This is a pioneering emerging leaders programme aimed at progressive businesses.

It enables these organisations to prepare their high potential for the challenge of leadership in an unpredictable future where sustainability will be essential to success.

Participants are invited to stretch their leadership capability immersing themselves in a real sustainability challenge around a relevant theme in a strategic market. They learn how use cutting edge methods to reflect upon their experiences and originate innovative approaches to complex situations while making sense of the relevance of sustainability for their leadership and its mainstream application in the business.

The programme is designed to lead to tangible business outcomes with participants being asked to translate their new vision of sustainability into practical, strategic and relevant business projects.

Duration: Typical length of full programme is three months.

Leadership for an emerging world

Who is it for?

The programme helps progressive businesses to embed sustainability thinking where it matters most – the future leadership.

Designed for the high potential technical or functional specialists, who have recently made, or are about to make, the transition to a broader, more general management role. Participants typically have 5-15 years' relevant management experience.

Leadership for an emerging world

What are the benefits?

In the time I have spent here I have been very impressed with the thought and effort that has gone in to putting this programme together. I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

Group Head Retail Banking Products Standard Chartered

The benefits of the programme are usually three-fold for the business, participants and field experience hosts. They often report the below outcomes:

Participants

• Understanding of organisational and personal leadership through awareness and practice  of skills, effectiveness and personal impact
• Commitment to and understanding of corporate responsibility principles and the ability to factor environmental and social considerations into business decision making
• Awareness of the impact of cultural diversity on individual, team and business effectiveness and the ability to drive results through difference
• Confidence to engage in meaningful dialogue and build collaborative partnerships with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to gain insights amidst unfamiliar and complex situations and to stimulate insights and innovative thinking with others
• Inspiration from having a visible impact in the world and seeing positive examples of social and environmental leadership

Organisation

• Enhanced ability of high potential population to manage culturally diverse workforce and stakeholders.
• Emerging leaders with deeper understanding of sustainability as well as motivation to integrate to business day-to-day activities, decisions and outcomes.
• Fresh insights on strategic markets and critical business issues and opportunities associated with sustainability.
• Enhanced brand equity with employees, communities and the market.
• Tangible business benefits delivered through the business projects.

Local partner

• Access to external skills, expertise and social capital.
• Opportunity to step back, reflect on their work and learn from others.
• Strengthening of reputation and self esteem.
• Fresh insights and solutions from highly skilled professionals on the real sustainability challenge they face.
• Better capabilities in teamwork, managing change and cultural integration.

Leadership for an emerging world

How it works

Lead's approach builds upon 20 years of experience of delivering leadership education for sustainable development all over the world.

The design and delivery of your programme will draw upon the insight and expertise of leading experts in learning and sustainability from across the Lead international network of offices, developmental projects, and expert practitioners from our global community.

Our Leadership for an emerging world programme follow a five-step process:

1. Understanding your organisation's needs: We will work closely with you to understand your learning needs and establish the specific aims of your programme. Together with a senior Lead Programme Manager, we will explore your aims and expectations, investigate your learner profile and specific areas of interest, and identify locations of strategic importance to your organisation.

2. Identifying the right local partners and location: We will use our unrivalled knowledge, experience and connections in various countries to select the most suitable local partners for you. Input and insight will be drawn from key internal and external experts, including expert members of the Lead global network of offices and Fellows to establish the ideal location, partners and experiences.

3. Designing an effective and inspiring learning journey: Once the right partnerships are forged, the development programme will be designed taking into account your objectives. We will work closely with your project coordinator, partners and a hand selected team of Lead trainers to design a powerful learning experience.

Please note that Lead will manage all aspects of the delivery on site, with the exception of travel arrangements to and from the location.

4. Delivering a world-class learning experience: We recognise that people learn in different ways, so we will use a suite of 'blended learning' approaches to deliver a dynamic educational experience. Your programme will be delivered using a range of learning tools, including:

• The U-Process: This social innovation technology articulated by Otto Scharmer at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a powerful roadmap for working with emergent, complex, multi-stakeholder challenges.
• Challenge-based learning: Learning is delivered through a custom designed team challenge tacking a real sustainability issue. Through a facilitated learning process, your people will be challenged to apply their skills and experience to solve a real-life  community issue.
• Virtual learning: Our virtual learning environment can be tailored to your needs, with relevant content to support your course design. Participants can use the platform for preparatory, background, project work, personal development and much more.

5. Measuring success and refining: It is fundamental that your programme delivers measurable return on investment, measurable leadership learning for your people, and a meaningful positive impact for the partners. To ensure that this happens, monitoring and evaluation will be embedded across the various stages of the programme.

Leadership for an emerging world