Our world needs a new kind of leadership
Find a leadership development programme that meets your needs
Are you a corporate leader, government minister, working for a charity or non-profit? Are you struggling to navigate the huge changes and upheavals in our world right now? Are you looking for better ways of thinking about leadership development and ways to make a difference in the world? How about developing your 21st century skills to develop greater resilience, personal leadership and to cope in an AI-dominated world?
Or do you manage a team and are interested in new opportunities to stretch their thinking and develop their skills? Are you an HR manager or talent professional, keen to keep up with the latest thinking and doing in leadership and team development? Or maybe you are embarking on a major behaviour change initiative and need innovative ways to train your teams? Keen to bring back more of the ‘human’ to leadership development to manage the transition to AI? Or maybe you are organising an annual retreat and looking for new and unusual ways of inspiring your team?
We offer a range of different core and bespoke programmes to empower you and your team’s leadership potential, from individual coaching for senior executives, to teambuilding opportunities, leadership development programmes and internal education and learning initiatives that can be scaled across a company or organisation.
Our programmes are run all over the world and have been delivered in such diverse locations as government offices in the Middle East, corporate boardrooms in Europe, schools and educational institutions in the USA and in migrant and refugee camps in Asia.
We take pride in the fact that we not only help you understand an issue and build awareness around it but, critically, actually help you bring around the behaviour change needed to solve it for the long term.
Teambuilding
Theatre and other arts-based approaches can be a wonderful way to offer your team a fun and interesting new way of interacting with each other, building trust and forging new working relationships.
We often start a teambuilding session with the building of ‘Frozen Pictures’, freeze-frame images or tableaux that help to encapsulate an idea or challenge the organisation is facing. This acts as a way to quickly bring together the collective intelligence of the people in the room and to build consensus around issues that need to be worked on. Whether it’s a conflict within the team, a new product or service that is being launched, or a refocus on the vision and values of the organisation, Frozen Pictures are a brilliant tool to visualise an idea and bring it to life.
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In a three-step process, we then identify the ‘ideal world’ where our problem is solved, the product is launched, or we are all living our values, and, critically, to consider the needed steps to get us to that very place. We call these ‘Images of Transformation’ and they are a very powerful way for you and your team to both visualise and embody the challenges, solutions and ‘how to’ steps to take action on the very changes we need to see.
Through the integration of other teambuilding games that help to build trust, improve communication skills, enable your to team to develop their creativity and leadership skills, a Frozen Picture workshop is guaranteed to get your team working together and having fun in a way they never have before!
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What do you do?
Organisational Transformation and Consulting for Change
Frozen Picture workshops can be a wonderful starting point in identifying the building blocks needed for larger-scale, long-term work on organisational transformation and consultancy initiatives. They are also a powerful way to look at foresight thinking and future scenario planning that builds the foundation of modern-day policy work.
Building out character and story that comes from the Frozen Picture work can then become the bedrock of both internal and external communication and storytelling initiatives that form the basis of longer-term behavioural change and increasing ‘agency’ in leadership development, strategic planning, new product development, storytelling and communications, marketing tools, and stakeholder engagement initiatives.
Following on from initial work with a team in a Frozen Picture workshop, we then often work with organisations over a much longer period of time to build on the problems and solutions identified in the initial workshop to ensure that the needed behavioural change or organisational transformation is deeply embedded and acted on.
The power of a theatre or arts-based approach lies in the engagement between merely a cognitive understanding of a problem and the way in which we need to ‘embody’ change for it to be sustainable and long-lasting. It simply isn’t enough to ‘tell’ people what needs to be done - they need to own the problem AND the solution and take leadership in bringing the ideal outcome into fruition. And these forms of learning are all backed up by neuroscience and more sophisticated contemporary understanding about how we all best learn.
Character and story to inspire, learn and empathise
We develop bespoke performances and interactive workshops for multinationals keen to find innovative ways to ‘teach’ their teams about issues they are facing internally, whether that is working cross-culturally, managing the challenges and opportunities of developing products and services for both local and international markets, or developing greater empathy and awareness of multiple stakeholders.
Whether it’s for a small group of 20 people, or for larger audiences of hundreds or even thousands, we can bring our extensive experience in managing events to deliver a unique and exceptional experience for your team.
