PROFOUND
2017
SENIOR
LEADERS’
PROGRAM
Sunday 28 May to Friday 2 June
A PROFOUNDLY DIFFERENT APPROACH TO
LEADERSHIP PRACTICE
“the future has changed as we know it”
We are living in a more networked, connected and complex world. Leaders are facing unprecedented challenges in everything
from digital disruption and market forces to human resource and strategic imperatives. Change is happening fast and the use of
simple methods is outdated.
Leadership is no longer anything like it was. Today, and in the future, leaders need to be fit for the exponential accelerated change
of the future, leaders need to transform their thinking at will – and to assist others to transform theirs. When stress, anxiety and
fatigue is constantly at a high point, with people working longer and harder, a new way of leading must emerge.
Simply knowing more is no longer enough. Complexity, paradox and ambiguity are not “knowable”. They can only be discovered.
And so, leaders must develop the insights which are the mechanism of discovery.
The Senior Leaders’ Program guides leaders to make a fundamental and profound shift, to elevate their thinking, take on multiple
perspectives and lead their teams to make meaning of the present and the future.
“The Senior Leaders’ Program surely resets the benchmark for all leadership programs. Without doubt it has
created the mold for the future. Its tone, content, design and evidence-based theoretical, humanist approach,
is precisely what our complex, fast paced and constantly changing world requires. The days of the old managerial
approach - rewarding decisions made within hierarchical structures - is a relic of the past. Welcome to a better
future of leadership program – and to the new, insightful leaders it helps create.”
JOANNE YATES, ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND POLICY CONSULTANT
A UNIQUELY DIFFERENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE
“gain the courage and wisdom not to need to make the complex simple”
The Senior Leaders’ Program is the result of over five years of research and development driven directly to answering “how do
we make organisations fit for the future and fit for people?”
This unique, contemporary executive program builds on existing leadership skills. It is a gateway to bodies of wisdom from
the humanities, sociology and philosophy disciplines - beyond the expertise of the traditional business school. This mass of
knowledge has been meticulously customised for organisational leaders.
You will experience the next generation of learning methods – beyond current experiential learning. These methods are
disruptive and person-centred, designed to challenge how you think about the world and transform the way you make
sense and meaning.
DISCOVER THE COMPLEXITY AND THE SIMPLICITY
“a co-created iterative dialogue of disruption and then sense making”
The Senior Leaders’ Program brings you advanced transformational adult learning methods in a week-long intensive residential
executive experience, with a cohort who all depend upon their ability to lead and work with others.
The faculty is a community of seven thought-leaders, each with deep wisdom and experience and each grounded in evidencebased scholarly practice.
The curriculum is an eclectic accumulation of models, theories, ideas, concepts, philosophies and wisdom, customised through the
experience of hundreds of leaders. It provides a practical, simplified and accessible gateway into the vastness of these disciplines.
The residential experience allows you to assimilate and socialise the learning in an uninterrupted, focused and collegial
environment. The bond formed with your cohort will be supportive and highly collaborative.
You will use the curriculum to co-create an evolving dialogue of disruption, discovery, learning, laughter, humility, thought,
and meaning and sense making.
The vision for the Senior Leaders’ Program is to open the cohort to a new life-long learning
journey about themselves and others, benefitting every part of their lives.
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
1
THE SENIOR LEADERS’ CURRICULUM
“leadership is helping others change their minds”
The Humanist Curriculum applies next-generation teaching techniques and cohort dialogue methods to teach
transformative thinking and provide new insights into people at work. It has been invented through customising and
translating global academic knowledge. The dialogue methods are used worldwide.
At the conclusion of the program you will have been introduced to and become familiar with the contemporary concepts
and ideas listed below. These ideas will open your thinking to a vastly different set of perspectives across the whole
organisation, individual behaviours, group dynamics and social contexts.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Action Logics: A tool to understand functional levels of thinking in leaders from opportunistic through to agile and highly sophisticated ways of thinking.
Human Centred Complexity: A deep appreciation of
the systemic complexity created by intentional humans
interacting in the special context of the organisations and institutions of work.
Collaboration and Competition: A deep appreciation of managing cognitive and social bias in organisations
towards constructive collaboration and competition.
