Art of Leading Collectively

Navigate Complex Change for Collective Action

Great collaboration doesn't happen by accident. It's intentionally led, strengthened, and practiced collectively.

Today’s complex challenges call for co-creation. Yet the realities of collaboration can be challenging: limited resources, conflicting agendas, social tensions, power imbalances, and multi-level decision-making. All of this can make it difficult to initiate, sustain, and scale genuine co-creation within teams and across partnerships.

The Collective Leadership Compass is a practical, human-centered framework that helps assess, align, and continuously strengthen collaborative efforts. By bringing diverse actors together and shaping adaptive partnerships that evolve into living networks, teams can navigate challenges with clarity and care, unlock collective potential, and turn diversity into strength. It’s where authenticity meets effectiveness and where co-creation becomes both a strategic and a deeply human success.

Duration: 4 days
Format: Hybrid (in-person in Potsdam or online)
Tuition Fee: €2,000 in-person | €1,500 online
Part of: Collective Leadership Specialist Certification Programme

What You’ll Learn

This four-day intensive course focuses on six key areas of collective leadership practice:

Understand Collective Leadership
Collective Leadership is the foundation of co-creation, where leadership is shared and diversity becomes strength.

Lead Co-Creation with Aliveness
Learn how to integrate purpose, authenticity, and collective intelligence into leadership practice.

Apply the Collective Leadership Compass
Use this proven framework to design, navigate, and monitor collaboration processes in your projects.

Build Resilient and Adaptive Structures
Develop outcome-oriented partnerships that support collaborative success.

Create Your Action Plan
Translate learning directly into your projects by developing a six-month action plan that applies the principles of collective leadership.

Convince Colleagues and Partners
Gain confidence that leading collectively will ease the management of complex change.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for professionals who work with diverse stakeholders and want to strengthen their collaborative leadership practice.

Project Managers & Change Makers

Those starting or steering complex cooperation projects who want to engage diverse stakeholders and move beyond traditional management toward constructive collaboration.

Leaders in All Sectors

Individuals in public, private, or civil society organizations who seek a leadership approach that goes beyond individual authority and inspires collective action and shared responsibility.

Strategists & Sustainability Practitioners

Professionals aiming to address systemic challenges by applying the Collective Leadership Compass to build resilient, outcome-oriented collaborations.

Course Structure

Balanced Learning Experience: Three days of hybrid training plus one day of self-paced learning. This structure balances facilitated sessions with time for personal reflection and integration.

Day 1

Session 1: Explore Aliveness and the Collective Leadership Compass

  • Getting to know each other
  • Shifting the leadership paradigm
  • Connecting to the core: Understanding aliveness at the center of leadership
  • Your personal Collective Leadership assessment

Session 2: Recognize Your Strengths for Leading Collectively

  • Thriving on mutual support: Peer coaching as a leadership practice
  • Getting clarity about your leadership learning context
  • Personal stories of leading collectively
  • Identifying your personal Collective Leadership competency pattern
  • Deep dive into the conceptual background of the Collective Leadership Compass
  • Identifying the system you want to enliven
Day 2

Session 3: Your Leadership Journey

  • Quantitative personal leadership assessment: Compass Aspects
  • Opportunities for further enhancing your Collective Leadership competencies
  • A Personal Action Plan for your Collective Leadership Journey

Session 4: Activate Your Strengths for Leading Collectively

  • The Generative Energies: Strengthening your leadership resilience
  • Personal Action Plan (continued)
  • Identifying the system you want to enliven
Day 3

Session 5: Build Momentum for Collective Leadership

  • Creating a sense of wholeness in human interaction systems
  • The core of transformative change: Systems aliveness as the key to collaborative success
  • Collaboration ecosystems and how they emerge

Session 6: Apply the Compass to Improve Collaboration

  • Understanding systems patterns: Quality check for teams and collaboration ecosystems
  • Finding entry points for enlivening collaboration ecosystems
  • Improving the patterns in teams and collaboration ecosystems
Day 4

Session 7: Building Blocks for Collaborative Success

  • Energizing teams and collaboration systems with emotionally compelling goals
  • Designing process architectures: Leading transformative change guided by the Collective Leadership Compass

Session 8: Driving Future Together

  • Planning roadmaps for transformative change with the Compass
  • Making the Compass work for us
  • Personal Action Plan (continued)
  • Resources for the journey
  • Course feedback and Certificates

Find the next Courses

Open Course

Jun 23 - Jun 26, 2026 · Europe · hybrid · English

Art of Leading Collectively

Potsdam and/or online at CET

Join our Certification Programme
Certification Programme
Become a certified Specialist of Collective Change.
Certification Programme
What Participants Say

Participants consistently rate this course highly for relevance, facilitator expertise, and impact on their professional practice.

"It's the best holistic and integral approach and method I know about."

Business Coach, Germany

"It offers relevant tools with adequate flexibility for professional leadership but also for continuous life improvement."

Deputy Project Head, Ghana

 

"Reassuring and inspiring; so much needed if we want to address changing systems and lift collaboration to another level."

Project Manager, Jordan

 

Still Have Questions?

Join a Free Information Session and learn about CLI's methodologies, certification programme, and this course.

Infosession or Announcements

Jan 29, 2026 · online

Free Information Session

Learn about methodologies, our work and about us.

Practical Information

This course offers flexible participation options to accommodate different needs and circumstances:

Hybrid Format
This course is planned as a hybrid event. Both in-person participation in Potsdam, Germany, and online participation at Central European Time (CET) are possible. Please choose your format when you register.

In-Person Participation

  • Location: Collective Leadership Institute, Kurfürstenstraße, Potsdam, Germany
  • Potsdam is in the Berlin area
  • Includes course materials

Online Participation

  • Live sessions at Central European Time (CET)
  • Digital course materials

Flexible Arrangements
CLI reserves the right to change an in-person participation into an online participation if visa delays, new pandemic situations, or other short-term notice reasons prevent on-site participation. Registrations remain valid in any of these cases. CLI will come back to participants individually in such situations and find the best possible solutions together.

Language
This course is conducted in English.

Certification
Participants who complete the full course receive a certificate of participation. This course can be credited toward the Collective Leadership Specialist Certification Programme.