Executive Agility and Resilience Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Advanced Certificate on completion
Who attends Chief executives and executive directors, Business unit leaders 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-198

Before you join: Participants should have substantial management experience and current responsibility for teams, budgets, programmes, operations, strategic initiatives, or senior stakeholder relationships.

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

Senior leaders are expected to make sound decisions before all facts are available, sustain confidence during disruption, and keep teams aligned when priorities shift. The difficulty is not simply managing pressure; it is recognising weak signals, distinguishing reversible from irreversible choices, setting decision boundaries, and recovering enough capacity to lead consistently. Poor executive agility can produce delayed action, confused accountability, avoidable stakeholder conflict, and exhaustion among leaders and teams.

This course develops the judgement, habits, and operating methods needed to lead through uncertainty. Participants use the OODA Loop, Cynefin, scenario planning, RAPID decision roles, pre-mortem analysis, stakeholder mapping, and crisis communication methods. They learn to create fast learning cycles, challenge assumptions without paralysing progress, conduct difficult conversations, manage personal resilience risks, and establish team conditions for candour and constructive dissent.

Instruction combines short expert briefings with realistic cases, facilitated group work, decision simulations, peer challenge, and structured application planning. Cases can be adapted to public services, banking, infrastructure, humanitarian programmes, technology, regulated industries, and multinational operations. Participants leave with an Executive Agility Action Plan, a decision journal template, a resilience risk register, and practical communication and team operating tools for immediate use. The course is delivered over five days in a classroom in 50+ cities or live online, with approximately 6.5 contact hours per day. Participants receive a certificate of completion.

The course is best suited to experienced leaders who hold accountability for strategy, operations, change, risk, people, or major stakeholder relationships and need to lead effectively when conditions are unclear or contested.

What you will be able to do

  • Assess executive agility strengths and constraints using a structured agility diagnostic
  • Interpret weak signals and uncertainty using PESTLE scanning, scenarios, and leading indicators
  • Design decision processes using RAPID roles, decision thresholds, and escalation boundaries
  • Apply OODA Loop and Cynefin methods to time-sensitive strategic decisions
  • Conduct high-stakes stakeholder conversations using message maps, SBI feedback, and interest-based negotiation
  • Build team learning routines using psychological safety practices and after-action reviews
  • Lead crisis communication using incident command roles, first-hour briefings, and verified updates
  • Produce a 30-day Executive Agility Action Plan with measurable experiments and review dates

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Make high-consequence decisions with clearer assumptions, evidence, and escalation criteria
  • Recognise personal overload signals before judgement, behaviour, or health deteriorate
  • Handle senior stakeholder disagreement without avoiding conflict or creating unnecessary escalation
  • Lead teams with greater calm, candour, and direction during operational disruption
  • Create a practical 30-day plan for improving executive decision habits and recovery routines

For your organisation

  • Shorter decision cycles for material issues with clearer ownership and audit trails
  • Earlier identification of emerging risks, weak signals, and strategic assumptions
  • More consistent leadership communication during incidents, restructures, and priority changes
  • Reduced leadership fatigue through explicit recovery practices and workload boundaries
  • Stronger team challenge, learning, and accountability after significant decisions or events

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can distinguish the core components of executive agility and resilience under uncertainty.

  • Strategic agility defined through sensing, deciding, acting, and learning cycles
  • Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and their distinct leadership implications
  • OODA Loop used to shorten decision latency under pressure
  • Cynefin domains matched to appropriate executive decision approaches
  • Personal agility profile assessed against cognitive, emotional, and behavioural patterns
  • Resilience distinguished from endurance, recovery, and sustained performance

Participants can convert external signals into plausible scenarios and decision triggers.

  • Stakeholder signals converted into assumptions, risks, and decision triggers
  • PESTLE scanning focused on material shifts rather than information volume
  • Signal-to-noise criteria for escalating weak signals to executive attention
  • Scenario axes built from high-impact, high-uncertainty external drivers
  • Three plausible futures tested against current strategy and commitments
  • Leading indicators specified with thresholds, owners, and review cadence

Participants can structure timely decisions while preserving appropriate challenge and accountability.

  • Decision rights clarified using RAPID roles and escalation boundaries
  • Reversible and irreversible decisions separated using Type 1 and Type 2
  • Time-boxed decision protocols prevent analysis paralysis during disruption
  • A structured pre-mortem analysis exposes failure assumptions before commitment
  • Decision journals record rationale, uncertainty, dissent, and expected outcomes
  • Red-team challenge tests evidence, options, and unexamined consequences

Participants can create adaptable execution systems that convert evidence into action.

  • Strategic intent translated into guardrails, priorities, and local discretion
  • Objectives and Key Results aligned with volatile strategic priorities
  • Minimum viable experiments framed with hypotheses, measures, and stop rules
  • Portfolio reviews rebalance resources across core, adjacent, and exploratory work
  • Kanban visualisation exposes bottlenecks, work-in-progress, and blocked decisions
  • Weekly learning loops convert evidence into priority and resource changes

Participants can communicate difficult decisions and gain commitment from diverse stakeholders.

  • Stakeholder mapping identifies power, legitimacy, urgency, and conflicting interests
  • SCARF model diagnoses threat and reward responses during change
  • Interest-based negotiation separates positions, interests, options, and objective criteria
  • Message maps organise difficult communications around audience questions and evidence
  • SBI feedback addresses observed behaviour, impact, and required adjustment
  • Listening ladders distinguish downloading, factual listening, empathic listening, and generative listening

Participants can protect decision quality by managing stress, attention, and recovery routines.

