Our Solutions
the developmental leader
We live in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, facing momentous challenges beyond any individual’s expertise. The relationship between cause and effect is not obvious, and unknowns far outnumber certainties.
Now, we need leaders who are stimulated by complexity.
Leaders who don’t need to hold solutions themselves, and instead, artfully facilitate dialogue to unlock collective wisdom. Leaders who can balance cognitive brilliance with emotional maturity and interpersonal versatility. Leaders who are self-aware, attuned to others and able to sense into the systems they are helping shape.
Future-fit Leadership
For too long, leadership development has been concerned with 'informational learning', focusing solely on ‘horizontal development’ by creating tools and developing new content to fit the existing form of a leader’s mind.
'Transformative learning' allows leaders to tap into their ‘vertical development’, growing their internal complexity in response to the world. Thus leaders can shift their world views and ways of being, expanding their capabilities to tackle.
Learn more about our methodology.
At a glance
The Development Leader program takes a truly systemic view of leadership development, through a process of transformation at the intersection of individual, team, organisation, and society itself.
The Development Leader program takes a truly systemic view of leadership development, through a process of transformation at the intersection of individual, team, organisation, and society itself.
The birth of this program is the nexus point of our 20 years of experience working with hundreds of senior leaders, the wisdom of the world's contemporary thought leaders and our understanding of human development.
Bringing participants into a highly immersive learning experience, where meaningful developmental discomfort sparks growth within a solid, psychologically safe holding space, this program invites leaders to co-create, constantly experiment outside the program and embody the principles they discover.
This unique experience is aimed at leveraging the power of diversity as a catalyst for individual and collective transformation. We invite leaders from across sectors and industries to come together to explore the outer reaches of their comfort zones and seize the priceless opportunity to learn alongside peers with experiences and backgrounds very different from one's own.
Why?
Business has changed
The rapid and exponential growth of innovative, status quo ‘antagonists’ (think Apple, Uber, Air BnB and other pioneers) has forced a seismic shift in the operating models for businesses around the globe. Open source environments, dynamic marketplaces, digitisation, disparate global teams - it’s a new way of business, and indeed life, facing a generation born into complex technologies, speed as the new 'IP' and burgeoning AI.
Since 2020, the global pandemic added a whole new layer of disruption, confronting the world with problems nobody alive had to solve before and challenging leaders and businesses in unparalleled ways - many of these which we are still living with now.
While the complexity of our contexts is ever-growing, traditional education frameworks and persistence with dated operating rhythms are failing to create ready-made high performers or produce the leaders of tomorrow.
'IN-FORMATIVE' LEARNING CHANGES WHAT WE KNOW. 'TRANS-FORMATIVE' LEARNING CHANGES HOW WE KNOW. TRANSFORMATION COMES ABOUT WHEN WE CAN LOOK AT WHAT WE BEFORE COULD ONLY LOOK THROUGH.
~ Adapted from Professor Robert Kegan
our contribution
The Development Leader program takes a truly systemic view of leadership development, through a process of transformation at the intersection of individual, team, organisation, and society itself.
As facilitators and perpetual students of the human condition, Tomorrow Architects are pushing the envelope and breaking new ground.
Specifically in the following areas:
- Behaviour change and adaptive adult learning;
- Team, high performance, and leadership development;
- Organisational transformation and culture change;
- Bridging original academic research into vertical development and transformative learning, and the practice of facilitation at the most senior levels in organisations
Our team of experts, each highly skilled over many years in the art of facilitation, partner with high-performance and lead teams, then cascade through organisations, to rapidly create and nurture social capital and psychological safety - the fundamental ingredients required for the high-performing, adaptive and developmental teams of tomorrow.
