Core Curriculum Workshop Roadmap
This is a very substantial curriculum, but you can complete bite-sized pieces, one workshop at a time.
The Core Curriculum workshops are organized into tracks, as shown in the figure.
Each yellow block is a set of related workshops. We call each block a “track”.
The Foundational Workshops in each track are described in detail below. Click on a track to expand its workshops.
Developmental Workshops are taken following related Foundational Workshops, to reinforce and internalize key behaviors. The Developmental Workshops are described here.
You do not have to go through the whole program: you can just take those you are interested in.
For those who wish to become certified in this curriculum, see our Certification Program description. Note that you are becoming certified in real knowledge — not a made-up framework.
Foundational Workshop Detailed Descriptions
Provides the fundamentals. To accelerate someone’s development as a leader, it really helps to know the basics. This track covers foundational models of leadership that have been extensively studied. It is the baseline vocabulary of leadership.
Why Leadership Is Central
How leadership underpins everything that happens in an organization, and why leader behavior generates the culture and underlies innovation and actual business agility.
The Crucial Importance of True Business Agility
Why business agility is to important today for innovation and even survival in a time of turbulence and accelerating change.
Situational Leadership
Two widely researched models are explained, for how different situations warrant different styles of leadership. The two models are compared. Participants are asked to consider situations from their own experience, and how these models might apply to those situations — or not.
Relational Leadership
We examine Leader-Member Exchange theory and the Tuckman Model, and consider ways in which leaders can improve their relationship with team members, and the performance of their team.
Socratic and Dialectic Leadership
Work has become complex. Most business uses a great deal of technology. That means that it is really important for teams and leaders to be able to have effective discussions about complex issues. Critical thinking is essential. We explore ways to make complex discussions more effective.
Social Identity Theory
Most humans are highly tribal by nature. This has huge ramifications for behavior, cognition, and decision-making, as well as who people tend to choose as their leader. We explore the kinds of cognitive bias that result from people’s feelings of identity.
Simple Examples of Leadership
Participants consider numerous example situations, and analyze those using the leadership styles that they have learned.
This track builds on the fundamentals, and covers important leadership issues, as well as examining a model of leadership that has been shown, through research of actual organizations, to be highly effective.
Authority, Autonomy, and Self Organization
Participants learn when authority is needed in an organization, and when it is not, and how authority relates to leadership. Team autonomy and self-organization are examined and participants learn what is needed for a team to be able to self-organize and have full autonomy.
Leaders We Know
The leadership style of some well known people are examined, using the models and styles that participants have learned.
Leaders We Want to Be
Participants learn about “transformational leadership”, and why it is a powerful exemplar of effective leadership.
Being Decisive but Not Autocratic
Participants learn about decision-making patterns for leaders, to make the most of their teams’ expertise. Cognitive biases and group cognitive distortions are explained, based on research.
Creating Psychological Safety
The full nature of psychological safety is covered, including some surprising aspects of it that are not often covered in popular explanations.
This concluding track on leadership covers “inner” aspects of leadership, as well as why and how different forms of leadership are needed in a multi-team and organization-spanning context. Several very different case studies are presented for comparison.
Attention and Focus
A leader’s ability to focus is a strong factor in their ability to learn what is happening in their organization and their ability to make good decisions. Attention and focus are internal behavior. Participants learn ways to improve focus and attention.
Emotional Intelligence
Covers the many aspects of emotional intelligence, which is — simply — one’s ability to behave in a less reactive way and be who one really wants to be. Covers techniques for becoming less reactive and more aware of others.
How Different Leadership Styles Work Together
In a complex goal-oriented ecosystem such as an organization, many kinds of leadership are needed for the organization to succeed, and they must align and support each other. Participants learn about the interactions between leaders.
Leading for Innovation
Innovation is crucial today for all organizations, in order to stay abreast of change and succeed. Yet innovation is often elusive. This is because innovation requires many things to occur. Participants learn how to avoid a “break in the innovation chain”. This workshop is under development.
Case Study: SpaceX and Elon Musk
SpaceX is examined from a leadership perspective. This is based on research as well as interviews with people at SpaceX.
