Traininglea

Leadership is changing. The traditional top-down management style is no longer successful in today’s fast-changing work environment. There is a need for a paradigm shift in leaders and their understanding of what constitutes effective leadership.

The training focuses on developing leaders who aspire to be adaptive and agile in their leadership style. In this training, leaders learn to lead themselves first, before leading others and create an environment that will allow agility to thrive. The training will give you a holistic understanding of Agile leadership, and what it means for the individual, the team, and the organization.

This course is accredited by the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) and can lead to the certification ICP-LEA. Learn more about ICAgile below.

 

Agile People principles and work methods – that need to form the basis for decision-making in a complex environment where the only competitive advantage is learning faster than competitors.

The importance of Psychological safety – what it means and how we can work actively to create a working environment that is characterized by a common view of how we can unlock everyone’s potential by making it ok to experiment and make mistakes and learn from them. 

How to balance an Agile culture with Agile structures – while supporting an emerging strategy where people are involved in goal setting and creating a common direction (via OKRs or other types of relative goals instead of fixed budgets and performance goals)

How to work on behavioral changes in social systems to achieve an Agile mindset and Agile culture – by changing structural impediments (annual budgets linked to fixed performance goals and rewards).

To develop a Learning Organization –  by enabling collaboration between silos.

How management can support an Agile organizational transformation –  How to assess the current organizational structure and design a new structure that enables business agility, maximizes communication and collaboration within and among teams and enables the flow of value.

Why Agility in Leadership is Needed  – An understanding of why traditional approaches to management and leadership don’t always meet the needs of our transforming. In particular, leaders will self-assess to determine how they might need to change their own behavior and attitudes to properly serve the needs of 21st-century organizations. 

Leadership styles that increase Agility – Learn different types of leadership styles and the impact they have on motivating behaviors to increase learning, innovation and collaboration 

Personal Agility  – How to develop yourself as a leader through self-assessment, self-management and mindfulness. 

Relationship Agility – Models for emotional intelligence in the context of Agile organizations. Develop an awareness of the different systems found within organizations, the often hidden dependencies between them, and how conflict can arise when they have incongruent agendas. 

Exercising Agility in key conversations   – How to practice inquiry & advocacy skills, including framing invitations rather than demands and asking clarifying, opening, deepening, and provocative questions. Learn to enable high-quality conversations as a leader as opposed to always participating in them. 

The Nature of Organizational Transformation and Agility – Describe how transformation is different from typical sponsored change initiatives. Point out that transformation generally implies a change in purpose or strategy that is radical and systemic, while sponsored change initiatives are more limited and typically focus on the how and less on the what and why. Explain how traditional organizational change models designed for limited change initiatives may not provide all leaders who need to navigate transformation. 

Why Transformation is needed for Agility – Understand how established organizations need to undergo a transformation in order to develop agile capabilities. Describe how transformation is different from typical sponsored change initiatives. Point out that transformation generally implies a change in purpose or strategy that is radical and systemic, while sponsored change initiatives are more limited and typically focus on the how and less on the what and why. Explain how traditional organizational change models designed for limited change initiatives may not provide all leaders who need to navigate transformation. 

• Leaders or aspiring leaders at any level in an organization
• People at any level who lead or aspire to lead in an organization on a business agility journey
• Leaders who see the value of growing an agile organization, and are committed to developing themselves as agile leaders in order to achieve that aim
• Anyone wishing to learn about the paradigm shifts necessary to lead in adaptive environments, and to develop relevant leadership capabilities.

This training is certified by International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile), a certification and accreditation body. ICAgile works with course providers to accredit new or existing courses against comprehensive and proven Learning Outcomes. ICAgile collaborate with worldwide agile thought leaders to develop learning programs that lead people to agile mastery. Learn more about ICAgile

Agile People is an ICAgile Member Organization and this is an ICAgile Accredited Course.

     

For this training, you will take part in a 2-day in-person workshop or 10 online sessions á 2-hours. 

Day 1 or Session F1-5 Agile People Fundamentals

Session F1: Introduction to Agile People and Important Principles/Tools
The foundation of Agile Peoples’ mindset is about the principles, values, methods, and tools that we need to start using to release competence and innovation – and what we stop doing. We discuss your challenges and go through the certification assignment. This session is an introduction to the agile way of working and thinking. 

Session F2: Psychological Safety as a Foundation for a Learning Organization
The importance of an approach that is permeated by security and confidence to increase profitability and innovation is emphasized in this session – we need psychological safety to increase creativity through a culture where it is ok to fail fast and try again. We play “The Psychological Safety Game” to facilitate the dialogue about difficult topics

Session F3: Emerging Strategies, Structures, and Goals
Emerging strategies instead of long-term planning, new ways of working with strategy, budgets, goals, performance processes, and rewards. Using value stream mapping to optimize flows in a system instead of working with resource optimization and sub-optimization of departments. Mindset Slider exercise. WoWs to be used: Beyond Budgeting, OKRs, Impact Mapping, VSM, etc.

Session F4: Building Conditions for an Agile Culture
In this session, we explore how you can create conditions for a fantastic culture where people can perform at their optimal level with a sense of being supported and secure. The gap between structures and culture/values is discussed. Structure – Culture Misfit Role Play. The importance of country culture for an Agile transformation.

Session F5: Creating conditions for Change
In today’s fast-moving environments and complex environments, we are challenged as people and as organizations to be much more responsive and adaptable, to have the capacity to navigate in complexity. How can we make sense of things when things keep changing, how can we make decisions and act when most of the time we don’t have all the information we need?

In this module we explore VUCA, we try out a sense-making and decision enabling framework for leaders (CYNEFIN), and we explore what enables our organizations to become true learning organizations.

Day 2 or  Session L1-5 Deep dive into Agile People Leadership

Session L1: The Why & What of Leading with Agility
In this session, we explore the changing environment & dynamics that call for a different approach to leading and following.  We look into the misalignment between what managers think drives their people, and what people – knowledge workers specifically – expect from the people managing and leading them.  Finally, we explore our own personal understanding and expectations.. what are some of the attitudes, expectations, and concrete behaviors we expect to see from people who lead with agility.

Session L2: Behaviors that Enable Agility
When you wish to make a radical change or transformation, understanding three things enables you to make the shift.  Where are we coming from, where are we now, and where are we heading toward.   In this session, we explore the evolution of leadership theories and which leadership styles and approaches they have given birth to.  We determine what is still relevant.. and what needs to change.  A big part of that shift comes from understanding the nature of Power & Influence, and how the ways in which we gain power might be changing. Finally, we look into specific qualities & competencies we can cultivate and develop to increase our own personal agility.

Session L3: Knowing & Connecting with Yourself
If we cannot understand and embrace ourselves, we have little hope for fully understanding and accepting others. Understanding why we react to things in certain ways gives us the insights and ability to better choose our responses and change how we show up in our interactions. Leading others starts with developing our own self-leadership. In this session, we explore ways to map and become more aware of our own experiences. We dive into heuristics – cognitive biases – to understand how they work and influence our thinking; how we can become more aware of them and most importantly.. how we can counter them. 
Finally, we explore specific leadership mind-traps, and how we can unlock those mind-traps to show up in better ways as leaders.

Session L4: Developing & Leading Ourselves
Having gained some insights into how we can know and connect with ourselves to choose how we respond to situations and show up in our interactions with others, it’s now time to put that into practice. We familiarise ourselves with the Clear Leadership model developed by Gervase Bushe, and how to develop the 4 selves of the Leader.. the Aware Self, the Descriptive Self, the Curious Self, and the Appreciative Self. 
We explore several different contexts where we can put these into practice… to better check-in with people; give and receive effective feedback, step into coaching leadership, and defusing conflicts through creating inter-personal clarity.

Session L5: Skillful Communication
Communicating effectively; relating to others, creating and maintaining healthy interactions, having productive conversations, and ultimately the ability to influence others requires both practice and an understanding of the dynamics of effective communication. In this session, we work on the dynamics of effective communication through the lenses of several mental models; the dynamics of productive conversations, and the power of effective storytelling to move and influence others.  We explore 3 types of stories we can learn to identify and narrative patterns that help you tell compelling stories as a leader. 

Your course leader and facilitator vary depending on location and dates. See more details in the events

If you attend a course that is delivered online. Then we will work with Zoom for presentations and team exercises, Mural as a digital canvas, Trello for keeping track of the agenda items and exercises, and Slack for communication between the sessions. You will receive links to all of the tools used in the training including the Learning Management System that will provide you will all the documents and videos in between every session.

There will be some work to be done after every session, so add about 5 hours more every week. Course literature and material will be sent to your location and distributed digitally. The certification assignment will be accomplished in the time between the sessions so that you will be ready on the day of the last session.