Leadership development is a process not an event. Development and the work of leaders are inseparable, whether it is at the executive suite or front line. We offer an integrated approach that develops leaders from the inside out.
Our Courage Code™ informs how we work with you, what you learn and the learning outcomes. Applying innovative methods to accelerate development, leaders and teams tackle real issues through action-learning paths. Programs are customized and include formal learning sessions, leadership practices, learning circles, and coaching. We go beyond transferring information about leadership to transforming leaders’ ways of thinking, being and acting. Leaders grow capacity to flourish and succeed in uncertainty.
Contact us and let’s start your journey now.
It is no secret that our world is changing in ways that we cannot predict. It is essential that leaders develop their ability to handle complexity, ambiguity, and change. The new leadership paradigm requires a shift from hierarchical leadership to more collaborative and participatory leadership style. This requires a different mindset as well as tools and knowledge. Researchers have shown that people at higher levels of development perform better in more complex environments because they can think in more complex ways and therefore are better able to handle adaptive challenges. The good news is that it is possible for leaders to transform by developing awareness of the beliefs and operating systems that drive behaviours and practising new ones.
We Base our program on The Leadership Circle™ Universal Model of Leadership. This holistic model integrates the best theory and research in the fields of Leadership Development, Psychology, Adult Development and Spirituality into one comprehensive framework. The creative competency dimensions – relating, self-awareness, authenticity, systems awareness and achieving – align with most leadership competency frameworks that we have encountered.
We have worked with hundreds of leaders using this model and have seen its effectiveness in supporting them to shift to next levels of their leadership development. The key creative competencies and reactive tendencies that make up this framework are well-researched and correlated to stages of adult development.
Courage Group International has extensive experience providing leadership development and coaching/mentoring services with a proven track record working with all levels of leadership including executives, senior leadership, managers and supervisors. Courage Group embodies the learning and practices that we teach and continually integrates that learning into our practice, both within the company and with client groups. We are committed to integrating current research and models in our assignments with clients. We facilitate constructive, courageous dialogue to create a leadership culture that is compassionate, inclusive and collaborative. This will achieve results for you and your company (organization).
“If we are really going to make a difference in the way workplaces support people to grow, we’ll have to make a difference in the way leaders think about their work.” Jennifer Garvey Berger
Effective leadership is needed to create the enabling conditions for culture transformation and to help the organization to successfully navigate transition, growth and uncertainty that is the new normal. In order for the culture to evolve, leaders must develop their self-awareness. This means they need a deeper understanding of themselves and the systems in which they operate. This new understanding or level of consciousness helps leaders see their reactive tendencies. Instead, with awareness, they can choose a more strategic and creative approach to achieving results. Developing these creative attributes is not just skill development; it is a practice. The role of leaders is to help others to develop their leadership capacity and enroll them in the vision for the shared future. Development is essential to close the gap between task demands of senior leadership and the complexity of thinking and decision making required of leaders. Leadership development, used with intention, is in itself a succession planning strategy.
Recent scholarship on distributed leadership points out that development of individuals as whole human beings with personal, professional and collective agency (empowerment) is essential for the promise of distributed leadership to be realized in organizations. Processes that make space for and support the development of our human capacity for connectedness are essential. Our approach to leadership development supports people to move to a new stage of consciousness and builds their capacity to effectively lead in a complex and ambiguous world. This is called vertical development. Most leadership development programs focus only on the development of skills and competencies at the individual’s current stage of awareness of self, others and systems – horizontal development. Our approach includes both vertical and horizontal development. Development of new capabilities and practical skills is integrated with deepening self-awareness. We recognize that people cannot (and should not) skip stages of development and the focus for learning needs to align with creating the shifts that they are ready for. We accompany the leaders on their journey as they learn new ways of being as well as doing and develop new habits of mind and leadership practices. This includes a combination of learning, coaching, mentoring and integration of learning as leaders deal with the real leadership challenges in the organization.
Courage Group believes that the best way to support implementation is to work with leaders and teams on the actual business issues and challenges they are facing by incorporating real time support on delivering on strategic goals and projects. Programs include modelling, feedback loops, action reflection learning, coaching, and mentoring strategies to support leaders to achieve results with their teams. While formal learning is a big part of the program, it is the practice and application of the learning with new ways of being and doing that will make the difference in outcomes. We believe integration of individual coaching into the leadership development program is an essential component to support transformative learning, adoption of new leadership behaviours and to promote sustainable outcomes. “Coaching has a proven impact: add coaching to an initiative and people will focus on that initiative more. Add coaching to training and people learn more, up to 6 times as much in some cases.”
Our Summit Spaces create an environment where it is safe to learn, experiment, contribute and challenge. Our transformational approach to learning opens new possibilities for action and results in individuals’ lives and the organizations in which they work. We work with facilitation processes that pay attention to the multidimensional human being and create conditions that maximize the learning of individual participants and the emergence of collective learning. There are four conditions that support transformational learning: the presence of the other, reflective discourse, a mentoring community, and opportunities for committed action. Transformation is a whole person experience that has emotional, social as well as cognitive components. These are conditions that we co-create in our learning environments.
