Open Course

Art of Leading Collectively

Designing Processes for Achieving Common Goals

Date Sep 16 - Sep 18 , 2026
Time 9:00am - 4:00 pm CET
Language English
Format hybrid
Place Online or Potsdam
Price Free

Every successful project needs to engage people, experience, and authority—and the more complex the project, the harder this becomes. Diverse stakeholders bring different expectations, interests, cultures, and power dynamics to the table. This diversity can be celebrated, but it can also unravel into competing agendas, low trust, and decision-making gridlocks, turning motivation into frustration or burnout.

In this 3.5-day course, you will be able to design, implement, and shepherd stakeholder engagement over time—tapping into the full potential of collaboration to achieve outcomes beyond immediate goals and build synergies that extend beyond one-time partnerships.

By deepening the quality of relationships through intentional dialogue, you will learn to shape a project culture that embraces diversity, builds commitment, and delivers shared results.

Registration status: Open until September 4

Course Outcomes
Understand 

Collective leadership as the foundation of co-creation—where leadership is shared and diversity becomes strength.

Learn

how to lead co-creation with aliveness, integrating purpose, authenticity, and collective intelligence into your leadership practice

Apply

 the © Collective Leadership Compass to design, navigate, and monitor  collaboration processes

Build

resilient and adaptive structures that support outcome-oriented partnerships

Translate

your learning directly into your projects: Develop a six-month action plan, applying the principles of The Art of Leading Collectively

Convince

colleagues and partners that leading collectively will ease the management of complex change

This course is for you if you work across organizational boundaries—leading teams, partnerships, or multi-stakeholder initiatives where getting people to pull in the same direction is both essential and hard.

You’ll benefit most if you are a:

  • Project Manager,
  • Leader
  • Strategist

working in civil society, the public sector, the private sector, or academia.

 

This course is especially relevant if you:

  • Are navigating complex collaborations with multiple partners or stakeholders
  • Feel that your team or partnership has more potential than it is currently realizing
  • Want to move from managing people to genuinely leading collectively

The core methodology you will learn in this course is the © Collective Leadership Compass, which is a practical, human-centered framework that helps you assess, align, and continuously strengthen your 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 is where authenticity meets effectiveness—and where co-creation becomes both a strategic and a deeply human success.

At the end of the course, you will receive a certification, marking your newly learned ability to use the Collective Leadership Compass and navigate change collectively.
This certificate can be used to continue the learning journey of CLI’s Certification Programme to become a Collective Leadership Specialist.

The Certification Programme is designed for practitioners who want to develop recognized expertise in collective leadership and create meaningful, lasting change in their working context. Through a structured journey of three modules, two foundational and one advanced, you will deepen your practice and apply it in real-world contexts.

Register for the Art of Leading Collectively
Register here

Self paced module: Explore leadership paradigms (online, before the course starts)

  1. Shifting the leadership paradigm
  2. Connecting to the core–leadership and collaboration
  3. Your leadership context
  4. Collaboration as an ecosystem
  5. Identifying the ecosystem you want to enliven

Day 1 (live): Collective leadership, aliveness & your personal strength

  1. Connecting to the core–understanding  aliveness at the center of leadership
  2. Deep dive into the conceptual background of the © Collective Leadership Compass
  3. Your personal collective leadership assessment
  4. Peer coaching as a leadership practice
  5. A Personal Action Plan for your Leadership Learning Journey

Day 2 (live): Leadership & collaboration patterns

  1. A sense of wholeness in human interaction systems
  2. Collaboration ecosystems and how they emerge
  3. Examples of pattern observation in different collaboration ecosystems
  4. Quality checks for teams and other collaboration ecosystems
  5. Finding entry points for bringing aliveness on the system level

Day 3 (live): Collaboration plans & your future leadership practice

  1. Energizing with emotionally compelling goals
  2. Designing process architectures for transformative change
  3. Self, system, process: Making the Compass work for us
  4. The Generative Energies: Strengthening your leadership resilience
  5. Personal Action Plan (continued)

Real learning doesn’t happen in a straight line. It happens when you step into unfamiliar territory, make mistakes, try again, and suddenly see things differently. Our courses are designed to create exactly that kind of space, where experimentation is encouraged, failure is part of the process, and genuine breakthroughs become possible.

We offer a (new) blended learning format: three days of live training combined with self-paced learning components.
This approach allows you to benefit from structured group sessions while having dedicated time for personal reflection and integration.

Do you want to learn more about the way our academy works? Read more on our Academy page.

This training 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.

CLI reserves the right to change an in-person participation into an online participation if you do not get your visa on time or other short-term notice reasons prevent you from coming to the course venue. Furthermore, the same applies if new pandemic situations occur that do not allow your participation on-site. Registrations remain valid in any of the cases given. We will come back to you individually in such situations and find the best possible solutions together.

 

Does my time zone matter?
The live sessions run from 9:00am to 4:00pm CET. If you’re joining online, please make sure this works for your time zone before registering. The self-paced pre-course module is flexible and can be completed at any time.

How does the self-paced material work?
Before the live course begins, you’ll get access to an online module called “Explore Leadership Paradigms” via a Mural board, sent to you 3–4 weeks before the course starts. It consists of five short units you can complete at your own pace. We recommend finishing it before Day 1 so you can get the most out of the live sessions.

Do you offer discounts?
Yes. We offer group rates for two or more participants, early-bird pricing, alumni discounts, and solidarity rates for students and grassroots organizations. Contact us for details.

Can I take the course with my team?
Yes! Taking the course as a team can deepen the impact significantly—you’ll be able to apply the tools directly to your shared context. Group discounts are available for two or more participants from the same organization. Contact us to discuss options.

How do I purchase this course?
Click “Register here” at the top of this page. Fill out the registration form and send it to our Head of Academy, Cholpon Aitakhunova, at cholpon.aitakhunova@collectiveleadership.com. After registration you’ll receive an invoice, due within 10 days of receipt—and at the latest two weeks before the course starts. Tuition is €2,000 in person or €1,500 online (7% VAT where applicable).

I can see the registration form when I click on register, but I cannot fill it in. What shall I do?

What is the cancellation or refund policy?
We understand that plans change. If you need to cancel:

  • Up to 8 weeks before the course: 30% of the tuition is charged
  • Up to 4 weeks before: 50% is charged
  • After that, 100% is charged

Charges are waived if you find a replacement participant. If circumstances beyond your control prevent your in-person attendance—such as illness or visa issues—we’ll work with you to find the best solution, including switching to online participation.

“In post conflict societies it provides knowledge, skills and tools essential to creating inclusive societies and fostering development.”

– Executive Director, Liberia

Enroll as a team
Tailored to your context: Taking a course together turns shared learning into shared practice. Apply the tools directly to your real projects, side by side.
On-Site Courses
Register for the Art of Leading Collectively
Register here
Get in touch about our Academy
Not sure where to start? Let's talk about what you need, which courses are the right fit, and how to get going—send Cholpon Aitakhunova a message.
Write an email

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