The Leadership Circle Workshop: Pathways to Partnership


	WORKSHOPS

	Introduction
	The Authentic Leader
	Mastering Leadership
	Pathways to Partnership

Pathways to Partnership
The Deep Dive


	In this program, experiences are structured to help the manager validate the feedback by noticing how they engage others. Managers will reflect on the underlying moti-vation for overly aggressive or cautious behavioral strategies. Finally, this workshop will help them create action plans for change.

Pathways to Partnership is designed for leadership teams, serious about the change efforts they initiate. So serious, in fact, that they want to be on the lookout for ways their behavior may be getting in the way of their own organizational change efforts. This workshop promises to help them gain important insight into themselves, their leadership and their lives, as well as assist them in taking a significant step forward in their leadership effectiveness.

This workshop is a deep dive into the dynamics of patriarchal control and the overly cautious complying behavior so prevalent in organizational life. The Leadership Circle Profile 360 degree assessment is used to provide managers feedback on how their leadership style supports or hinders the organization they envision.

In many cases, strategic change efforts become bogged-down in bureaucratic maneuvering and cautious positioning. Often, while we are striving to achieve important results, we get caught-up in the fear of real or imagined consequences. We react to this fear with decisions and behavior that undermines our intended results. Then, when change efforts begin to derail, we blame others (above and/or below us) and circumstances instead of exploring how our behavior is contributing to the problem. We call this the “Problem-Reacting” orientation.

This reactive stance does not begin in the meeting room, but rather in the parking lot each morning. Bright, creative, and passionate people put on their work face and walk through the front doors of their organizations. With our work-face on, we find ourselves holding back in meetings or becoming intimidated in the presence of others and swallowing our voice. Or, we overpower others whom we see as the opposition even when they are our colleagues. We avoid uncomfortable circumstances and interpersonal conflicts and retreat to spreadsheets and the safety of our head when matters of the heart are at stake. We hold onto authority even when we know that getting others involved is what our organization needs. These are natural reactions to fear, but they are very limiting. The volume of pure creative talent and energy discarded in our nation’s parking lots each morning is staggering.

We have been far too cavalier in thinking that, as leaders and sponsors of change, we could change the culture without making substantive changes in our own styles of leadership. We have been trying to change the culture while ignoring our own needs to transform. The deepest work of organizational transformation begins when we realize that we are one of the primary obstacles to our own vision. As we change how we deploy ourselves with each situation and act more in accordance with our vision, the culture will follow. The longer we put off the significant change required of us, the longer the future will remain beyond our grasp.

For additional information about the theory and concept that support this workshop see the Pathways to Partnership position paper. For additional workshop information, contact us.

PROGRAM BENEFITS

By the end of this comprehensive 3 day workshop participants (and their team) will:

		Understand the role transition they face in moving from patriarchy to partnership.
		Gain insight into the relationship between their personal character make-up and their leadership.
		Learn how they currently deploy themselves as a leader and the kind of organization they leave in the wake of their leadership.
		Learn how to work within themselves over time to evolve away from habitual, reactive patterns of leadership to better serve the future that they want to create.
		Identify the leadership behaviors required to embody and create the type of organization they are striving to build.
		Develop action plans to become a more effective role model for the organization they envision.