How do you lead with greater creativity and self-trust in a sea of competing voices, pressures, and projections?
As women, we often receive conflicting messages about how to lead:
Hold people’s emotions but be tough. Don’t be too tough if you’re a woman of color, though; then we’ll think you’re angry.
Integrate different perspectives but also don't compromise your vision. And just make sure your vision fits in with a dominant cultural context.
Build credibility but be humble about your accomplishments. There’s a code to follow and you better get it.
We walk a tightrope.
Leadership is a balancing act between meeting expectations and disappointing them to mobilize collective learning and shared ownership. This delicate balance is often made more complex while navigating societal expectations on women — which vary across racial and cultural identities and can still feel taboo to acknowledge.
We designed this highly experiential 2.5-day Lab to help you to move from awareness to effective action. We will delve into the root causes of systemic challenges women face in practicing leadership with an intersectional lens and expand our toolkits for responding.
This Lab will help you shift from feeling torn, unseen, and/or overwhelmed to a sense of agency, optionality, and creativity. Through reflective and embodied exercises, simulations, presentation, peer coaching, and more, you’ll explore frameworks for diagnosing your internal and external systems and scaffold your own unique leadership development journey. And you’ll do it in a community of women who, like you, are here for the ‘real talk’ on experiences across lines of difference (e.g. age, race, sexuality, class, religion, industry, and more).
Program Outcomes
By the end of the Lab, you will have:
Explored your own stories, projections, and triggers around authority, gender and race, and leadership
Unearthed your developmental edges, as they relate to your authority role and your practice of leadership
Improved your diagnostic skills for understanding both internal and external systemic pressures and conflicts
Practiced negotiating with your own inner voices
Deepened relationships with a cohort of confidants to support you well beyond the program
Our Frameworks
KONU’s approach builds on the Adaptive Leadership and Adult Development framework which has been developed over 35 years of research and teaching at Harvard University by Professors Ronald Heifetz, Robert Kegan, and their collaborators, including KONU co-founder Tim O’Brien. This year’s Adaptive Leadership Lab facilitators also bring additional expertise in social and emotional learning, identity development, multiracial and cross-class group processes, performance, somatic practice, and organizational development.
Program Participants
This workshop is for you if you identify as a woman* and:
You are currently frustrated that you are not making much progress on issues that are most important to you
You are accountable to a wide set of stakeholders with numerous (and often conflicting) expectations of you
You are open to exploring within yourself and with others the ways in which race and other identity markers have informed your experience of womanhood
You lead a team or organization with a social impact mission, OR you are developer of people who thinks the Lab’s frameworks would resonate with those you support
You are curious to do internal work, ready for candid dialogues, open to questioning preconceived mindsets and beliefs, and committed to taking their leadership practice to the next level
Logistics
The Adaptive Leadership Lab is a multi-day workshop that will take place in Philadelphia, PA. It will run on:
Monday, June 24th from 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Tuesday, June 25th from 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. (plus optional dinner)
Wednesday, June 26th from 8:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Venue
The lab will take place at the Loft on Passyunk (pronounced “Pash-yunk”), a beautiful dance studio and event space located in the heart of South Philly. East Passyunk Avenue is also well-loved by locals as a foodie district; breakfasts and lunches for the Lab will be catered by various local food establishments for you to enjoy.
Address: 1919 E Passyunk Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19148
Transportation
SEPTA Public Transit:
By rail: 4-minute walk from Snyder Station via Broad Street Line
By bus: 3-minute walk from 12th St and Mifflin St stop via 45 Bus
By car: 4-minute walk from parking garage, available at 1930 S Broad St (Constitution Health Plaza).
Lodging
Our partners at Marriott have graciously provided a room block at their Downtown location in Center City for your stay. You will receive a link to reserve using our room block as a part of your registration process.
Address: 1200 Filbert St
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Investment
The tuition is 2950 USD for individuals working in corporations or 2450 USD for individuals working in nonprofit or government organizations. Scholarships are available (further information below).
Your investment includes:
All Lab materials (worksheets, books, journal, etc.)
Breakfast, coffee/tea, snacks, and lunch on all three days
Dinner on Tuesday, June 25th (optional to attend)
A 30-minute session with one of the Lab’s facilitators before the program
A 60-minute coaching session with one of the Lab’s facilitators 2-4 weeks after the program to help you integrate and apply your learning
Free access to the remainder of KONU’s 2024 virtual open enrollment offerings
50% off any coaching package purchased in the second half of 2024 (after the Lab)
Scholarships
We provide scholarships to ensure that the Lab is accessible to a range of change agents. Using a pay-what-you-can model; scholarship recipients will financially invest at a level that is meaningful yet doable for them and/or their organization, and KONU will cover the rest of tuition. Please fill out the scholarship application form by Monday, May 13th. Scholarship recipients will be notified one week later, on Monday, May 20.
Payment Plans
We strive to make the Adaptive Leadership Lab financially accessible and understand that the cost of tuition may represent an appreciable investment on your (or your organization’s) part. In our efforts to provide you with flexibility in making this investment, we invite you to reach out and inquire about payment plan options by emailing gene.sun@konu.org. We are committed to making this experience possible for you!
Facilitators
How to Learn More
Interested in the Lab but want to learn more before registering? Book a 15-minute meeting with a Lab facilitator, or register for an info session on Wednesday, May 1st from 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. ET.
*We use the language of “women-identifying” because we know there is no one way to be a “woman.” We welcome anyone for whom the term “womanhood” resonates with their experience of gender.