What can participants expect?

At Collaborate, we have years of experience supporting people in organisations across the country to develop their leadership skills and mobilise change. For the first time, we have created a programme designed for people from across our network of public, private, voluntary and community sector partners to learn together across places and sectors.

Over six in-person sessions, participants in this programme will collectively explore how they can lead change from wherever they stand in their system.

We expect that participants who come on this program will have a particular issue, cause or topic that they are each working on — something they care about, a change that they are trying to bring about in the world. Participants will learn from each other, both from people working on similar priorities, or facing similar challenges, and from people working on very different things from very different positions or perspectives.

Grounded in ideas from complexity theory, systems change and adaptive leadership, and in the wisdom and experience of the participants, the programme will offer participants new knowledge, frameworks, and skills and the opportunity to test and apply them, along with reflection on how they relate to their own work. 

Key features of the programme include:

• Developing the skills to work in partnership, build common purpose and share power—and to do this in uncertain and complex conditions.
• Exploring and expanding competence in negotiating across difference and increasing the personal ability to address structural inequalities, promote and harness diversity, and develop the leadership of others.
• Reflecting on the self and the horizon of individual experience to generate greater self awareness and flexibility in working with others.

The programme will be interactive and participatory. It will include a variety of different types of learning activities, including presentations, talks and Q&A, large group and small group discussions and exercises, and personal reflection.

The learning community of participants will also serve as its own case study to explore how to mobilise change. We will look critically at our own experiences to gain insight into system dynamics, power, and sensemaking.

Programme graduates will have:

• A network of likeminded people from across places and sectors
• Time, space and support to develop themselves professionally, connect to their individual purpose, and further their self awareness
• Knowledge and skills to mobilise change in our complex world in which outcomes are the emergent properties of systemic factors
• Understanding of what is required for effective collaboration, including grappling with power dynamics
• A deeper grasp of the challenges facing society, through the lens of a wide range of stakeholders

Programme outline

Who is the programme for?

For Collaborate, leadership is the practice of mobilising change, rather than mere authority or power. It’s possible to exercise leadership from a whole variety of different positions of power within a system. This programme is for anyone who wants to exercise leadership regardless of their role or seniority.

As part of the programme we will be considering the different possibilities and constraints on leadership at different levels of power, exploring the sources and uses of your power and seeking to understand better the power of other people in the system that you are a part of.

This programme will benefit anybody who is: 

• Striving to make progress on difficult or long standing problems.
• A believer in the power of collaboration for social change who wants to develop the skills and understanding that help make this possible.
• Eager to develop themselves and their practice, prepared to think differently, and seeking a network of like-minded peers.

This is not your average “training programme”. It is experiential and relational. Signing up means joining a learning community where you commit to supporting your own and other people’s learning and exploring and developing together.

“This programme helped me step away from the day to day firefighting to think and reflect. The most useful lesson for me was how to take a bigger perspective and find ways to tackle difficult and sensitive topics in an open and professional way. The speakers were great — they gave me a basket of good practice to go back to. And the colleagues I met are a great source of support that I still turn to now. I also learned a lot about myself and my style. You lead your own learning, so people are open and you can talk freely about things we probably wouldn’t normally.”
Stacy Bailey (Director of HR & OD – London Borough of Harrow)

We held an informational webinar about the programme on the 16th May. You can watch a recording here:

Your facilitators will include experienced Collaborate team members,
Elle Dodd, Jeff Masters, Leigh Brown, Naomi Diamond

How to get involved