A recent case study
Lan Lan’s Story
We were commissioned by the World Economic Forum to deliver a day-long, interactive theatre performance and workshop series, designed to challenge 200 young leaders to better understand issues surrounding China’s rise to power, cross-cultural management and leadership, supply chains and ethical business, stakeholder engagement, bottom of the pyramid populations, migration and global leadership. The story focused on the life of a young migrant girl, Lan Lan, and three other characters - the factory boss where she worked, the American owner of a sock company, and his wife - all of whose lives were intertwined with hers and affected by her reality.
Watch the video!
"Arts-based approaches to learning in the corporate space can add tremendous value to a more empathetic understanding of cross-cultural issues, leadership development and teamwork. Companies with a passion and desire to enhance the impact of their goods and services, to drive focus to more transactional benefits of understanding one's target audience, and to make links across different stakeholder groups to improve innovation, would benefit by taking part in this unique approach to organisational learning."
Yana Peel, Founder and CEO, Intelligence Squared Group
We then often use character and story in our ‘Masterclass’ programmes, making learning come alive for your team
Leadership Masterclasses
We know that leadership development is a long-term process for your team and that it requires continued personal and professional development to make it happen. We also know that you as an organisation need cost-effective ways to bring about internal transformation, harnessing the best of technological and in-person training to scale leadership development. But we have also seen and know first hand that a purely digital approach to leadership development doesn’t cut the mustard.
That’s why we harness cutting edge research in micro-learning with in-person masterclasses that facilitate a more human and personal approach to leadership development, with plenty of opportunities for real-time feedback and practical support to guide you in your leadership development as it applies to your everyday working life. The Masterclass programmes are also an excellent way for you to bring together global teams across the world for real-time interactions that build team-spirit and reinforce company culture in engaging and interactive ways.
Our background in the theatre means that our course are unlike any other your team will experience. We are experts in making learning fun and accessible, yet deeply rooted in the reality and experience of leading on the ground. Our founder, Caroline Watson, is an award-winning entrepreneur, with a background in grassroots empowerment of leaders, particularly those drawn from the Global South and the emerging markets. As a passionate advocate for diverse voices and leadership nurtured from the ground up, Caroline brings to all training programmes at the Centre a visionary and inspiring approach that empowers and energises leaders from the bottom to the top of an organisation
Our award-winning approach creates opportunities for even junior team members to practice their leadership development in real-time and get weekly feedback and peer support. Through a combination of in-personal masterclasses delivered through Zoom or at your company headquarters, small group and peer feedback groups, and mobile micro-learning technology to support the learning and development, we are confident we can give your team members a truly innovative yet efficient way to upskill large numbers of your teams in cohorts of 5 - 100 leaders per course.
All programmes can also be delivered as part of a residential retreat at Clos de Gaye, our stunning space in south west France.
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A leadership development programme for high potential and emerging leaders enabling you and your teams to master the 21st century skills needed to navigate the uncertainty and volatility that face our world today.
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Leading and managing across cultures, whether that's through cross-border M and A's, working with diverse teams around the world, or managing 'glocal' issues in a way that harmonises all actors.
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Our world is in need of a rebalance – and men are increasingly feeling this too. Both men and women are yearning for lives with more balance, a greater sense of depth and meaning, a role in caring responsibilities, and both personal and professional opportunities to allow their own humanity to flourish.
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A bespoke programme for government officials and those in training that combines many of the ‘mosaic’ modules from our ‘Art of Leadership’ programme with the opportunity to also be certified in the ‘Arts and policy’ programme through Renaissance Now, an initiative of Harvard professor, Doris Sommer.
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Leadership development for those working in non-profit or civil society organisations, supporting those working on the cutting edge of social justice issues, poverty alleviation or in humanitarian contexts.
Our founder, Caroline Watson, offers a limited number of one-to-one coaching opportunities on leadership presence and confident communication each year, for senior leaders and those stepping up to a new level of leadership
The essence of all the programmes that we run is that leadership is a lived experience, not a theoretical concept.
Our founder, Caroline Watson, has herself got over 20 years experience of living life at the ‘coal face’ of what true leadership means. Not for her the theoretical concepts of white, privileged males, spouting leadership lessons from air-conditioned offices in fancy tower blocks and the hallowed business schools of Ivy League universities with boring Powerpoint presentations, immune from the realities that ordinary people face. But real life, ground level leadership from those really living what it means to change the world. Leadership gained from experience of working in emerging markets, with grassroots leaders facing the most incredible pressures, in situations where diverse perspectives are foundational to success. Leadership that empowers YOU and your organisation to be the change we need to see.
All of our facilitators are drawn from across the world, often from emerging markets with diverse backgrounds, and all have experience of leading both grassroots and corporate leadership teams in global projects.
