Pears Foundation

Trainer: Shoshana Boyd Gelfand

Criteria:  CEO or senior leaders, willingness to attend all three sessions

“The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges” – Professor Ron Heifetz, Harvard University

COVID-19 has forced the entire world to adapt. But many of the adaptations we are making are addressing technical challenges that we are facing (e.g. “Which online platform will help my team work from home?”) rather than the underlying adaptive questions (e.g. “What fundamental changes in our organisation’s activities and values will be required in order for us to thrive in this new environment?”)

“Adaptive Leadership” is a practical leadership framework that helps individuals and organisations to adapt to changing environments. It fundamentally involves recognising the difference between technical challenges which can be addressed by expertise and adaptive challenges which require new learning and, ultimately, loss of the status quo.

The Adaptive Leadership framework provides tools to help leaders:

• identify and articulate their adaptive challenges
• mobilise people to overcome their resistance
• sustain people through a period of change

Based on the theory of Adaptive Leadership developed by Dr Ron Heifetz, this three-session series will explore how leaders can build their capacity for leading adaptive change efforts. The first part of each session will be taught with the second half consisting of case study exercises of the participants own experiences.

This three-session series is for CEOs who want to explore as a cohort how to build their capacity for leading adaptive change efforts and share the challenges of leading in uncertainty. The first part of each session will be taught with the second half consisting of case study exercises using the participants’ own leadership challenges.

Session 1         Managing disequilibrium/ Orchestrating Conflict

Session 2         Systems thinking: Mapping stakeholders, factions, perspectives, and losses

Session 3        Cultivating anchors and staying the course: Allies, confidantes, and partnerships

We are particularly targeting new and recent CEOs who began their roles just before or during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period of peak uncertainty, to help build your leadership skills and create a cohort of peers who can learn together and support each other.

If you are a new or recent CEO or senior leader and would like to join the course please register your interest by emailing Rachel: rfranklin@pearsfoundation.org.uk