Through COVID, new ways of leading emerged.
As leaders struggled to navigate a physically unavailable and disconnected workplace, COVID demanded Australia and the World find new ways of working and leading. That’s when co-authors, Tim and Mel recognised a new way of leading was rapidly emerging, and threw themselves into co-hosting online experiences for leaders, exploring ‘Leading in Isolation’.
From this series of dialogues, a range of themes emerged, attuned to both local and global contexts which saw the intensification of the pandemic, social injustice playing out in the streets and climate change impacts across the world – all which leaders needed space to explore their experience of and relationship with.
Our response was to shift our program, responding to this new need with the second evolution of this program, ‘Curated Conversations.’ Sessions included deep processing space, to collectively sense-make our experiences and the demands we faced as leaders. New program elements included an applied approach to learning, and we’ve amplified this in what we now call the first iteration of Being Leaders.
Across each stage of this evolving process, the space invited leaders to gather from across the country, where new thinking emerged as leaders built capability and capacity to weather the rapidly changing environment we all faced. Collective Intelligence found its way into our dialogue, and into our being.
As the leadership experiences we offered evolved, we found it necessary and beneficial to hold space for unstructured conversations amongst leaders. We questioned what leaders needed to support them on their learning journey, and how to deepen exploration and nurture generative experiences and co-created with our community new ways of being as we sensed our way forward. We discovered what we intuitively knew, structured learning had limitations and immersion and emergence was necessary for leader capability to evolve.
In our experience, in our lives and within this community coming together for 3 years now, new ways of learning are needed as there are new ways of leading required. From this co-created learning journey, Being Leaders has emerged.
To find out more about the program, visit our page via this link here and reach out to us directly if you have any questions.
Co-Authored by Tim Collings & Melina Lipkiewicz
