Deep Dive 3-hour Sessions
For this year's conference, we've designed these extended Deep Dive sessions as a form of professional development built right into the conference. They are master classes, focusing on new skills, in-depth learning, and practical tools you can use in your own teaching, training, consulting, or coaching work. These sessions will run alongside regular programing and will be marked as Deep Dives on our conference schedule - look for that in early May!
Followership for High Performance
with Mark Rennaker & Mike Linville
What do you really think about followers? Who are more important to an organization: leaders or followers? Are you a leader or a follower?
Key topics explored in this session include follower as role, reimagining leadership as a system, unspoken follower perspectives, and the key characteristics of effective followers. Learn how a focus on followership and follower development may be more important to high levels of organizational performance than leadership development.
Recipients of the 2023 Followership Trailblazer award and co-authors of the landmark textbook, The Essentials of Followership, already in its 2nd edition, Mark and Mike have designed this deep dive session especially for those new to followership.
Polarity Thinking Deep Dive
with Tim Hurson & Liz Monroe-Cook
Liz is a consulting psychologist, graduate of the Polarity Thinking™ Mastery Program, and Past Chair of the Creative Education Foundation Board. Tim is a global author and speaker on Productive Thinking who regularly incorporates Polarity Thinking™ into his facilitation practice.
Together, they will unpack the key concepts of Polarity Thinking™ to help you rethink the relationship between followership and leadership. A polarity mindset avoids the narrow view of the world shaped by false-choice, either-or thinking. Instead, it equips individuals, teams, and organizations with the tools to recognize and honor multiple perspectives—including those of both leadership and followership.
LEGO® SERIOUS PlAY® Deep Dive
with Dr. Althea Simpson
In an era where organizations struggle to foster authentic leader-follower relationships, Althea offers a breakthrough approach using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology.
Following her acclaimed session that earned top ratings at the 2024 conference in Glasgow, she returns to guide participants through a three-hour immersive exploration of leadership-followership dynamics.
Courageous Follower Train-the-Trainer
with Ira Chaleff & Basil Read
A session for professional trainers, educators and consultants, who would like to be able to deliver, or deepen their current delivery, of the core material of The Courageous Follower in formal training to classes, groups and private or public sector organizations.
Please consider this a master class. You should be very familiar with the principles and models of courageous followership. Questions you bring to the class should focus on how to deepen your capacity to develop courageous followership in others, rather than on how to understand it yourself.
For those who regularly teach courageous followership as part of leading and following, no further preparation should be needed. For those who aspire to do so, but have not yet had the opportunity, or only do so occasionally, please review the book, The Courageous Follower, in the weeks prior to the conference. You may also choose to watch some of the videos available at www.irachaleffauthor.com.
Everyone should have at least once taken the Followership Styles Assessment. This preparation will allow us to move at a brisk pace through the fundamentals and nuances of effectively developing courageous follower awareness, behaviors and skills.