From the back seat into the driver’s seat: Steering your own development as an emerging leader

Do you want to strengthen your ability to drive positive change?

There is no shortage of complex challenges that need to be addressed that relate to water and waterways. For many of us, a ‘business as usual’ approach is not an option. We need the ability to drive processes of influence to deliver positive change in many settings. In other words, we need to build our capacity to play different types of leadership roles. Such roles may include being a thought leader, team leader, adaptive leader, boundary spanning leader, strategic leader or authorising leader.

Leadership development is a lifelong process, which ideally, should start early in a person’s career and be actively managed by the leader themselves.

In this 90 min workshop, Dr André Taylor (Leadership Specialist with the International Water Centre) will facilitate an interactive session where participants will learn about principles and methods of leadership development.

Specifically, participants will have the opportunity to do a self-assessment exercise to reflect on where they are currently positioned in the process of managing their own development. They will then work through a series of exercises to explore four key steps in managing their development as leaders. These steps are:

• adopting an appropriate mindset, including a ‘leader identity’;
• taking control of the leadership development process;
• learning about principles and methods of leadership development, with a focus on those that are high impact, low-cost and can use real work challenges as ‘practice fields’; and
• using a leadership development plan to organise and structure activities.

This workshop has been designed primarily for emerging leaders. It would, however, also be valuable to more experienced leaders who are keen to learn new ways to accelerate their own development or help others to do the same (e.g. mentees or staff).