Distinguish between leadership and authority, and explore the exercise of leadership from various positions in a group, organization, or community.
Learn a disciplined diagnostic practice for distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems.
Develop insight into your own assumptions, loyalties, and resistance to change.
Gain practical tools for orchestrating learning and adaptation in your organization.
Work alongside a network of diverse, accomplished professionals committing to reflection, candor, and courageous learning.
In a world where authority is no longer enough to make progress on complex problems, Leadership for the 21st Century invites participants to examine the values, loyalties, and assumptions that shape their leadership choices. Rather than focusing on current events, this program is a deep, hands-on exploration of how you mobilize people, including yourself, to face difficult realities and make meaningful progress on the challenges that matter most in your work.
Through a week of intensive, highly interactive learning, you will confront the real-world leadership dilemmas you face in your current role. Every morning begins in small consultation groups where peers help one another diagnose adaptive challenges and test new interpretations of what’s really happening in their organizations and communities. Plenary sessions expand these insights, using the “group as case” and other experiential methods to surface the dynamics that make leadership both possible and perilous.
Along the way, you and your cohort of fellow leaders will engage with frameworks that deepen your understanding of leadership as a practice rather than a position—including the Adaptive Leadership framework, Strategic Triangle for Public Value Creation, and Immunity to Change process. Together, these methods help you move beyond technical fixes toward adaptive work: closing the gap between your aspirations and the current reality.
Program Curriculum
Leadership for the 21st Century is an intensive, highly interactive on-campus executive program designed to simulate the challenges of leadership in your organizations and communities, with a focus on navigating authority, conflict, and change. Led by experienced Harvard faculty, the program incorporates peer-group consultations, case studies, and personal reflection to help participants develop practical strategies for leadership on participant’s most pressing challenges. You will be asked to bring a leadership challenge from your own work, engage in honest conversations about what holds you back, and help others do the same. The process requires curiosity, openness, and courage.
Who Should Attend
Senior leaders and experienced professionals from public, corporate, and nonprofit sectors who seek to deepen their capacity to lead in uncertain, interdependent, and politically charged environments