Case Study: Visa and Dee Hock
Dee Hock founded Visa. Yet Hock was someone who had trouble being promoted. We learn about Hock and what made him so effective for achieving something that was all but impossible — getting powerful banks to give up control.
Case Study: Whole Foods and John Mackey
As a retail company, Whole Foods is very different from a product company. We examine the leadership that was needed for Whole Foods to succeed.
Reflections on the Case Studies
Participants discuss the case studies, and examine then using the tools that they have learned.
Learn how to maximize effective communication and collaboration on a team. Collaboration is not a point-in-time event, but rather is a process over time. Learn how to orchestrate the process.
Effective Work on a Team
People are cognitively diverse. That means that for a team to be effective, a team leader needs to pay attention to how effectively team members are communicating, and ensure that each individual has the conditions that enable them to succeed.
Better Meetings With Contributors
Participants learn how to make team meetings effective, and what the best uses of meetings are, as well as alternatives to meetings and when those alternatives are appropriate.
Better Management Meetings
In meetings with peers, managers often deal with a range of interpersonal factors that can generate dysfunction. In this module, participants learn about those, how to detect them, and how to mitigate them. This workshop is under development.
Better Leader Communication
When a leader communicates, it is important that it is received in the desired way. We cover techniques to ensure that. This workshop is under development.
Making the Most of Language
Language impacts how communication is received: is it a command? A suggestion? A fact? An expectation? Participants learn to be precise and intentional about the words that they choose. This workshop is under development.
Improving Emails for Greater Productivity
Email is the primary medium of business communication, and will remain so because it is a common denominator spanning everyone. Participants learn how to make emails more effective. This workshop is under development.
Work is about people. Leading is about people. To lead people, it is necessary to have a people focus, and ensure that those people are well and are progressing, so that they can be as good as they can be.
The Importance of Well Being
People only perform at their best when they feel “well” — that is, they are not under excessive stress, and feel supported by their environment and those who they depend on. Participants learn the many aspects of wellness, and how to support wellness among one’s team members.
Developing People
People want to advance professionally. Learn how to support your people’s aspirations and development, and how to make sure that people have the capabilities that you need them to have — in time.
Finding and Promoting the Right People
Learn about cognitive biases that are common when interviewing people, and ways of interviewing that are more objective. Learn also how to recognize leadership traits in others.
Learn about organizational culture: what it is, how to measure it, and how to plan for and execute cultural change. As Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast!
Culture as a Complex Adaptive System
Learn about the “complex adaptive system” model, which explains how systems, including organizations, develop complex emergent behavior and structure over time. Learn also how managers can take control, and direct the system’s evolution in a desirable direction.
Dimensions of Culture
An organization’s culture can be measured and categorized. Learn about the Human Synergistics organizational culture model.
Creating a Culture of Innovation
Learn the cultural traits that encourage innovation.
This workshop is under development.
The Components of Transformation
Learn what elements are needed in a plan for shifting culture and capabilities.
Creating a Transformation Strategy
Participants learn how to design a desired culture for their organization, and now to plan for shifting the culture.
Tactics to Change Culture
Participants learn techniques for shifting an organization’s culture over time.
Change as a Learning Journey
Explains why change in how products are developed is fundamentally a learning journey, rather than a process change.
The Stages of Change
Explains the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behavioral change, and illustrates how to apply it to have more transformative and effective discussions with people, especially when it is necessary to change minds or change behavior.
Learn an Operations Research perspective that unifies all the techniques that we hear about in Lean, Theory of Constraints, and other process oriented schools of thought.
What Is Flow
Participants learn what “flow” is, in the context of product development and operations.
Disruptions to Flow
Covers how flow can be interrupted and throttled, and what to do about it.
Balancing Utilization, Flow, and Agility
Learn how utilization, flow, and agility relate to each other, from a system perspective. Learn how they can be combined to achieve an optimal balance of utilization, flow, and agility. Real examples are shared.
Flow Management Techniques
Participants learn important flow management techniques such as critical path, last responsible moment, and failure mode analysis.