COURAGEOUS LEADERSHIP
“Compassion, dignity and equity are innate values that are present and activated in radical transformational leadership.”
- Monica Sharma
Individual coaching
I support leaders through one-on-one and group coaching to build self-awareness, see new perspectives, refine their approach, and gain action-confidence to lead bold change.
Approach
I use the Co-Active Coaching model and the Inner Development Goals framework to support you in achieving your objectives.
This might include:
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Understand your blind spots and break through unhelpful patterns in order to increase your impact, empowerment and effectiveness.
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Strengthen your self-awareness, presence, and emotional intelligence so you interact in non-reactive ways with intention, insight, and influence.
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Build your capacity to engage, support and motivate your team so you are more in sync and able to respond to what’s needed, advance your goals, and mobilise change.
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Understand your deeper motivations and values that drive your contributions and positive impact, so you are fulfilled and inspired by your work.
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”
- Bill O'Brien,
former CEO Hanover Insurance
Transformational Leadership programmes
Customised Leadership Programme
I can design and deliver a customised leadership programme for your organisation to help you adapt to complex challenges, achieve your strategy, and transform your organisation. This can increase your teams’ capacity to collaborate, innovate new solutions, and expand effectiveness.
French and English
The Transformational Leadership programme is available in French, co-hosted with Dialogue en Intelligence Collective (see video below) and in English (see video and pdf to the right of a sample programme) tailored to your needs.
Inner and Outer Capacities
I help participants build inner skills such as self-awareness, relation-building and systems thinking as well as outer skills such as collaboration, action-learning, and leading change in order to build capacity to facilitate needed shifts.
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I’ve been engaged in leadership development over the last decade for UN agencies, UN Global Compact companies, and social & environmental changemakers.
Approach
I am currently using the Theory U process, Inner Development Goals framework, and Compassionate Systems Leadership because they create conditions for deeper transformation of individual leaders, a shift in mindset in the organisation, and an increased positive impact of the organisation to achieve and expand outcomes, including:
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Enhance personal leadership and ability to engage and mobilise in teams
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Increase collaboration, engagement, and innovation across the organisation
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Enhancing participants’ inner capacities of self-awareness, sense-making, and action-confidence
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Building outer capacities of relational strength, collaboration, and systems leadership
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Work toward cross-cutting priorities in a collaborative, innovative and adaptive way
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Support implementation and evolution of the organisation’s strategy
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Strengthen skills to tackle complex problems with diverse stakeholders with a systems approach
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Expand ability to create organisational or systems transformation, shifting mindsets and paradigms
Objectives and outcomes tailored to the programme could be outlined in a theory of change diagram as shown in an example below.
My experience in courageous leadership
Strength and resilience of the human spirit
The Leadership for Results programme I helped deliver in Ghana is probably one of my favourites. We worked with 75 leaders across sectors (business, government, social impact, UN) to build collaborative solutions for climate adaptation. These leaders were facing economic, social and environmental challenges, due to climate change, that they could not resolve within their own organisations or sectors.
We helped them build capacity to collaborate with each other and discover breakthrough solutions to challenging situations. It was a very humbling and touching experience as we helped them build skills:
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to listen deeply with compassion, dignity and fairness;
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to expand their inner listening, confidence, wisdom and intuition;
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to see the big picture, think strategically, and lead change;
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and, to take small steps toward courageous, concrete action to generate prosperity, establish new patterns, and achieve results.
Our programme addressed underlying issues of equality, empowerment, and power dynamics that created a blind spot and unpreparedness for dramatic climate shifts. While it engaged a relatively small number of leaders, it was reinforced by subsequent programmes and supports and eventually led to a national climate change adaptation strategy.
From my engagement in designing and delivering these leadership programmes and coaching in a wide variety of context, I have learned about the strength and resilience of the human spirit; about the power of intention, integrity and connection; and how a small group of people who have the audacity to make positive change happen can transform their world by creating new patterns, forging deeper relationships, and seeing the best in each other.
After our team finished, the programme continued with local facilitators to support long-term change and local ownership of the empowerment and results.
Summary of leadership programmes
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Co-designed a leadership development programme for executives in sustainability – Scotland
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Leadership development and innovation in climate adaptation across sectors with 75 UN partners – Ghana
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Led a group of United Nations staff and consultants to design and deliver 7 four-month, cross-agency, transformational leadership programmes in New York, Geneva, Addis Ababa and online in French and English: 140 participants across 26 UN entities and 24 countries developed 28 innovation initiatives ranging from eDiplomacy to increased hiring of women.
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Co-facilitated a week-long UN Women Transformative Leadership programme for 50 women leaders in the Government of Afghanistan, including ministers, elected officials, and senior staff.
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Designed and facilitated leadership programmes in Spanish and English, over a two-year period, that helped companies in the Americas achieve their business goals by creating a more engaged, proactive, and aligned workforce. Clients included member companies of the United Nations Global Compact.
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Co-designed and co-delivered a 6-month leadership development and organisational change programme for 80 colleagues in a UN agency in Geneva, in-person and virtually. Built skills in collaboration, innovation, and systems-based approaches. Seven prototypes initiated change on complex, cross-cutting challenges, leading to mindset shifts, relationship shifts, and action shifts. Resulted in 30% increased capacity to mobilise stakeholders; 20% increased ability to create spaces for diverse teams to collaborate with psychological safety and genuine co-creation; and, 19% increased ability to draw on multiple sources of intelligence to inform decision making.
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Digitally adapted a leadership programmes quickly for new country contexts and business realities. Co-designed tailored programmes based on the needs of the organisation and participants in order to best help a broad audience transformed their leadership style, work more effectively in relationship, see the broader strategic context, and lead change in a different way.