Strategic Influencing: The application of the psychology of influence and persuasion applied to driving cooperation for the purposes of strategic and mutual benefit.
Cognitive Resilience: An appreciation and practice in the psychology of sense and meaning making in the development of personal resilience and self-care.
Group Social Identity: An appreciation of how the Social Identity of a group or team is the ‘essence’ of what drives high performance, trust, innovation and harmony.
Disorderly Behaviour: A deep appreciation of
disorderly human behaviour in organisations and
learning on the management and avoidance of these
behaviours at work.
•
•
•
•
•
Personal Presence and Gravitas: A deep appreciation
of the power of presence and authentic speech and
behaviours in the establishment of leadership
and authority.
Moral Ethics in Leadership: The application of a model
of authentic leadership grounded in the ethic of “do no
harm” and moral consequentialism towards organisations
which are fit for human beings.
Power and Politics: An appreciation of how the
dynamics of power and the systemic complexity of
human politics drive both good and bad outcomes
in organisations.
Ethnography: The application of this tool out of
social anthropology to the measurement, creation and
management of organisational cultures.
Social Constructivism: An appreciation of how humans
create and construct meaning through the construction
of the self in their cultural and social contexts.
“The quality and content of the course was excellent, and had a nice balance of information sharing,
interaction and application. It enlightened my leadership strategies. It was stimulating,
empowering and perspective taking. So different; so challenging. It was the best program
that I have ever attended in my whole career.”
ROBYN REEDER – MANAGER INTEGRATED SERVICES
SOUTH EAST, UNITING AGEWELL.
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
2
YOUR TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING JOURNEY
“you will need to be able to transform your own thinking at will”
Transformative learning is different. It shows you how to see beyond what you can observe, to suspend your unconscious
biases and existing beliefs so that new understanding can emerge.
Your level of thinking about situations, personally and professionally, will be deliberately and temporarily suspended, to
provide a greater understanding of how complex systems in organisations require a new level of thinking. At a deeper level
of thinking you will become aware of patterns and styles not suited to the current environment of change and complexity.
MANAGEMENT 1.0 TECHNOLOGY
HUMANIST TECHNOLOGY 2.0
Task and Outcomes Centred Learning
Person and Meaning Centred Learning
The traditional approach defines the learner by their
job role and the tasks and outcomes the organisation
expects of their role. The learning offered to the learner
is the means to an end for the required performance
in the role for the benefit of the organisation.
The transformative approach defines the learner as
the person inside the role and learning as the sense
and meaning they make of themselves being in the
role. The learner is the performer and changing their
perspectives provides them control over the task,
outcomes and performance.
Service Model of Delivery
Participative Model of Delivery
The traditional approach offers education as a
Service and the educator seeks validation and
approval from the learner and the organisation.
The educator defines themselves as an authority
providing proven knowledge and experience that
is required to also consistently satisfy learners.
The transformative approach invites the learner to
participate in a challenging change experience.
The educator defines themselves by how effectively
they disorientate the learner and importantly that
they can support the learner to make new meaning/
sense for themselves.
The Method is Instruction and Practice Based
The Method is Dialogue and Perspective Based
The traditional approach is instructional and
practice based. Including experiential learning
which requires instruction prior to practice.
Insight is gained through simplified reality,
simulations, activities and continued practice.
The transformative approach uses perspectives in a
dialogue to create a disorientation in the thinking of
the learner and then supports a new reorientation and
transformation through different meaning.
Transformative Development is universal and seamless
across all contexts.
Operation Centred Complexity (OCC)
Human Centred Complexity (HCC)
The traditional approach creates OCC by integrating
people into the business operations, processes and
systems to facilitate the management and control
of OCC. Models like “Complication or Complex”1
use reductionist methods to assume complexity
can be controlled.
The transformative approach defines complexity as
solely caused by human being by definition because
all inanimate business processes and systems on
their own can only be “Complicated”. Human beings
cause all complexity however only some complexity
matters and some does not.
Scientific Thinking and Complexity
Dialectic Thinking and Complexity
The traditional approach uses scientific observation
and methods to analyse and assume reliability of
the ‘objects’. Reductionism is the primary tool used
to remove unreliability and perceived unimportant
complexity. Scientific Thinking studies ‘objects’ to
turn Complex into Complicated.
