Transformational Leadership Masterclass Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Advanced Certificate on completion
Who attends Executive Directors, Senior Managers 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-135

Before you join: Participants should have substantial management or leadership experience, typically including responsibility for teams, budgets, programmes, functions or major 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 deliver results while changing how people think, decide and work. This becomes difficult when formal authority is insufficient, stakeholder interests conflict, culture discourages challenge, and transformation programmes compete for attention. Leaders must interpret uncertain situations, build commitment across boundaries, make difficult choices visible, and create conditions in which others assume responsibility rather than wait for direction.

This masterclass develops the judgement and practices required to lead significant organisational change. Participants examine adaptive leadership, vertical development, strategic narrative, sponsorship, political dynamics, culture, senior-team effectiveness, decision quality, coaching and succession. They apply named frameworks including Heifetz’s adaptive leadership model, Immunity to Change, Kotter’s eight steps, Cynefin, RACI and GROW. The focus is on selecting the right intervention, not merely applying a familiar leadership style.

Teaching combines focused instructor briefings, cases from public services, financial institutions, multinational businesses and NGOs, peer challenge, group analysis, simulations and structured reflection. Participants work with a live leadership challenge throughout the programme and leave with a personal leadership charter, a transformation agenda, stakeholder and sponsor maps, a change narrative, and a 90-day application plan. A certificate of completion is issued to participants who complete the course.

The course is designed for experienced leaders who already manage significant responsibilities and now need to influence enterprise-level outcomes. It is particularly relevant where change depends on collaboration among executives, functions, regulators, partners, employees or communities.

What you will be able to do

  • Diagnose adaptive leadership challenges using Heifetz’s technical and adaptive distinction
  • Construct an Immunity to Change map for a significant leadership objective
  • Create a strategic change narrative using future-back planning and message architecture
  • Design a transformation sponsorship model using Kotter’s eight-step framework
  • Map stakeholder power, interests and influence strategies for contested decisions
  • Improve decision quality using Cynefin, premortems and red-team challenge
  • Establish senior-team decision rights using RACI and team-charter methods
  • Produce a 90-day transformational leadership application plan with leading indicators

Benefits of attending

For you

  • A clearer leadership purpose linked to organisational mandate and personal non-negotiables
  • Practical methods for influencing powerful stakeholders without relying on formal authority
  • Greater confidence handling resistance, conflict and competing executive priorities
  • A disciplined approach to developing successors through coaching, delegation and exposure
  • A 90-day plan for demonstrating visible leadership change after the course

For your organisation

  • Stronger sponsorship and accountability for strategic transformation programmes
  • Earlier identification of stakeholder resistance, dependency risks and cultural barriers
  • Better senior-team decisions through explicit criteria, dissent and decision rights
  • More consistent leadership messages during periods of uncertainty and organisational change
  • Improved internal leadership pipeline through deliberate coaching and succession actions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can distinguish adaptive challenges from technical problems and diagnose the system sustaining them.

  • Transformational versus transactional leadership through Bass and Avolio’s four I's
  • Leadership system diagnosis using culture, strategy, talent, and operating-model evidence
  • Distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges using Heifetz’s diagnostic lens
  • Authority, leadership, and informal influence mapped through stakeholder dependency analysis
  • Personal leadership purpose tested against institutional mandate and stakeholder expectations
  • Systemic patterns identified with causal-loop diagrams and reinforcing feedback loops

Participants can identify behavioural patterns that limit their leadership range and plan targeted development experiments.

  • