Adaptive Leadership
Vertical Development Consulting is excited to be offering our new Adaptive Leadership Masterclasses to support and elevate your ability to tackle challenges at home, work and in your communities.
This is an intensive on-line training for experts, managers, leaders, facilitators, executive coaches who want to be at the forefront of their respective fields.
Even though system thinking has been taught for several decades, people in positions of authority often apply quick fixes to tough problems. The impact is that change and transformational efforts in organisations fail to deliver the benefits.
As a result of this, many of you have been asking for advanced and bite-sized workshops to become versed in tackling challenges and for a way to upgrade your ability to tackle challenges with no easy answers.
As a participant of the Adaptive Leadership Masterclasses, you will learn to frame and diagnose a challenge you’re currently facing, either at home, work or in your community. You will frame your challenge, look at it through different lenses and learn productive tools and methods to identify solutions that have buy-in and commitment from your stakeholders.
Who are our workshops for?
Executives and change agents who want to grow and expand as leaders: we offer new ways of thinking that can help you address organisational challenges.
Team leads who are running leadership or change programs in their organizations and would like to sample our approach and methods.
During these Masterclasses, you will be taught by seasoned leadership development practitioners who will share with you best-in-class frameworks for your personal use and to tackle adaptive challenges so that you can be at the leading edge of your profession.
“Melissa and Rudi combine deep knowledge and compassion to help you probe the edges of your leadership abilities and personal depths in a way that moves them from the shadows into the forefront so you can take small actions to make a big impact.”
“Rudi and Melissa provide a rich platform for learning Adaptive Leadership. The combination of the two of them is highly engaging and inspires full focus bringing attention and realistic positive change!”
“Vertical Development Consulting’s virtual offerings have been a game-changer for me. They have truly opened my eyes to the inherent value of adaptability and responsiveness in the face of challenges and change. Thanks to their insightful approach, I now have the tools and mindset to manage uncertain situations and confidently lead myself and others.”
The Adaptive Leadership Masterclass Curriculum
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By the end of this session, you will:
Know the definitions of technical problems and adaptive challenges and confidently describe the differences between the two.
Understand why technical fixes don’t work when facing adaptive challenges.
Know why this idea is so important to the exercise of leadership.
Internalise the definition of leadership as mobilising people to make progress on tough, daunting, adaptive issues.
Feel excitement in beginning to see the leadership principles and competencies as clues to a new way forward on adaptive challenges.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
The Questions
Distinguishing Technical and Adaptive work
Definitions of Leadership and Authority
Four Competencies needed to make progress when the work is adaptive
Register here for Session 1.
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In this session, you will learn the power and necessity of making skilful interventions.
By the end of this session, you will:
Identify what prevents experts and leaders from making skilful intervention un their teams at work.
Understand the definitions of four types of interpretations and how they differ from each other
Through perspective co-ordination, experience availability of more options for intervention.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
The O-I-I method
Interpretation Mindshift
Six Interpretation Types
Situations and Interpretations Practice
Register here for Session 2.
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In this session you will enhance your ability to manage yourself and exercise more effective leadership.
By the end of the session, you will:
Learn about the links between vulnerabilities and triggers, and why managing both is a leadership behaviour.
Identify personal triggers and vulnerabilities and how they interfere with the work of leadership.
Learn simple mindfulness habits for noticing and responding to a trigger in a productive manner.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Diagnose Yourself
Understand your Strengths & Vulnerabilities
Understanding & Managing Triggers
Apply what you’ve learned to your challenge.
Register here for Session 3.
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July 11 & 20, 2023 AEST
In this session, you will begin to understand that leadership on adaptive challenges involves experimenting “beyond your comfort zone.” You will identify edges of your own comfort zone and get ideas about how to stretch and experiment to make more progress on your challenges.
By the end of this session, you will:
Understand that leadership and progress on adaptive challenges require you to initiate experiments that are uncomfortable and outside your typical (default) set of behaviours.
Learn that it makes sense to experiment beyond your comfort zone.
Observe the current limits of your competence, confidence and comfort when attempting to exercise leadership.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Working with Strengths and Talents
Identify Your Growth Edge
Improvement Goal Exercise
Goal Setting
Register here for session 4.
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In this session session, you will begin to surface the competing values and conflicting priorities at work in any system and begin to build capacity to exercise leadership that takes this into account.
By the end of this session, you will:
Get familiar with the definitions of factions, values, loyalties and losses.
See the world (and your challenge) differently as factions get elevated around an issue.
Know that it is usually easier to find common ground among factions about purpose than to agree on strategy or tactics.
Learn to name factions for the purpose of breaking down barriers and shifting us/them dynamics.
Use powerful questions to energise and connect with a faction other than your own.
Practice actively listening to another faction, making sure they experience your empathy with the losses and loyalties that will need to be renegotiated as you work together.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Factions
Diagnosing Factions
Values, Loyalties and Losses
Faction Mapping
Working Across Factions
Register here for session 5.