The transformative approach uses dialectic thinking
to open the ambiguity and paradox inherent in
complexity to the observer. Dialectic thinking enables
the observer to see the movement of the ‘objects’ and
to see into the ‘spaces’ between the ‘objects’.
Snowden: https://www.acu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/659004/David_Snowden_A_Leaders_Framework_for_Decision_Making.pdf
1
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
3
THE IDEAL PARTICIPANT FOR AN
EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY
“we need to be extraordinary just to survive – the Senior Leaders’ Program helps
leaders get to extraordinary”
The Program is a contemporary innovation in executive education. An ideal participant is one that believes:
•
•
•
real change in organisations can only come from having people change themselves
true high performance comes from those who know why they want to perform
in having the courage to embrace complexity and do the hard yards to create authentic organisations fit for the future
The program is open for:
•
•
•
senior leaders with direct reporting responsibility to the CEO
senior divisional managers responsible for complex business and technical areas
senior general managers who have complex cross-functional responsibilities
ATTAIN A RANGE OF SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS
The Senior Leaders’ Program offers participants unique benefits:
•
•
•
•
Develop critical thinking and hold greater resilience to respond to complex scenarios
Discover greater sensitivity to engage diverse stakeholders and their perspectives
Build individual capacity to work autonomously and collaboratively in challenging situations
Improve strategic thinking skills to perceive, examine and act in areas of uncertainty
On completion of the Senior Leaders’ program, participants have a greater capacity to achieve the following:
•
•
•
•
Accomplish organisational objectives with a higher sense of purpose
Apply critical and strategic thinking skills when responding to individual, team and organisational challenges
Drive improved performance with greater influence and impact on organisational decisions and strategies
Build resilient interrelationships between themselves and the organisation, their people and systems
The Senior Leaders’ Program is a refreshingly different approach to leadership
development and practice, demonstrated in every aspect of the program.
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
4
YOUR FACULTY
Errol Benvie
Program Director
Errol has developed this program over five years and proven its effectiveness in transforming leaders’ insights
and understanding of themselves and the complexity of modern organisations. He brings to his leadership
of the program a 25-year general management career which included several CEO roles across a range of
industries. He has an MBA and a Masters in Organisational Coaching from Sydney University and is a doctoral
candidate at Middlesex University.
As Program Director, Errol leads and facilitates the integration of the participants’ experiences into the
formal curriculum and, together with the team, supports the transformative outcomes. As a developmental
coach his style is provocative yet deeply respectful of the courage and challenges involved in changing
participants’ mindsets.
Lex Dwyer
Lex brings over 30 years of experience in building collaboration, well-being and reflection in organisations
and teams. He immerses participants in an experience that provides education around important
business themes and at the same time illustrates how to better take care of themselves and build a
capacity of high performance.
A key theme of his work is managing energy and building resilience in a turbulent and challenging
business world and harnessing cross functional opportunities to minimise the siloed approach that
limits businesses. His unique approaches using humour, wisdom, learning and reflection are integrated
throughout the program in this novel journey that also acts as the engine coolant to the dialogue and
mental exercise of the program.
Katie Vasey
Katie brings a qualitative methodology termed ethnography, applied for over a century, to investigate
the complexity of humans in all their social environments. She has been conducting ethnographic studies
with humanitarian migrants since 2002. Her teaching experience and research background includes:
human rights, mental health, humanitarianism, ethnographic and qualitative research methods and
public health.
Using ethnographic methods, Katie’s work explores how and why forms of well-intentioned intervention
(be they humanitarian, philanthropic, medical, or entrepreneurial) so often cause backlash or unexpected
repercussions. She currently consults to the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She delivers the module on Ethnographic Methods on the joint
Executive MBA offered by Madrid University’s IE Business School and Brown University in Rhode Island.
“Errol is passionate and infectious. His desire to share and impart his
knowledge is a gift for leaders today.”
MALCOLM CASEY - DIRECTOR OF CLINICAL SERVICES
ST VINCENT’S PRIVATE HOSPITAL TOOWOOMBA
St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
5
YOUR FACULTY
Julie Morgan
Julie brings over 20 years of senior leadership and executive experience to her role as Senior Consultant and
Lecturer in Organisational Development for ACU Executive Education. She has worked in a variety of not-forprofit settings including international human rights, overseas aid and development, healthcare and education.
