The Allora Leadership Forum Online
Drawing on leading, international research into what works, the Forum offers classic and original understandings and strategies for immediate implementation.
Sessions can be accessed as ‘stand-alones’, or taken as a series, building throughlines for deep understanding.
The forum features coaching, dialogue, and interactive workshopping. Participants share common experiences, questions and challenges; and plan actions to further strengthen their leadership.
The approach is rigorous and ‘organic’ with the direction and focus growing from participants’ current, authentic, contextualised experiences.
Sessions are 90 minutes and are spaced approximately 5 weeks apart, allowing for reflection and ongoing action-learning.
Individuals are invited to enrol in the forum, and new cohorts begin regularly. In addition, we have several versions of the Forum currently running, individually tailored to the contextual needs of teams of leaders within organisations.
Module 1
#1 The Nexus between Authenticity, Trust and Influence
How leaders build the influence necessary for them to accomplish their team goals. A leader’s influence grows in direct proportion to the trust others have in them, and this is dependent on their level of authenticity. When trust is high people’s engagement soars from compliance to commitment. These related concepts, including Simon Sinek’s ‘Circle of Safety’, are explored in practical ways.
#2 The Human Challenges of Leading Change
Some of the key work of leaders is leading change, and yet it can be extremely problematic. Few people are naturally ‘blockers’ or ‘resistors’. Effective leaders understand that most people challenged by change are good people experiencing difficulties. We share a range of strategies to engage and support stakeholders as they navigate change. We also share common myths about leading change and what to do instead.
#3 Building Alignment
Vast research suggests the importance of organisations being aligned, but there is little advice on how to accomplish this. We draw on leading international practice to share an ongoing process for monitoring and intervening, in real time, that builds greater alignment of priorities and processes, to maximise the highest leverage from people’s efforts and also to minimise the dissipation of energy from lack of alignment.
#4 Building High-Performance Teams
In two parts: How leaders attend to the crucial elements of high-performing teams; understanding stages of team development; addressing team dysfunction in ways that keep relationships intact; drawing on several leading authorities in the field to offer key strategies and a cohesive approach to building high performing teams..
Module 2
#5 Leading through Conversation – What is the actual work of leaders? Why distinguish between leadership and management? Building capacity: a ‘sweet spot’ of support, guidance and delegation between micro-managing and a laissez-faire lack of monitoring and accountability. This focuses on interpersonal capacity-building skills, and the leadership power of language.
#6 ‘Re-inventing’ Feedback
In two parts: When done well, feedback stimulates growth, yet often causes net harm; understanding when and how to use the Five Types of Feedback; keeping the locus of feedback with the person receiving it; creating feedback dispositions and a culture in which people actively seek, receive, give and respond to it; understanding that feedback is far more than a transaction of information.
#7 Leading with a Coaching Disposition
In two parts: 9 key attributes of a coaching disposition to support participants to adopt a coaching perspective as a default approach to all their professional conversations. It also focusses on developing participants’ skills of rapport-building, listening, paraphrasing, questioning, and knowing when to hold a silence. Practicing a coaching disposition provides leaders with key attributes and skills for engaging in rich dialogue.
#8 Leading Teams with Emotional Intelligence
In two parts: Besides re-acquainting participants with emotional intelligence, this topic has a particular focus on how leaders can learn to strengthen their own EQ and use it to support the engagement of team-members. It makes practical links with other aspects of leadership and draws mainly on the research of Daniel Goleman, Travis Bradberry and Viktor Frankl.
Module 3
#9 Political leadership
Authentic leaders are politically astute and understand how to navigate ethically through complex situations where a positive outcome for all, including for themselves, cannot easily be achieved. They develop insight and wisdom around know-how to acknowledge differing perspectives, know what to compromise on and what not to compromise on, seek common ground and find practical and constructive paths forward.
#10 Staying Above the ‘Magic Line of Choice’
A rubric for auditing where a person sits between high levels of self-efficacy, grit, resilience and optimism on the one hand; and victimhood, helplessness, cynicism and despair on the other. Understanding how leaders can use this resource to tailor support for their colleagues; understanding also, how to use ‘The Line’ for your own learning and self-assessment of your leadership practice.
#11 Narratively Intelligent Leadership
A primer on how we all create stories by running an internal commentary to make sense of what’s happening around us, and believe those stories are true, no matter how self-limiting or how growth-oriented they are. How leaders can turn this to their advantage and recalibrate a more aspirational internal commentary of what’s going on; as well as co-authoring a powerful, inspiring team story of positive purpose and accomplishment.
#12 Executing Strategic Goals
The whirlwind of daily busyness undermines efforts in most organisations to achieve strategic intentions. Collecting and interpreting data to devise priorities and goals, and then designing implementation strategies are all important foundations to executing strategic goals, but there are other crucial elements often overlooked. This topic offers the often-missing, four additional practical strategies leaders can take after launching an implementation plan to drive effective progress towards strategic goals.
Module 4
#13 Co-Constructing a ‘Living’, Shared Vision
Not many people challenge the value of having a vision, but how do you construct a shared vision? And how do you keep it refreshed and ‘alive’ as a reference point for every key decision in the school? How can it be utilised as powerful tool for inducting new staff, while also enabling them to contribute input to it as it continually evolves?
#14 Leading Through Challenging Conversations
Many people avoid challenging conversations, or leave them too late, even when they know they shouldn’t. This is often because they don’t feel confident or skilled enough. This topic offers strategies for refining all conversations so they are more professionally constructive and aligned with core values; it also examines dispositions and skills for engaging in conversations that are potentially challenging, including how to be respectfully explicit about unacceptable performance. It includes how to respectfully ‘call out’ toxic behaviour. Incorporates role-playing and debriefing real scenarios.
#15 Leading in complexity
Leadership contexts are rarely straightforward or logical. Leadership expert Tom Peters says ‘If you’re not confused, you’re not listening.’ A key attribute of leadership is distinguishing between simplifying things that can be simplified and avoiding trying to simplify complex things. A complex situation is different from a complicated or even a chaotic situation. ‘Systems thinking’ is an approach to guide progress through complexity.
#16 Leading with Positivity
Tying together research into positivity, Growth Mindset, and Appreciative Inquiry to generate stronger: efficacy, confidence, aspiration, energy, commitment and performance. This topic draws mainly on the practical research of Carol Dweck, Martin Seligman, Barbara Fredrickson, David Cooperrider and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Module 5
#17 Identifying & Providing Differentiated Leadership Development needs
The stages people go through as they develop as leaders, their learning needs and what they need from you at each stage. And as you grow in your own leadership, how can you keep attending to your own learning, to cultivate the practical wisdom needed for responding effectively to whatever comes your way?
#18 Boosting Team-member Engagement
Understanding motivation and engagement; several bodies of research are clear about what team members need to flourish in their roles. This topic draws mainly on the practical research of Martin Seligman, Daniel Pink and Robert Kegan.
#19 Overcoming how leaders inadvertently undermine their own leadership
The myths of ‘strong leadership’ and the strength of authentic leadership; prioritising our own competing commitments; how to be the leader that people respect and will be frank and honest with; embracing productive reasoning and abandoning defensive reasoning; the key traps that undermine leaders’ trust and influence.
#20 Seeing yourself as others do
Most of us have a sense of how others see us, but we’re often deluded. Learn proven, powerful strategies to find out how others see you and modify that view. Learn more about your blindspots, inconsistencies, assumptions and omissions.
New cohorts are formed for each season regularly. Send queries and register interest at info@allora.org.au