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.

Course Methodology

This course features the use of interactive exercises to allow participants to develop strategies that will help them improve their competencies in adaptive leadership. The course also relies on the analysis of case studies and real-life examples from the business world.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, 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.

Target Audience

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.

Target Competencies

• Adaptive leadership
• Envisioning and initiating
• Influencing and motivating
• Decision-making

• Strategic thinking
• Leveraging diversity
• Capacity-building
• Emotional understanding

Course Outline

Purpose and Possibility

• The illusion of the broken system
• Distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges
• Distinguishing leadership from authority
  • Technical problems
  • Adaptive problems
• 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
• 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
    • Gap between espoused values and behavior
    • Competing commitments
    • Speaking the unspeakable
    • Work avoidance
  • Recognizing the political landscape and uncovering values driving behavior
  • Sharing responsibility for the organization’s future
  • Valuing independent judgment and building leadership capacity
  • Institutionalizing reflection and continuous learning
• 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