Nationally and internationally, Julie’s work in adult education has focused on ethical and values-based
leadership development, the promotion of social inclusion, and conflict transformation and peacebuilding.
Julie is consistently ranked as one of ACU Executive Education’s most inspirational facilitators. With qualifications
in Counselling, NFP Management, and International Human Rights Law and with degrees in Education,
Theology, and Ethics, Julie’s doctoral studies at UNE focus on Complexity Responsive Leadership.
David Cameron
David graduated from NIDA to become an award-winning stage and screen actor. He is an acclaimed
theatre and television director, best known for series including Stingers, Sea Change and City Homicide.
David has voiced hundreds of commercials and animations, and has also created documentaries for
Telstra, Origin and NAB.
He teaches and mentors actors and directors at The Victorian College of the Arts and for a number of
Australia’s top corporate institutions where he employs his knowledge of performance to assist leaders to
have greater impact and presence in their communication.
Peter Lawry
Peter is renowned for engaging people deeply, and has transformed leaders and organisations in more
than 20 countries around the world. His practical approach is widely recognised for its ability to achieve
extraordinary business outcomes while increasing both employee commitment and customer satisfaction.
His work in complex adaptive systems brings a unique perspective to social systems of organisations offering
practical tools and processes for making meaning in organisations. Prior to his work with corporations, Peter
was a clinical supervisor training professionals in the helping professions.
Michele Konrad
Michele’s career began in the US Military, from which she became a project manager and turnaround
specialist, earning twenty years’ experience on major projects in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Algeria,
Australia and Papua New Guinea. She has now broadened her scope to include writing and filmmaking.
Michele is, above all, a storyteller. She sees a story as the most powerful way to shift a paradigm, enabling the
transformation of people, who then turn around projects. In an industry obsessed with linear causality and
the illusion of predictability, Michele has built a career of translating complexity into successful outcomes
for projects and teams. She will tell the story of her evolution from an effective but sometimes bruising
change agent to a person-centred master storyteller, illustrating lessons of benefit to a variety of challenging
situations. Michele holds a Master of Science in International Affairs and an MBA from Georgetown
University, and is the co-author of a non-fiction book on the economics of societies in transition.
“Lex is delightful. His ability to bring all participants together was fantastic.
His coaching was tightly correlated with the days’ presentation which
enabled a practical side to the theory.”
MALCOLM CASEY - DIRECTOR OF CLINICAL SERVICES
ST VINCENT’S PRIVATE HOSPITAL TOOWOOMBA
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
6
PROGRAM DETAILS
LOCATION
The Catholic Leadership Centre is a new world class conference
and learning facility for professional learning programs and
executive courses. It is conveniently located in the heart of East
Melbourne with easy access to public transport.
The Catholic Leadership Centre
576 Victoria Parade
East Melbourne VIC 3002
DATES AND TIMES
The course is a five-and-a-half-day intensive residential
program. It will commence at 4pm on Sunday 28 May and
will conclude at 4pm, Friday 2 June 2017.
We recommend participants book flights which arrive
no later than 2pm on Sunday 28 May 2017. Flights are
the responsibility of the delegate and are not included in
program fees.
FEES AND INCLUSIONS
Early booking discount
• book and pay prior to 31 March: $9,990
Per person fee
• for bookings from 1 April: $10,990
Multiple bookings per organisation
• pricing discounts are available for organisations sending
more than one person
Prices are quoted in Australian dollars and are inclusive of GST.
Fee inclusions:
• five nights of accommodation
• all meals and drinks
• all program materials and resources.
Please note flights and transfers are the responsibility of the
delegate and are not included in the program fee.
FIND OUT MORE
To find out more about the Senior Leaders’ Program:
T: +61 2 9739 2842
E:[email protected]
W: acu.edu.au/SLP2017
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
7
acu.edu.au/SLP2017
Australian Catholic University – CRICOS registered provider: 00004G
Disclaimer (January 2017): Information correct at time of printing. The University reserves the right to amend, cancel or otherwise modify the content without notice.