participants will be able to:

• distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges and learn how to observe, interpret and intervene;
• discover the implications of the status quo on their organizations and diagnose the system;
• create an adaptive culture by mobilizing the system;
• devise a plan to identify their roles, prioritize and articulate their purposes in an adaptive challenge; and
• apply tactics that will allow them to identify the emotional elements needed to lead an adaptive change.

Course Outline:

Day 1: Purpose and possibility

• The illusion of the broken system
• Distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges
• Distinguishing leadership from authority
• Living the disequilibrium, observing, interpreting, and intervening
• Experimenting and taking smart risks smartly
• Engaging above and below the neck and connecting to purpose
• Living life as a leadership laboratory
• Resisting the leap to action and discovering the joy of making hard choices

Day 2: Diagnosing the system

• The elegance and tenacity of the status quo
• Diagnosing the system and discovering structural implications
• Determining the technical and adaptive elements
• Identifying the four adaptive challenge archetypes
• Recognizing the political landscape and uncovering values that drive behavior
• Sharing responsibility for the organization’s future
• Valuing independent judgment and building leadership capacity
• Institutionalizing reflection and continuous learning

Day 3: Mobilizing the system

• Reframing the group’s default interpretations
• Generating a diversity of interpretations
• Designing effective interventions
• Keeping work at the center of people’s attention
• Managing authority figures
• Protecting and engaging the voices of dissent
• Creating a holding environment
• Nurturing shared responsibility for the organization
• Developing leadership capacity
• Institutionalizing reflection and continuous learning

Day 4: Seeing yourself as a system   

• Identifying your loyalties
• Knowing your tuning
• Broadening your bandwidth
• Understanding your roles
• Identifying your scope of authority
• Articulating and prioritizing your purposes
• The story you tell yourself

Day 5: Deploying yourself

• Staying connected to your purposes
• Integrating your ambitions and purposes
• Engaging courageously
• Inspiring people
• Being with your audience
• Speaking from the heart
• Running experiments
• Growing your personal support network
• Creating a personal holding environment
• Renewing yourself

Training Methodology

Lectures, discussions, exercises, case studies, audio-visual aids will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods.