What is the difference between a leader and a manager? 

A manager works best within a defined environment, their primary task is to avoid chaos and achieve objectives in a timely manner. Whereas a leader must have a vision for the organization, and ensure their managers have the tools to realize their vision. This includes clearly articulated and achievable objectives, supported by realistic resourcing. Visionary leaders embrace uncertainty and search for opportunity in challenges. They will not hesitate to change the status quo if it no longer delivers outcomes.

The best leaders create an organizational culture where people can speak freely, exercise initiative and be allowed to make the occasional mistake in the interests of advancing the goals of the organization. 

Critical to creating a strong culture is a right sized supporting infrastructure that is both ideational, empathetic, and practical. There are a suite of techniques that can be used to help identify and resolve organizational cultural barriers. We help leaders assess their organizational climate and create subtle initiatives to make corrections as needed. The US, British and Australian militaries have different approaches to these challenges. Contexr can tailor elements from one or all of these methodologies to strengthen your leadership skills and the responsiveness of your organization to change management.

A curriculum is a set of sign posts to the state of the art of knowledge on any topic. Your team might be consumed with tyranny of the inbox to keep up with the latest developments. Let Contexr develop graduate level programs on subjects important to your organization.

Our programs are agile and scalable in content, detail, complexity and duration. Need to get up to speed on a topic, we can deliver briefings to audiences of 1-1000. Prefer to have an interactive experience? The seminar format is a great tool to bring people together to work collaboratively to solve problems. One of our subject matter experts provides the context and then guides a wide ranging discussion on the topic among your team. Need to grapple with a more detailed challenge? We can craft a experience to meet just about any challenge. We have found that a weekly 2 hour session is an ideal format for deep dives even in busy organizations. There is enough time to reflect and prepare between sessions, even for busy senior managers.

Discussions guided by an outside subject matter expert can also be fantastic team building programs. Guided discussions have impacts that go beyond the accumulation of knowledge on a subject. For example, team members learn how to effectively engage one another while remaining respectful of different viewpoints. These engagements are some of the best ways we know to help leaders improve the culture of an organization. Sometimes discussing a subject that is completely new to the group can help break logjams in negative perceptions that have accumulated over time. Improving organization communication in this way builds trust and respect. This is particularly the case where team members have to interact in front of an ‘outsider’ who is a subject knowledge expert. Seminars hold the potential to fundamentally improve the culture of an organization.

We make these engagements fun and thought provoking. We can use different interaction formats that bring out the best in your teams - some examples include

• Debate, 
• Snap reverse debate (where the sides prepare on one side of an issue but are told to argue the opposite when it comes time to present), 
• COA Briefs (where teams compete to develop a set of courses of action and brief it to a leader), 
• Structured brainstorming,
• Hypotheticals (a guided war game format involving role play and following an “if this, then that” discussion).

Talk to us today to tailor a program for your exact requirements.