Adaptive Leadership

Explore the practices, strategies, and mindsets needed to exercise leadership in the 21st century.

Objective & Outcomes

At a time when rapid social, technological, and ecological shifts are forcing organizations to increase their capacity to adapt, developing leadership skills becomes critical to enable change. In this course, students will be exposed to new capabilities designers have to incorporate in order to exercise leadership, including how to engage and mobilize systems of people when facing complex challenges. Grounded in both theory and practice of the Adaptive Leadership Framework, this course provides a foundation for designers to build their own adaptive capacity.

Upon completing this course, students will be able to diagnose the challenge and the socio-political aspects of barriers to progress in a system.

Typical Schedule

Session 1: Distinguishing Leadership from Authority
Session 2: Technical Problems vs Adaptive Challenges
Session 3: Diagnosis of the System
Session 4: Factions
Session 5: Manage Self
Session 6: Mobilizing Others
Session 7: Final