Collaborative Leadership and Teaming Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Functional Managers, Programme and Project Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-LD-193

Before you join: Participants should have experience contributing to, supervising or coordinating a team, project, programme or operational process.

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

Major initiatives increasingly depend on people who do not share a reporting line, location, profession or operational vocabulary. Leaders must bring specialists together quickly, create conditions where concerns are raised early, coordinate decisions across boundaries and convert experience into better action. Without these disciplines, teams duplicate work, defer difficult conversations, lose critical knowledge and make slow or poorly owned decisions.

This course examines collaborative leadership as the work of enabling effective teaming: temporary and continuing collaboration among people with different expertise. Participants learn to frame shared work, establish team charters, clarify decision rights, make expertise visible and build psychological safety without lowering performance expectations. They apply practical methods for closed-loop communication, advocacy-inquiry, conflict diagnosis, interest-based negotiation, after-action reviews, decision protocols and virtual collaboration.

Teaching combines concise instructor briefings with realistic cases drawn from cross-functional change programmes, operational incident response, public-service delivery, financial-services transformation and project environments. Small-group analysis, facilitated simulations and peer feedback allow participants to test choices under uncertainty, competing priorities and status differences. Participants leave with a personal teaming action plan, a team charter structure, decision and communication templates, and a diagnostic for assessing their current collaboration routines. A certificate of completion is issued to participants who complete the course.

The course is suited to managers and professionals who lead through influence, coordinate work across functions or contribute to complex programmes. It is particularly useful where delivery relies on matrix structures, external partners, geographically distributed colleagues or rapidly assembled project teams.

What you will be able to do

  • Diagnose teaming conditions using interdependence mapping, psychological safety indicators and coordination risks
  • Create a team charter defining purpose, roles, norms, decision rights and escalation routes
  • Apply advocacy-inquiry, closed-loop communication and SBAR for high-stakes collaboration
  • Build psychological safety through leader framing, invitational inquiry and productive responses to failure
  • Conduct after-action reviews and convert lessons into tested process improvements
  • Resolve cross-functional conflict using interest-based negotiation and conflict diagnosis
  • Design decision protocols using RAPID, pre-mortems and documented dissent
  • Produce a 30-day teaming action plan with measures, milestones and accountability partners

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Lead temporary and cross-functional teams with clearer purpose, norms and decision ownership
  • Handle disagreement without suppressing expertise or allowing relationship conflict to escalate
  • Recognise speaking-up barriers and respond constructively to concerns, mistakes and weak signals
  • Run better decision meetings using explicit roles, evidence standards and recorded rationale
  • Turn feedback and operational experience into a measurable personal collaboration plan

For your organisation

  • Faster coordination across functions through clearer handoffs, roles and escalation thresholds
  • Earlier identification of operational risks, customer issues and implementation concerns
  • Higher-quality decisions through structured challenge, diverse expertise and documented assumptions
  • Reduced rework from stronger communication loops and shared interpretation of commitments
  • Repeatable learning routines that retain lessons from projects, incidents and change initiatives

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can distinguish teaming from stable team management and assess the coordination demands of interdependent work.

  • Teaming versus stable teams: task boundaries, membership, and coordination demands
  • Edmondson's psychological safety construct: candour, fallibility, inclusion, and help-seeking
  • Interdependence mapping identifies handoffs, decisions, expertise, and critical interfaces
  • Cynefin distinguishes clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic coordination conditions
  • Knowledge economy work: distributed expertise, rapid learning, and temporary collaboration
  • Team charter components: purpose, deliverables, roles, norms, and escalation

Participants can translate strategic intent into shared outcomes, stakeholder commitments and explicit decision responsibilities.

  • Strategic intent translated into shared outcomes, constraints, and decision criteria
  • OKRs distinguish outcome measures from activities and local output targets
  • Stakeholder mapping identifies sponsors, contributors, affected parties, and blockers
  • Boundary-spanning roles connect operational knowledge, authority, and external relationships
  • RACI clarifies accountable decisions without substituting for collaborative judgement
  • Decision-rights matrix assigns recommendation, approval, consultation, and execution responsibilities

Participants can establish practical agreements that clarify membership, expectations, authority and team operating rhythms.

  • Kick-off conversations establish purpose, expertise visibility, and working agreements
  • Team charter records scope, membership, norms, meeting cadence, and escalation
  • Role negotiation surfaces hidden expectations, authority limits, and contribution gaps
  • Working agreements specify responsiveness, meeting conduct, documentation, and challenge norms
  • Expertise directory makes specialist knowledge visible before urgent decisions
  • First-90-days plan sequences relationships, deliverables, feedback, and review points

Participants can use structured communication methods to clarify meaning, surface assumptions and secure commitments.

  • Closed-loop communication confirms messages, ownership, deadlines, and interpretation
  • SBAR structures concise escalation messages around situation, background, assessment, recommendation
  • Advocacy-inquiry combines stated reasoning with genuine questions and listening
  • Ladder of Inference tests assumptions before attributing intent or competence
  • Meeting architecture separates information sharing, decision making, problem solving, and reflection
  • Decision logs capture rationale, dissent, owners, dates, and revisit triggers

Participants can create conditions where people raise concerns, admit uncertainty and contribute dissenting expertise.

