Often we hear from RRU alumni that they really miss being a part of something greater than themselves once their degree is complete. We have come to understand that your ability to live into your degree is derived directly from your ability and willingness to test new competencies, expand and deepen your capacities for change, innovation, and personal resilience while working in real time on real projects especially during uncertain and emerging times. And we know, that the experience of belonging to a cohort can be transformational in and of itself in terms of two way flow learning and camaraderie -- moving beyond the resources of the one to the richness of the whole.
So, we asked a number of RRU alumni directly - through focus groups and one-on-one conversations:
- How agile and equipped are you to create conditions of real change?
- What obstacles to innovation do you most often face?
- Do you feel that you are engaged in meaningful exchanges of ideas and conversation with your peers?
- How could we best support you embodying the leadership you envision and your change agency as a post graduate?
You told us you have an appetite for further cohort based learning in a well designed, structured environment that:
- directly challenges you,
- brings burning questions to the foreground,
- fosters innovative thinking and creativity,
- encourages mentorship and individualized tailored development,
- reinforces confidence and courage, and
- fortifies networks for collaboration and further innovation.
You said how much change and complexity is a real challenge in your everyday life and work. And further, that action learning within the context of facing real issues would be highly relevant, applicable and powerful.
We are responding.
Foundations for Innovation and Transformation Post Graduate Certificate – Phase I brings a rigorous blend of self-directed learning and structured curriculum enhanced by coaching (both peer and individual). The fresh-thinking behind our design is based on leading edge living systems theory and using “self as source” to accelerate your effectiveness as a leader. The program will encourage the development of a longitudinal community of practitioners who can be counted on to continue to share learning, collaborate and innovate together long after Phase I is over. Masterful RRU facilitators will lead a five day on campus residency with a cohort of diverse and passionate people who are committed to continue to stretch themselves, stay resilient and deepen their capacity for innovation and leadership while contributing to the transform of their workplaces and communities.
Who Should Attend?
- Alumni of any and all RRU graduate certificate and degree programs who want to deepen their mastery, catalyze their leadership and open to the transformation possible by continued graduate level learning
- Graduate alumni from applied change leadership programs at other post secondary institutions welcome!
Topics: The Foundations Experience Clarifying your Change Challenge: You register with a specific change challenge that you are working on now
Intake Individual Coaching Session: Your program begins with an individual orientation and intake session over the phone with an Integral Coach™ to help you sharpen and explore further the burning questions you are facing before residency
Five Days In-Session: In this first steps intensive, you assess your capacities, talents, skills, brilliance and blind spots, tap into each heart of the four praxis dimensions (see below), and design a map of your next developmental steps, wherever they take you. You gain greater self awareness and the confidence to engage, with all of yourself and others.
The four praxis dimensions are:
Self as Source: Experience the ways in which you can build competence and capacity, from the inside out. Have direct experiences of the power of various dimensions of self mastery that enable you to embody authentic presence in times of uncertainty and ambiguity. Form the basis of your capacity to respond, even when no one, including yourself, knows the answer.
Designing for Emergence and Engagement: Get an overview of ways of working with living systems, whether at work, in your community or family – a very different approach than linear goals, objectives and work plans. Using a few key principles of design, find innovative and powerful ways to enable change that is ripe and ready to come to fruition.
Catalyzing Widespread Transformation: Introduction to the key principles of working with resilience, resistance and conflict in order to unleash pockets of blocked energy. Have the opportunity to experience working with these real time.
Spanning Divides: Acquaint yourself with the key means of facilitating engagement across boundaries of disciplines, sectors, worldviews and turfs. Draw on the wisdom of unique perspectives, find common threads, arouse synergies, and deepen the capacity for collective action. You and your coach work to develop your coaching program to strengthen yourself so you can grow a greater capacity to show up in your world. You also develop a plan for ongoing learning.
Post-Session Action Learning:
One on One Coaching Session: Within one month of the session, you will have a phone session with your coach to help keep you moving ahead
Peer Mentoring: Within six weeks, you will meet (face to face or online) with your peer mentoring group with the option to continue to meet thereafter. Your peer mentors will know the challenges you are facing and what you are developing in yourself and in your world, and they will each be galloping right alongside you taking risks toward the results that matter most.
Learning Outcomes:
- Gain enhanced skills, resources and approaches for anticipating, initiating and influencing change in uncertain times
- Explore an assessment of the change challenge that you are leading and a strategy for next steps
- Accelerate fresh thinking, ways of seeing and understanding yourself and your world so that you can more incisively discern ways to tap into your natural strengths and power
- Discover proven ways of unleashing energy that is stuck or blocked inside and out
- Participate in an Integral Coaching® program designed specifically for you by an Integral Coach™ and a follow up coaching call within 6 weeks of the program
- Develop a strategy for innovative intervention with input from your colleagues and faculty in the program
- Join a peer mentoring group that you will call upon and meet with long after the residency is over
- Receive a certificate of completion recognizing the continuation of you deepen your mastery and allows for your participation in Phase II (2010-11) if desired
- Become the change you wish to see in the world!.....
Facilitators: All faculty are members of the Ginger Group Collaborative (www.gingergroup.net), a community of practice focused on deepening mastery in inter-sectoral collaboration since 2001 and they are:
Diana M Smith, BSc., MA (Public Admin), CMC, enables purposeful creative change through small group and large system facilitation, leadership and team development within organizations and in inter-sectoral collaborations. She has been a faculty member in MALT at Royal Roads University and is an Adjunct Faculty member at the University of Victoria. These positions build on her 25 years’ experience in management, training and leadership at community, national and international levels. She is involved with several peer learning communities and volunteers in several capacities.
Michael Keller MT, MA, is an innovative consultant, coach, catalyst and educator who has worked with organizations for over 20 years. He is dedicated to building collaborative, multicultural relationships that support personal, professional and organizational effectiveness ― creating relationships that work! Michael's work is informed from having lived overseas in Nepal and Tibet for 10 years. There, he completed a Masters in Intercultural Communications and consulted privately in organization development. Since 2000, Michael has been an Associate Faculty member in the Masters in Leadership Program (formerly MALT) at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC. Since 1994, he has presented experiential workshops in communications and leadership both regionally and nationally (in the USA).
Jean Singer MA Whole Systems Design, Master of Architecture, and BA Psychology, is a brilliant designer of dynamic participatory change processes informed by her background in architecture and organizational systems, and her life within the natural setting of Whidbey Island, in Washington state. She sets the conditions for discovery, learning and innovation to emerge on an individual and collective level in her work with organizations. Jean is adjunct faculty in the Center for Creative Change at Antioch University Seattle and guest lecturer for a number of graduate level courses in organizational development and non-profit leadership at the University of Washington.
Anne Wright, M. Planning, Certified Integral Coach, PCC, is a coach, trainer and facilitator with a background in organization development and human systems planning (health, child and youth services). She is one of the most experienced Integral Coaches™ in the world, and serves on the Faculty of Integral Coaching® Canada as instructor of the Apprenticeship and Fundamentals programs. She brings to her work senior management experience in municipal government and over 20 years of consulting experience in fostering change and innovation. She is also grounded in over ten years of study and practice of yoga and Pathwork spiritual training.