Agile and Resilient Leadership Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Senior Managers, Department Heads and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 9 Nov 2026 Course code SD-LD-113

Before you join: Participants should have experience leading a team, project, programme, department or significant workstream, including responsibility for decisions, priorities or stakeholder communication.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Leaders are expected to maintain delivery, make sound decisions and keep people focused when priorities shift, information is incomplete or disruption affects critical services. This is particularly demanding in regulated, public-service and multinational settings, where a delayed decision can affect customers, staff, service continuity, compliance or reputation. Leaders need more than personal stamina: they need repeatable ways to interpret uncertainty, set direction, distribute authority and learn quickly from results.

This course develops practical leadership methods for volatile, ambiguous and high-pressure conditions. Participants use Cynefin to assess the nature of a challenge, OODA loops to shorten decision cycles, and rolling-wave planning to manage priorities without false certainty. They examine psychological safety, delegation, stakeholder communication, change readiness, conflict and crisis leadership. The course also addresses personal resilience through workload boundaries, recovery practices, stress appraisal and deliberate self-regulation. Participants learn to distinguish urgent incidents from important adaptation work, and to build team habits that support candid reporting and timely course correction.

Teaching combines focused instructor briefings with realistic cases, group analysis, decision simulations and structured reflection. Cases include service disruption, regulatory change, competing portfolio demands and cross-functional delivery failures. Participants apply the methods to a live leadership challenge and leave with a 90-day agile leadership action plan, a personal resilience plan, a stakeholder communication approach and practical decision-making tools. The course is available as a five-day classroom programme in 50+ cities or live online. Participants receive a certificate of completion.

It is designed for managers and leaders who already lead people, projects, functions or change initiatives and need to respond more effectively when conditions do not follow the original plan.

What you will be able to do

  • Apply Cynefin and OODA loops to select appropriate responses under uncertainty
  • Create rolling-wave plans with priorities, guardrails, assumptions and review points
  • Delegate recurring decisions using explicit decision rights and escalation thresholds
  • Build psychological safety through working agreements, coaching and SBI feedback
  • Develop stakeholder communication plans for uncertain, contested or disruptive change
  • Diagnose change readiness using ADKAR and targeted resistance-management actions
  • Use resilience practices to manage pressure, recovery and sustained leadership performance
  • Produce a 90-day agile leadership action plan for a current workplace challenge

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Faster decisions when evidence is incomplete and stakes are high
  • Clearer delegation without losing accountability for outcomes
  • Practical routines for sustaining energy during prolonged pressure
  • Greater confidence handling resistance, conflict and difficult conversations
  • A structured 90-day plan for changing personal leadership habits

For your organisation

  • Shorter decision cycles during disruption, change and competing priorities
  • More consistent escalation and accountability across leadership teams
  • Earlier identification of delivery risks, weak signals and resistance
  • Improved staff retention through psychologically safer team practices
  • Stronger recovery and learning after incidents, setbacks and failed assumptions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can distinguish agile leadership from reactive management and assess the conditions requiring adaptation.

  • Agile leadership principles: customer value, adaptation, transparency and distributed authority
  • Distinguishing agility from speed, constant change and unplanned reactivity
  • VUCA and BANI conditions used to classify leadership challenges
  • Assessing decision latency, handoffs and escalation patterns within teams
  • Leadership stance choices: directive, coaching, participative and delegative responses
  • Balancing delivery reliability with experimentation through explicit operating boundaries

Participants can select proportionate decision approaches when information, time and certainty are limited.

  • Cynefin domains matched to clear, complicated, complex and chaotic work
  • Sense-making before action when evidence is incomplete or contradictory
  • Probing safely through time-boxed experiments and reversible decisions
  • OODA loops for observing signals, orienting choices and acting rapidly
  • Decision rights mapped with RAPID roles and escalation thresholds
  • Separating urgent incidents from strategic opportunities using impact and reversibility

Participants can set adaptable priorities and planning cadences that respond to changing evidence.

  • Outcome-based goals written with OKRs, measures and guardrail metrics
  • Rolling-wave planning across quarterly priorities, monthly horizons and weekly commitments
  • Kanban flow metrics: work in progress, cycle time and throughput
  • Managing portfolio trade-offs through cost of delay and capacity allocation
  • Scenario planning using trigger points, assumptions and contingency actions
  • Review cadences that convert operational data into priority decisions

Participants can create team conditions that support ownership, candour and timely decision-making.

  • Psychological safety assessed through speaking-up, learning and interpersonal-risk behaviours
  • SCARF model applied to status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness
  • Team working agreements covering decision rules, response times and conflict
  • Delegation Poker used to clarify authority across recurring decisions
  • Coaching questions that shift ownership from manager to team member
  • Feedback conversations structured with SBI: situation, behaviour and impact

Participants can communicate decisions and change credibly when answers are still emerging.

  • Stakeholder mapping by influence, impact, sentiment and information needs
  • Change narrative linking strategic intent, local consequences and credible evidence
  • Communication channels selected for urgency, ambiguity, reach and dialogue
  • Message maps built around audience concerns, decisions and next actions
  • Listening sessions that surface resistance, weak signals and implementation barriers
  • Rumour control through timely facts, acknowledged uncertainty and response commitments

Participants can diagnose adoption barriers and direct leadership actions that support change implementation.

