Individual Development / Leadership Intensives
Leadership Intensives
An Intensive works on the leader’s own development: the capabilities she needs to strengthen, and the things she finds hard to do well.
One Leader, One Focus
A Leadership Intensive is designed for a leader who can identify an area of leadership that has become especially important.
It may have emerged because of a promotion, a larger team, a new level of authority, a difficult relationship, a major change effort, or a recurring pattern that is limiting the leader's effectiveness. The leader may know exactly what she wants to develop, or she may simply know that her current way of approaching the situation is no longer enough.
An Intensive works on the leader's own development: the capabilities she needs to strengthen, and the things she finds hard to do well.
Where It Starts
Some leaders arrive knowing exactly what they want to focus on, and the work starts there. Others have a general sense that something is not working, without a clear name for it. Working with her Leadership Faculty member, and often with a set of short scenario evaluations, the leader can bring the focus into view: what she does under pressure, and where her defaults serve her or hold her back.
Either way, the subject is the leader herself, and the capability she wants to build, rather than an analysis of her situation.
Sometimes a leader's first read has more underneath it, and that surfaces here too.
A leader may believe she needs to delegate more. Closer examination may show that the deeper issue involves trust, identity, standards, control, or uncertainty about what leadership at the next level requires.
A leader may believe she needs to become more influential. The work may reveal that she is relying on the quality of her ideas while paying insufficient attention to interests, authority, alliances, timing, or the meaning others attach to the change.
A leader may believe she needs to become more confident. The real developmental need may involve judgment under uncertainty, greater tolerance for disagreement, or a stronger ability to act without complete information.
The Work
Once the developmental focus is clear, the Intensive becomes a structured learning process. It is demanding, and much of the work happens between the sessions, in reading, reflection, and experimentation.
The leader works with relevant frameworks and cases. She practices new approaches. She prepares for real conversations and decisions. She applies the learning in her work and returns with evidence of what happened. The Leadership Faculty member provides challenge, feedback, interpretation, and additional practice as the work develops.
The Intensive is especially useful when the leader needs depth and focus. It allows the work to remain concentrated on one important area long enough for the leader to understand her current patterns, experiment with alternatives, and begin to develop greater range.
Areas of Focus
Each Intensive is built around clearly identified leadership capabilities. Participants should understand what they are working to develop and how that capability connects to their real work.
The eighteen sit in five clusters. Three Intensives completed within one cluster amount to a Certificate in that area of leadership.
Stepping Up
The altitude changes.
First-Time Manager
Moving from doing the work yourself to leading the people who do it.
New Senior Role: Director
Leading through other managers, and releasing the decisions you used to make yourself.
Your First C-Suite Role
Stepping into enterprise leadership, where operating skill is no longer enough on its own.
Your People
The ones you lead.
Certificate in Leading People
Difficult Conversations and Accountability
Giving hard feedback and holding people to account, including the conversations that are easy to postpone.
Managing Expectations and Entitlement
Handling the person who believes they are owed a promotion, a raise, or recognition they have not yet earned.
Repairing a Leadership Team
Diagnosing and repairing a leadership team where roles conflict and trust has broken down.
The System
Beyond your team.
Certificate in Leading the System
Strategic and Systems Skills
Reading the system that keeps producing a problem, rather than solving the problem in front of you each time.
Influence Without Authority
Building influence with peers and stakeholders when you cannot rely on formal authority.
Building a Culture of Innovation
Creating the psychological safety and productive disagreement that innovation depends on.
Leading Through Uncertainty
Leading and deciding when the answer is not known and others are looking to you.
Yourself Under Pressure
The inner game, made visible.
Certificate in Leading Under Pressure
Managing Yourself Under Stress
Understanding what pressure does to your judgment, and learning to regulate it.
Executive Presence
How your presence is read by others, and how to develop it deliberately.
High-Stakes Communication
Communicating with authority when the stakes and the scrutiny are high.
Stretching Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Building the capacity to act before you feel ready, as a deliberate practice.
Your Career
Nobody else is planning it.
Building Visibility and Sponsorship
Building the visibility and senior sponsorship that shape a career.
Negotiation and Advocacy
Negotiating role, scope, and resources, using strategies that work for women.
Planning Your Next Role
Deciding what you want next, and running the campaign to get there.
Leaving a Role Well
Knowing when to leave, and leaving well, with your health and reputation intact.
Designed for You
Not every leadership challenge fits a named area. If what you are facing sits outside the eighteen, we design an Intensive around it - built on your situation, the capability you need to strengthen, and the work in front of you.
What It Includes
$4,000
six sessions
A Leadership Intensive includes six individual sessions, relevant assessments, structured exercises, and work between sessions. The value lies in the concentration of the work and the degree to which the learning is designed around the leader's actual challenge.
Each completed Intensive also earns a digital badge you can share. Three within one cluster amount to a Certificate in that area.
Buy an Intensive
Six sessions with a member of the Leadership Faculty, focused on the one area you want to develop. After payment, you choose your coach and we help you book your first session.
$4,000
This price is partially sponsored by KS Insight, to give better access to women leaders, who are less often supported by their organizations in accessing leadership training.
Buy an IntensiveWant an intensive built around a specific challenge instead? Get in touch and we will design one with you.