Playing the role of surrogate leader, Tomorrow Architects walks stride-for-stride with organisations and their people looking to 'shift the dial' through a journey of cultural transformation. We resequence the DNA, create emotional literacy and harness its power to promote divergent opinions, foster creativity and innovation, and drive breakthrough performance.
ask yourself
are you ready to lead the future, or protect the past?
admission prerequisties + Interview
ONE
To join the Developmental Leader Program you need to meet the following criteria:
- If you're Currently in a leadership position, the Developmental Leader program is for you.
- We will invite you to an admission interview to explore your context and motivations.
Global leadership profile developmental assessment
TWO
All participants are encouraged to take the Global Leadership Profile (GLP), an assessment that helps identify your current vertical development stage and explore your emerging developmental edge. A GLP debrief will take place, with an accredited coach, before The Developmental Leader program begins and will be instrumental in supporting you to set clear intentions and learning goals for yourself.
The tWO immersives
THREE
Each immersive runs for three days in person plus two additional travel days.
Immersive One: Lead Self | Lead Others
The current global context of disruption is asking each and every one of us to adapt and evolve. The first part of this immersive clarifies the backdrop of contemporary leadership, where context is constantly increasing in complexity and calling for an increase in individual leaders' complexity of mind. From there, we focus on leaders harnessing the collective wisdom of their teams to foster ongoing innovation, while at the same time, building cultures where people can utilise their strengths and thrive. The conclusion of this immersive provides the tools that leaders need to build high-performance teams that deliver, while fostering wellbeing and intrinsic motivation.
Immersive Two: Lead Others | Lead Organisations
Increasingly, leaders operate in highly interconnected & complex systems, yet the skill of 'systems thinking' can be quite challenging. This immersive concludes Lead Others with a dive into developmental dialogue for high-performance before focusing in on supporting leaders to look beyond their specific team, function, division, etc and develop a wide and holistic understanding of their role, and impact in the organisational system and beyond.
Tracking optimal physiology
FOUR
Research has shown strong links between the state of our bodies and those of our minds and psyches.
By using one of the most advanced biometric devices in the world for the duration of The Developmental Leader program, we are able to track the state of your body, and develop a much deeper awareness on the links between your physiology, your psychology, and your leadership performance.
your trusted tribe
FIVE
Our years of research, through many large developmental programs, have proven the transformative value of small peer-learning groups.
They are a fundamental pillar of The Developmental Leader program and provide a life-changing opportunity to build a trusted ‘tribe’, who will stay with you long after the program has ended.
developmental leader roadmap
Program Overview
1
Immersion One - Lead Self | Lead Others
DAY 1
Foundations for growth
- Social Capital - Building the interpersonal fabric for a transformative development.
- Adaptive Leadership - Understanding the nature of adaptive and technical challenges, and what this requires from us as leadership.
- Managing Disequilibrium - In a complex adaptive world, how do we regulate ourselves holistically to be able to perform under pressure?
DAY 2
A recipe for personal transformation
- My Leadership Journey - Painting a picture of our leadership to date and our aspirational future for our individual leadership.
- Immunity to Change - We often explore change, but not often enough do we explore why change is so hard. The Immunity to Change is an enduring recipe for creating change in our lives and leadership.
DAY 3
A recipe for high performing teams
- The power of 'Why' - In a world asking a lot of our teams and people, how can we convey a compelling vision for people to align behind?
- Diversity & innovation - What are the ways we can seek alternative perspectives and approaches to build a diverse and inclusive team?
- Psychological Safety - It isn't enough to have diverse perspectives, Psychology Safety creates the container to allow this diverse perspectives to build off one another and create breakthrough performance.
2
Immersion Two - Lead Others | Lead Organisations
DAY 4
Managing high performing teams
- You Can't Ask That - Mastering the art of challenging and curious dialogue, where we can ask the big questions and seek the nuance of individual inputs.
- Ladder of Inference - How we make our meaning making transparent so we can co-create our worlds together.
- Developmental Dialogues - Developing the muscle of sitting in challenging, growth based dialogue.
DAY 5
Systems Leadership
- Complexity Rising - From Mechanistic to Organismic, how are our worlds and organisations changing over time?
