Leading Self, Leading Systems
When, where & how to book
When?
Session 1, 0930-1130 BST, Thursday 31 March 2022
Session 2, 0900-1300 BST, Thursday 7 April 2022
Where? Online on Zoom
What does it cost?
Standard fee: £250 plus VAT (UK sales tax)
Reduced fee: £150 plus VAT (UK sales tax)
The workshop fee cover both sessions: on 31 March and 7 April.
We aim to offer our programmes to a wider range of people and organisations, including in different regions of the world. To widen accessibility to our programmes we offer a reduced fee option. Please choose the fee that fits your economic circumstances.
Times of great disruption and volatility are also moments of great possibility and transformation. To realise the potential of this moment we must strengthen two critical leadership capacities:
- Leading Self – how to be our best selves in situations of enormous turbulence; and
- Leading Systems – how to lead and navigate skilfully amidst the messiness and complexity of conflicted human systems.
This workshop combines a rare combination of frameworks and practices that will deepen both your personal insight and your systems sight so that at this moment of intense turbulence we strengthen our capacity to lead with greater courage, compassion and practical wisdom.
We draw on the profound and practical thinking of systems theorist, Barry Oshry, and his five decades of research into the nature of human systems and the drivers of human behaviour. One of the revelations in Oshry’s work is that many of the problems we believe are primarily personal or interpersonal – “I’m not effective in my role”, “If only I had a better manager (partner/Prime Minister/President) then things would be fine”, “We are not a good team” – are not just personal. Context matters too. Many of us don’t see our contexts and the power of context to shape consciousness and behaviour. This blindness to context increases blame, kills trust, and corrodes potentially supportive and productive relationships. It keeps us stuck.
The workshop includes two highly engaging, enjoyable and thought-provoking sessions spaced a week apart to allow you to immediately apply the frameworks and practices in your everyday working life.
Session 1, 0930-1130 BST, Thursday 31st March 2022
What to expect?
- Online simulation that replicates the leadership contexts within which we work everyday. This experiential exercise becomes a platform to explore the nature of context in human systems and its impact on behaviour.
- Frameworks to help you distinguish between personal and system dynamics.
- Application of the framework to your situation, identifying actions that you can take to apply the learning in the week between workshop sessions.
Outcomes
- Recognise four key systemic contexts in human systems and how these shape behaviour.
- Learn to spot predictable patterns of behaviour that limit organisational effectiveness.
- Identify specific habitual behaviours that limit your effectiveness.
- Increase your awareness of the interplay between self and system.
Session 2, 0900-1300 BST, Thursday 7th April 2022
What to expect?
- Stimulating organisational exercise, based on Barry Oshry’s Organisation Workshop, where participants enter a fast-moving, turbulent environment as either a top executive, middle manager, worker or customer working together on important shared tasks. The experience will productively challenge your taken-for granted assumptions about what it means to lead yourself and lead systems.
- Practices to bring together diverse stakeholders and rapidly generate a rich picture of the whole system.
- Frameworks to expand your perspective and see more clearly what is personal, what is a function of group dynamics and what is systemic.
Outcomes
- Generate greater awareness and choice in how you lead yourself and the systems of which you are a part.
- Increase your empathy for other, extending your ability to effectively partner with a wider range of stakeholders.
- Learn to see underlying conditions & patterns of interacting that create misunderstandings, tensions and conflict in teams and organisations.
What do clients say about our online workshops?
“A game changer in online experiential learning”
“ The possibility to empower ourselves in any moment by ‘seeing’ our emergent responses and then asking what our ‘creative contributions’ might be.
“Simple yet impactful.”
“Very apt and applicable to all types of organisations”
“Exceptional online learning – I was immediately able to see opportunities to grow and build on my work and the projects and teams I am working with.”
“Experiential, immersive, illuminating.”
Workshop Leaders
John Watters is a Founding Director of Living Leadership and one of the world’s leading authorities on the work of systems theorist, Barry Oshry. John had the joy and privilege of a 15-year collaboration and partnership with Barry Oshry, pioneering the introduction of Oshry’s work into Europe, accrediting trainers, coaches and consultants worldwide and bringing this systems work to organisations as diverse as UNESCO, NATO, Shell, Microsoft, Roche, public sector bodies of all kinds, plus global and local charities.
John’s leadership and organisational consultancy work focuses on connecting individuals, teams and whole systems with their full potential. John specialises in facilitating breakthrough on complex issues and finding common ground in stuck and conflicted situations. In doing this work he pays special attention to holding space for our full humanity to be present, creating conditions to get to the heart of the issue and strengthening our capacity to listen deeply to ourselves, others and the whole system. Clients describe John’s way of working as courageous, challenging, warm-hearted and inspiring. John lives in Shoreham-by-Sea, UK.
Lauren Isla is an Associate of Future Considerations and a Director of Hope, Curiosity, Determination. Lauren is accredited in Barry Oshry’s Organisation Workshop and has delivered client programs using this framework in Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Singapore and Bangladesh.
Lauren helps organizations map out where they are against an ideal of having leaders and teams connecting, communicating and collaborating regularly across functions. Using proprietary tools and processes she helps organisations find out if their leaders and teams are networking as they should. Lauren’s spatial intelligence, analytical mind and ability to recognize patterns serve her in good stead as a Social Network Analyst (SNA). Trained by Valdis Krebs, a US-based consultant specializing in organisational network analysis, her work in SNA has provided the leaders of client organizations with insights into gaps in connections among and between their employees, teams and departments, allowing them to map and measure the amount of teamwork, communication, information flow, and knowledge-sharing that happens – or not – within their company, team, department, division or group. Lauren lives in Manila in the Philippines.
We also run this workshop as part of leadership development and business partnering programmes, leadership meetings and conferences, either in-person or online. Please contact us to discuss your needs
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