  • ADKAR diagnoses for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement gaps
  • Change impact assessments covering roles, processes, skills, systems and controls
  • Stakeholder readiness segmented by commitment, capability and influence
  • Resistance conversations using inquiry, acknowledgement, options and agreed actions
  • Transition milestones managed with adoption measures and corrective interventions
  • Sponsorship actions defined for visible commitment, decisions and obstacle removal

Participants can manage personal pressure and model sustainable performance during demanding periods.

  • Resilience defined as recovery, adaptation and learning after pressure
  • Stress appraisal distinguished from workload, fatigue and burnout indicators
  • Energy management through recovery cycles, boundaries, sleep and workload design
  • Circle of control separates action, influence and external uncertainty
  • After-action reviews convert setbacks into specific learning commitments
  • Leader self-regulation using pause, label, reframe and deliberate response

Participants can lead initial responses to disruption while maintaining clear coordination and communication.

  • Incident leadership roles established using command, coordination, communication and liaison
  • Crisis decisions prioritised through life safety, service continuity and legal duties
  • Situation reports structured around facts, impacts, actions, risks and requests
  • Escalation thresholds tied to severity, authority, time and stakeholder exposure
  • Business continuity priorities set through critical-process and dependency analysis
  • Post-incident reviews distinguish accountability, learning, remediation and assurance

Participants can address disagreement early and build alignment around decisions and shared outcomes.

  • Productive conflict distinguished from destructive friction, avoidance and personalisation
  • Thomas-Kilmann modes selected according to stakes, relationships and time
  • Interest-based negotiation separates positions, needs, options and objective criteria
  • Difficult conversations prepared with facts, assumptions, requests and boundaries
  • Conflict de-escalation uses neutral language, summarising and agreed next steps
  • Cross-functional alignment built through shared outcomes and decision records

Participants can translate course methods into a focused plan for their current leadership responsibilities.

  • Leadership agility diagnostic identifies behavioural strengths, constraints and development priorities
  • Personal resilience plan specifies warning signs, recovery practices and support
  • 90-day action plan links priorities, experiments, stakeholders and review dates
  • Decision journal records assumptions, choices, outcomes and learning signals
  • Peer accountability arrangements establish check-ins, evidence and course correction
  • Manager briefing frames commitments, support required and success measures

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Cynefin decision-selection guide
  2. Rolling-wave priority planning template
  3. Stakeholder communication message map
  4. ADKAR change readiness assessment
  5. Personal resilience and recovery plan
  6. 90-day agile leadership action plan

Who should attend

  • Senior Managers — maintain direction and service performance during shifting priorities
  • Department Heads — coordinate decisions, resources and communication across functions
  • Programme Managers — manage uncertainty, dependencies and stakeholder expectations
  • Change Managers — strengthen leadership sponsorship and adoption through transition
  • Operations Managers — respond to disruption while protecting critical service delivery
  • Team Leaders — create accountable, candid and adaptable team practices

Skills and tools covered

Adaptive decision-makingResilient leadershipChange communicationTeam psychological safetyCrisis responsePriority management

Tools and standards

Cynefin Framework, OODA Loop, ADKAR Model, SCARF Model

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce each method, followed by case analysis, facilitated group work, simulations and individual application planning. Participants examine leadership decisions from service disruption, regulatory change, operational delivery and cross-functional transformation scenarios. They practise selecting responses under uncertainty, framing stakeholder messages, resolving conflict and setting decision boundaries. Structured reflection connects each method to participants’ own responsibilities. The final sessions focus on converting learning into specific leadership commitments, review routines and support requests.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience leading a team, project, programme, department or significant workstream, including responsibility for decisions, priorities or stakeholder communication. Familiarity with basic performance management, project delivery or change activity is useful. Participants should bring one current leadership challenge that involves uncertainty, change, pressure or competing demands. No prior study of agile methods, organisational psychology, business continuity, formal change management or resilience models is required. This is not an introductory course for participants with no people or delivery responsibility.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should already lead people, projects, programmes, functions or important workstreams. The course does not require prior training in agile, change management, psychology or business continuity.

Participants should bring details of a current leadership challenge involving change, uncertainty, pressure or competing priorities. They may use this challenge throughout the course when developing their action plan.

It suits experienced managers, team leaders, programme managers, operational leaders and change leaders. It is particularly relevant for leaders responsible for service delivery, transformation or cross-functional coordination.

This course focuses on leadership judgement, team behaviour, decision rights, communication and personal resilience. It uses selected agile planning methods but does not teach Scrum certification, technical delivery methods or product-owner responsibilities.

Participants leave with decision, communication, resilience and planning tools that can be used immediately with their teams. The 90-day action plan identifies priorities, stakeholders, experiments, review dates and evidence of progress.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides about 6.5 contact hours. The five days cover ten modules in teaching order, with time for cases, simulations, discussion and individual application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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