Citizen Leadership

Leader is not a title to claim for oneself, it is a temporary role offered to (or requested of) a person of integrity and good standing in his or her community.
— from Leadership is a Fashionable Hat

COVID-19 update: Assume this workshop will be held, unless you hear otherwise. If it is cancelled or postponed you'll be offered a refund or the option to join at a later date.

Beyond (and beneath) Leadership

Leadership is a word much loved in business culture these days. We have agile leaders, servant leaders, thought leaders, fearless leaders, open leaders, and tribal leaders, to name but a few. We have leadership rules, leadership laws, leadership principles, and leadership lessons. To satisfy this craving the business world is now awash with Leadership Training.

And here's another one: Citizen Leadership. Yet despite its name this workshop will not teach you to be a leader. You will learn instead to be a good citizen, and in understanding the nature of citizenship your innate ability to lead will be sparked, positioning you to take on leadership responsibility as and when required, without fear, and more vitally, without the need for positional power.

Thoughtful Citizenship

The original name for this workshop was Thoughtful Citizenship intended to call out the limiting idea that thinking was restricted to the domain of leadership, and reinforced through terms like Thought Leader. In the knowledge work industry we must all—by definition—be thinkers. A citizen leader typically has no positional power but leads instead by modeling: working thoughtfully and effectively, adopting a caring, conscientious manner, and confronting aggression and injustice.

The act of reinventing organisations requires gentle guides, considerate stewards, thoughtful citizens who know when to serve, when to step up and when to step aside. Today's organisations require everyone to lead, when the time is appropriate for the type of leadership each of us can offer—and all of us can offer leadership. We just need to try a little less, release a little more.

"This was a chance to think really deeply about what leadership is and is not. About why we need leaders, and why we do not. I left the workshop thinking of myself less in terms of a leader and more as someone who can allow action to happen. If you get the chance to take this workshop, do it!" — Dr Laurie Young, Director of Engineering, Thoughtbot UK

Shift your paradigm

This workshop will take you on a two-day journey to discover you innate citizenship, your ability to love, to serve, to create, to confront, to rise above the mundane and live to your fullness within the madness of the corporate world, seeding transformation as you go.

Using poetry, storytelling, dialog, improvisation, creative writing, theatre games, metaphor and scripture the experience will challenge your mind and open your heart.

If you are already designated a leader this workshop may be a process of unlearning, emptying your cup in order to make room for a different way of thinking, a different approach to leadership. If you do not (yet) coinsider yourself a leader this workshop will unlock your potential to be one.

"Without a doubt the most thought provoking agile session I've ever attended. Tobias continues to create angles which give me the aha! moments." — Jem Djelal, Agilist

Learning outcome

If all goes well you'll leave with a sense of awe at how something as simple as good citizenship becomes great leadership in the transformation space, and you'll be ready to arrive at your next station with a willingness to be the best you that you are capable of being, whether leader, citizen or some oscillating hybrid of the two.

Do not attend this workshop if you have any desire to hold onto, or gain corporate power, or wish to maintain the status quo. This workshop is for fearless adventurers, curious investigators, and unorthodox thinkers.