Adaptive Leadership Program

An experiential development program for people who want to lead well in uncertain and changing environments. It builds adaptive leadership capability and a supportive network of peers who trade ideas and experience.

You work with a set of tools and frameworks for making progress on complex problems, alongside deliberate work on self-awareness and personal growth.

The program is grounded in adaptive leadership, the framework developed by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky at Harvard Kennedy School and set out in Leadership on the Line and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.

Its central distinction is between technical problems, which can be solved with existing expertise, and adaptive challenges, which require people to change how they think, what they value or how they work. Most difficult conversations stall because an adaptive challenge is being treated as a technical one.

Over three days you'll work with:

Technical versus adaptive

Diagnosing which kind of challenge you're actually facing, and why the usual fix isn't working.

Getting on the balcony

Stepping back from the action to see the pattern you're caught inside.

Work avoidance

Recognising how groups, including your own, sidestep difficult work without admitting it.

The holding environment

Creating enough safety for people to do hard thinking, and enough pressure that they actually do it.

Self as instrument

Understanding your own triggers, defaults and blind spots, because you are the one tool you bring to every conversation.

Participants bring a real challenge from their own work and apply each of these to it across the three days.

Three in-person program days, plus an online induction one week before it starts. All participants complete a short pre-work writing task ahead of the program.

A maximum of 24 participants.

At a central location in Melbourne (Naarm), Victoria. Venue details are provided to participants on registration.

Workplace-funded (early bird $3450 inc GST)

$3950 inc GST

Self-funded and non-profit organisations

$2495 inc GST

Scholarships are available for eligible non-profit organisations only. Apply here.

Fees subject to change at short notice.

A limited number of scholarships are available to eligible individuals, at a reduced registration fee. Apply for a scholarship here.

Yes. Please email us at mail@equality.org.au to request an invoice.

The Adaptive Leadership Program 2026 is a collaboration between The Equality Project® and the Centre for Civil Dialogue. The lead facilitator is Taryn Sexton, supported by the CCD and TEP teams.

Changemaker Masterclass

Grounds people in purpose, connection and the core skills that help them understand themselves and others. It builds the mindset, self-awareness and human skills that make meaningful change possible in the first place. Adaptive leadership concepts are not covered.

Adaptive Leadership Program

Is about leading across difference. It focuses on how you read a conversation, how you manage yourself when it gets hard, and how you keep making progress when people disagree.

Put simply: Changemaker builds your purpose and connection. Adaptive Leadership builds the diagnostic skill to read a difficult situation accurately, and the self-management to stay effective inside it.

The Adaptive Leadership Program is delivered by The Equality Project® in collaboration with the Centre for Civil Dialogue.

This program is the foundational work: how you think, how you read a moment, and how you manage yourself when a conversation gets hard. You'll dip a toe into the conversation skills themselves.

Going deeper on those skills is what the Centre for Civil Dialogue does next.

Anyone seeking to enhance their leadership capabilities. Participants must also:

• Be 18 years or over
• Be able to attend the 3-day in-person intensive on all key dates
• Have support from their organisation or senior leadership to participate

All levels of experience are welcome, including people new to the role. No prior long-term experience is required.

Registration opens 7 September. Register your interest now and we'll email you when it does.

Participants of the Victorian LGBTIQ+ Leadership Program 2021 wrote about their experience:

• Alushka Rajaram
• Ravi Teja Bodanam
• Sav Emmett Wolfe

Contact us at mail@equality.org.au.