  • Stress-performance curve used to identify productive and damaging activation
  • Physiological recovery routines scheduled through sleep, movement, and attention practices
  • Cognitive reappraisal reframes controllable demands without denying material risks
  • Attention management protects executive capacity through boundaries and single-tasking
  • Micro-recovery protocols restore focus between high-stakes meetings and decisions
  • Resilience risk register tracks overload signals, mitigations, and support

Participants can establish team practices that support candour, learning, and distributed authority.

  • Psychological safety conditions established through candour, fallibility, and respectful challenge
  • Team operating agreements define response times, escalation, and meeting norms
  • Conflict styles diagnosed using Thomas-Kilmann modes and situational choices
  • Constructive dissent structured through dissent channels and decision closure
  • After-action reviews separate intended results, actual results, causes, and actions
  • Distributed leadership assigns authority closest to relevant expertise

Participants can organise executive response and communication during a significant incident.

  • Crisis leadership distinguishes urgent stabilisation from longer-term adaptation
  • ISO 22301 continuity concepts connect incident response, recovery, and communications
  • Incident command roles clarify authority, information flow, and operating rhythm
  • First-hour executive briefings establish facts, unknowns, decisions, and accountabilities
  • Stakeholder communication sequences address employees, regulators, customers, and media
  • Rumour control uses verified facts, update intervals, and designated spokespeople

Participants can make and explain difficult trade-offs with ethical discipline and accountability.

  • Ethical decision screens examine harms, rights, fairness, and public defensibility
  • Stakeholder impact assessments surface distributional effects and unintended consequences
  • Speaking-up systems protect challenge, dissent, and escalation without retaliation
  • Bias interrupters counter confirmation, availability, and sunk-cost effects
  • Decision audit trails document evidence, conflicts, approvals, and exceptions
  • Values-based trade-offs communicated with rationale, limits, and accountability

Participants can translate course methods into a measurable plan for a current leadership challenge.

  • Executive agility diagnostic synthesises individual, team, and organisational constraints
  • Priority challenge framed using context, stakes, uncertainty, and decision horizon
  • Thirty-day experiments specify hypotheses, measures, owners, and review dates
  • Personal resilience routines translated into calendar commitments and boundary rules
  • Stakeholder conversations planned using audience, message, objections, and follow-through
  • Peer accountability arrangements set check-ins, evidence, and adjustment triggers

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

What you take back to work

  1. Executive Agility Action Plan
  2. RAPID decision-rights template
  3. Decision journal template
  4. Resilience risk register
  5. Crisis first-hour briefing checklist
  6. Team operating agreement template

Who should attend

  • Chief executives and executive directors — need disciplined judgement during strategic uncertainty
  • Business unit leaders — must align performance, resources, and people through changing priorities
  • Senior public-sector managers — face scrutiny, political constraints, and competing stakeholder demands
  • Programme and transformation directors — need rapid learning cycles across complex change portfolios
  • Risk, compliance, and resilience leaders — must connect emerging risks with executive decision-making
  • Country managers and regional leaders — coordinate distributed teams through disruption and ambiguity

Skills and tools covered

Adaptive decision-makingStrategic sensingExecutive resilienceCrisis leadershipStakeholder communicationTeam learning

Tools and standards

OODA Loop, Cynefin Framework, RAPID Decision Model, SCARF Model

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce decision, resilience, communication, and crisis-leadership methods. Participants analyse realistic cases, work in facilitated groups, test choices through time-pressured simulations, and receive peer and instructor challenge on assumptions and communication choices. Structured reflection links each method to current responsibilities. Individual application planning converts course material into specific decisions, conversations, routines, and 30-day experiments. Delivery can be tailored with sector-relevant cases while retaining the core executive methods.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have substantial management experience and current responsibility for teams, budgets, programmes, operations, strategic initiatives, or senior stakeholder relationships. They should be familiar with routine organisational decision-making and able to discuss a current leadership challenge in a professional setting. Prior formal study in leadership theory, psychology, business continuity, project management, or strategy is not required. The course does not require specialist financial modelling, clinical mental-health knowledge, or previous crisis-command experience.

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

The course is designed for experienced managers and senior leaders with responsibility for people, operations, strategy, risk, programmes, or major stakeholder relationships. Participants do not need prior formal leadership training, but they should be ready to examine real leadership decisions.

Participants should bring a current leadership challenge involving uncertainty, change, stakeholder tension, team performance, or operational risk. No specialist software or technical materials are required; course templates and case materials are provided.

It is most suitable for executives, directors, senior public-sector managers, business unit leaders, transformation leaders, and resilience or risk leaders. It also suits experienced country and regional managers coordinating distributed teams under changing conditions.

General leadership courses commonly focus on management style, delegation, motivation, or performance conversations. This course concentrates on executive judgement, strategic sensing, decision pace, crisis communication, team challenge, and personal capacity under sustained uncertainty.

Participants work with a current leadership issue and convert methods into decision protocols, stakeholder conversations, recovery routines, and measurable experiments. The final application plan sets actions, owners, evidence, and review dates for the following 30 days.

Each day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and includes approximately 6.5 contact hours. The five days cover strategic sensing, decision-making, adaptive execution, stakeholder communication, personal and team resilience, crisis leadership, ethical judgement, and 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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