- Understanding upstream leadership - Moving from putting out 'spotfires', to addressing the systemic issues at the source and finding new opportunities for sustainable intervention
DAY 6
Fostering systemic transformation
- Collective Immunity to Change - taking the same approach of individual transformation to the organisations we lead. What changes do we want to champion, and how can we take a complex, systemic perspective to enable them to happen?
- Integrating our experience - By this stage the journey is almost over! This serves as a time to celebrate our growth and each other, and commit to our ongoing growth.
This is bloody brilliant!! It really makes you rethink what's possible.
~ Olivia Ross Wilson, Chief Communications Officer of Ikea Global
Research informing our work
1
Social Capital
Margaret Heffernan has focused her life work, as a CEO and entrepreneur, on understanding what makes great teams great. For her, the answer was Social Capital, which she describes as the trust, knowledge and reciprocity between team members that create quality of life in the workplace and help groups build resilience.
2
Psychological Safety
Organisational behavioural scientist, Amy Edmonson of Harvard first introduced the concept of Psychological Safety. It is described as a group's shared belief that members of a team are safe to take interpersonal risks such as asking for support, making mistakes and providing feedback and input.
Psychological Safety has been linked to decreased rates of attrition, increased physical safety in the workplace, better mental health results and stronger engagement.
3
Vertical Development
Grounded in the work of researchers such as Harvard Prof Robert Kegan and Boston Prof William Torbert, vertical development is now considered a crucial leadership component required for ongoing innovation and thriving in highly unpredictable, ambiguous and disruptive environments.
Vertical development refers to leaders' capacity to increase their mental complexity (evolving HOW they know, not just WHAT they know) to be able to adequately respond to the complexity of the world they operate in. It makes it possible to bridge the gap between knowing and doing and helps unlock the immense potential of individual and collective wisdom for solving the thorniest challenges of our time.
4
The Physiology of Adaptive Leaders
Over the past years, we have been undertaking multiple studies in partnership with our largest clients, as well as researchers from the University of Queensland and experts from WHOOP (one of the world-leading biometric wearables), exploring the links between a leader's physiology (physical effort, recovery, heart rate, HRV) and the quality of the leader's decision making and emotional management, as well as their impact on the team's psychological safety.
We have also been exploring the links between vertical development and stress management and the role stress plays in fall-back mechanisms (causing late-stage, highly complex leaders to adopt reactive and ineffective behaviours under stress).
Evidence shows the links between physiology and the quality of day to day leadership are significant and thus this topic plays a key role in our long-form leadership programs.
Welcome to Spring Bay Mill
Growth requires a mix of disequilibrium and equilibrium. The polarities of luxurious, comforting spaces set against the industrial relics of the mill, and brutal beauty of the natural environment provide the perfect backdrop for this unique experience.
Accomodation options
GLAMPING
Designed with attention to detail for a close-to-nature experience, the 32-tent Glamping Field accommodates up to 60 people in a spacious 4m Lotus Belle canvas tents. All tents are standing height and are equipped with LED lighting, toiletries and luxury bedding. The communal camp kitchen is fully equipped with BBQs and fridges as well as a sheltered dining area with a fire pit. Indoor and outdoor showers and a toilet block complete the shared camp facilities.
RIDGE QUARTERS
This architecturally-designed hub offers a row of 12 double or single rooms, each with an adjacent private bathroom, a communal kitchen, lounge and dining/work area. The Ridge Quarters offers stylish and functional accommodation designed for work colleagues or groups travelling together.
Our
Clients
Here's some organisations we've partnered with, creating moments of growth for their leaders and teams.
Get in touch
Get in contact to see how we can transform your business to be a part of a better Tomorrow.
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Acknowledgement of Country
We respectfully acknowledge the first custodians of the land on which we live and work, the Wurrundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. We pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging and to all First Nations People. Sovereignty was never ceded and treaties were never signed.
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