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In this session, you will begin to understand the characteristics of process challenges and how unaddressed process challenges become barriers to progress. With that foundation, you will explore what it takes to address potential barriers with a trustworthy process. To conclude, the group will use itself as a case, with some participants experimenting to build a more trustworthy process.
By the end of this session, you will:
Practice the foundational skills of asking curious questions and listening actively to people with different perspectives on an issue.
Recognise characteristics of a trustworthy process.
Notice characteristics and behaviours that decrease trust in a process.
Understand that a trustworthy process doesn't mean everyone trusts the process all the time.
Know a range of ways to intervene to improve the process for adaptive work.
Practice intervening to improve the process for adaptive work.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Process Challenges
Design Experiments to Create a More Trustworthy Process
Create a Trustworthy Process
Register here for Session 6
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In this session, you’ll explore the idea that making progress on issues that we care about requires us to raise the heat on ourselves and others to compel us to do difficult work.
By the end of this session you will:
Understand that if sustainable progress is to be made there will be discomfort.
Become familiar with the definition of heat and why we need to generate heat to create an sustain change.
Understand the productive zone metaphor and see the productive zone as a place of curiosity, provocation, and experimentation.
Identify interventions that can be counted on to raise or lower the heat.
Understand that raising the heat is only appropriate when there is a clear purpose for any resulting discomfort of loss.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Productive zone of Disequilibrium
When and How to Raise (or lower) the Heat
Register here for Session 7
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In this session, you will get the opportunity to outline, in writing, first draft experiments to make progress on your leadership challenges to implement when they go back to work or home. You will be coached to use KLC leadership behaviours, assess risk, and consider potential outcomes.
By the end of this session you will:
Know the definition of an experiment in this context.
Know that adaptive work necessitates a series of experiments.
Design experiments including:
Purpose for the experiment
What you’ll do
What you expect to learn and/or the progress to expect to see
How you will use the result as data to inform your next experiment
Evaluate the level of risk associated with an experiment, including the level of intended heat.
Evaluate the level of risk associated with an experiment, including the level of intended heat.
Feel energised around trying something with a new experimental mindset.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Experiments Design
SMART Experimentation
Act Experimentally
Register here for Session 8.
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The purpose of a debrief is disciplined reflection to meet one or more of these objectives:
Assess the group’s process and communication.
Get new voices and insights into the room.
Solidify lessons about leadership.
Diagnose the situation to understand what’s making sense to people and what is not.
Consider ways to apply leadership ideas to real-world adaptive challenges.
We will explore the following tools and methods:
Concept and Purpose of a Debrief
Register here for Session 9.
“Can’t wait to experience the rest of the workshops!”
C. Melissa Neu has over 20 years of experience supporting global and domestic organizations to strategically increase their visibility and reach by nurturing relationships, communicating effectively, and leading in a future-smart way. Her work is influenced by a lifetime of volunteering and intercultural experiences, and she feels called to support social impact globally.
Melissa currently creates change in her community in multiple ways. She works with organizations to diagnose their challenges for creating equitable workplaces. She strategizes with them on consulting and training solutions that will help them create inclusive work environments, mitigate bias in all aspects of their organization, and teach leaders to increase cross-cultural competencies. She volunteers with the American Red Cross of the Carolinas and the CUE Center for Missing Persons.
In addition, Melissa is an instructor who teaches leadership, interpersonal and intercultural communication at multiple academic institutions. In all these areas, Melissa dedicates her time to advocating as an ally to improve living and working conditions for those in her community. Melissa is a Moving Worlds Fellow, a Vital Voices Leadership program graduate, and she is certified to teach Adaptive Leadership through the Kansas Leadership Center.
Melissa is earning her Doctor of Strategic Leadership from Regent University. She has a B.A. in Theater from Metropolitan State College of Denver. She also has an M.P.S. degree in Organizational Communication and an M.A. in International and Intercultural Communication from the University of Denver.
Rudi is a Leadership consultant, facilitator and coach who consults with business leaders across the globe to strategically improve leadership, organisational culture, and to create inclusive environments.
His experience spans a broad range of industries including Airlines, Banking, Telco, Mining, Pharmaceuticals and early growth companies, working with clients like:
BHP, Caterpillar, Diageo, Genentech, Google, INSEAD, Marriott, McKinsey & Co, Oliver Wyman, Rio Tinto, SAP, SAP, SIG Combibloc
His areas of expertise include performance coaching, structural dynamics, team effectiveness and leadership decision-making.
Rudi studied Adaptive Leadership under Ron Heifetz at the Harvard Kennedy School and is certified to teach Adaptive Leadership through the Kansas Leadership Center. He graduated from INSEAD with an Executive Masters in Change.
Rudi is a member of the Transformational Faculty at Mobius Leadership, a premier Leadership firm that supports organisations undergoing transformation.