  • Leader framing presents uncertainty, interdependence, and learning as legitimate work
  • Invitational inquiry draws out weak signals, concerns, and dissenting expertise
  • Productive response acknowledges bad news, asks questions, and prevents blame
  • Speaking-up barriers include status gradients, expertise gaps, and fear of consequences
  • Red-team protocols test plans through structured challenge and alternative hypotheses
  • Psychological safety surveys distinguish interpersonal climate from satisfaction or engagement

Participants can establish learning routines that turn team experience into specific operational improvements.

  • After-action reviews examine intent, events, causes, and revised actions
  • Plus-delta reviews identify retained practices and specific process changes
  • Double-loop learning questions governing assumptions, goals, and decision rules
  • Learning huddles convert frontline observations into tested operational adjustments
  • Knowledge-capture templates record context, decision rationale, evidence, and reusable lessons
  • Experiment backlogs prioritise hypotheses, measures, owners, and review dates

Participants can diagnose conflict sources and select proportionate methods for resolution, repair and escalation.

  • Task, process, and relationship conflict require different leadership responses
  • Interest-based negotiation separates positions from needs, criteria, and options
  • Thomas-Kilmann modes guide choices between competing, collaborating, accommodating, avoiding, compromising
  • Conflict diagnosis tests facts, interpretations, incentives, power, and identity threats
  • Repair conversations use observation, impact, request, and mutual commitments
  • Escalation protocols define thresholds, evidence, decision owners, and response timing

Participants can design decision processes that use diverse input while maintaining pace, accountability and execution discipline.

  • Decision-quality criteria combine values, evidence, uncertainty, and implementation commitment
  • RAPID assigns Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, and Decide roles
  • Pre-mortem analysis exposes plausible failure modes before commitment
  • Six Thinking Hats separates factual, emotional, critical, and creative contributions
  • Disagree-and-commit records informed dissent while preserving execution discipline after decisions
  • Decision protocols set quorum, time limits, evidence standards, and documentation

Participants can adapt teaming practices for geographically distributed, culturally diverse and multidisciplinary groups.

  • Media richness guides channel choice for ambiguity, conflict, and coordination
  • Virtual meeting protocols specify preparation, participation, decisions, and follow-up
  • Time-zone overlap maps protect equitable access to critical conversations
  • Cross-cultural communication identifies directness, hierarchy, pacing, and face-saving differences
  • Boundary objects align disciplines through shared artefacts, definitions, and visual models
  • Collaboration technology norms govern version control, response windows, and records

Participants can assess their current teaming context and commit to measurable improvements in collaborative leadership practice.

  • Teaming diagnostic assesses psychological safety, alignment, learning, and coordination routines
  • Stakeholder influence analysis prioritises sponsorship, resistance, and relationship-building actions
  • Thirty-day action plan specifies behaviours, milestones, measures, and accountability partners
  • Personal leadership commitments translate feedback into observable collaborative practices
  • Review cadence links team indicators, after-action reviews, and course correction
  • Peer consultation protocol tests implementation risks, assumptions, and support needs
  • Manager briefing frames intended changes, resource needs, and success measures

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

What you take back to work

  1. Team charter template
  2. Interdependence mapping worksheet
  3. RAPID decision protocol
  4. Psychological safety diagnostic
  5. After-action review guide
  6. Thirty-day teaming action plan

Who should attend

  • Functional Managers — coordinate delivery through colleagues outside their direct authority
  • Programme and Project Managers — align specialists, sponsors and workstreams around shared outcomes
  • Team Leaders — establish productive norms for new, changing or distributed teams
  • Transformation Managers — lead cross-functional change where assumptions and priorities conflict
  • Operational Leaders — improve escalation, learning and coordination during time-critical work
  • Senior Technical Specialists — influence decisions and contribute expertise within multidisciplinary groups

Skills and tools covered

Collaborative leadershipPsychological safetyCross-functional coordinationDecision qualityConflict resolutionTeam learning

Tools and standards

Cynefin Framework, RAPID Decision Model, Ladder of Inference, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce models, followed by case analysis, group exercises, simulations and structured reflection. Participants work with scenarios involving cross-functional delivery, competing stakeholder demands, operational failures and distributed collaboration. Facilitators guide diagnosis of communication patterns, decision bottlenecks and conflict sources, then provide feedback on practical responses. Application planning connects the methods to each participant's current team or project, with peer consultation used to test assumptions and implementation choices.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience contributing to, supervising or coordinating a team, project, programme or operational process. They should be familiar with common workplace meetings, stakeholder interactions and basic performance expectations. Prior experience in a formal leadership role is useful but not essential; individual contributors with significant cross-functional responsibilities will benefit. No psychology qualification, organisational development background, project management certification or prior study of leadership theory is required. Participants should bring a current or recent collaboration challenge that can inform their application planning.

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 have experience working in teams, projects, programmes or operational processes. Formal line-management responsibility is not required, but participants need a real collaboration context to which they can apply the methods.

Bring details of a current or recent team, project or cross-functional challenge. Useful material includes a team structure, stakeholder list, operating issue or decision that has proved difficult.

It is designed for managers, project and programme leaders, team leaders, transformation professionals and senior specialists. It is particularly relevant for people who must coordinate colleagues without direct reporting authority.

The course focuses on the specific disciplines required when diverse experts must work together on interdependent tasks. It gives greater attention to psychological safety, decision rights, learning routines, conflict and cross-boundary coordination than broad leadership courses.

Participants leave with templates and a 30-day action plan linked to a current work challenge. They can use the charter, decision protocol, communication methods and review routines immediately with their teams.

Each day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. Time is divided between instructor input, cases, group exercises, simulations, reflection and application planning across the ten modules.

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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