The Dialogue & Leadership of Change programme is for people who are seriously concerned to bring about constructive and sustainable change at any scale.

The problem with change is that those affected by the change are often excluded from decision-making. It can seem impractical to include the many different individual and sub-cultural views, aspirations, and fears held by those involved, and in consequence, change is often designed privately by a few of the participants on behalf of others. This feels like an imposition to those affected when they discover (or are then told) what part they are expected to play in the change. Such change processes tend to fail as previously overlooked factors have to be taken into account.  

This is where Professional Dialogue gets different results. Professional Dialogue is a means of talking and thinking together successfully with people in larger groups, to reveal to everyone where they are, where they collectively need and want to be, and how they might proceed together. Crucial information that would otherwise be considered in separate conversations thereby becomes available to all involved. This requires both skill and understanding – the skills to talk and think together effectively, and an understanding of the sequence of who needs to be gathered when to achieve an inclusive, constructive and sustainable change. This skill and understanding is made available and practiced on the Dialogue & Leadership of Change programme.

This unique 'learning-through-doing' programme enables participants to further their organisation's current change needs over a series of off-site workshops supported by regular telephone coaching.  The skills are practical, immediately applicable, proven in practice, and theoretically rigorous, arising from original academic research in the 1980s.  Group participation, of two to four colleagues, is strongly recommended for greater impact on the change process.  This can involve individuals from the same or different parts of one organisation, or the inclusion of others from related stakeholder or supply chain organisations.  Executive sponsorship is deliberately incorporated in the application and review of the course to further deepen the organisational effect.  A distinctive feature of this programme is the networking and innovation opportunity, as participants from different corporate and social sectors support and challenge one another's thinking and practice.

Watch some of our previous participants talking about their experience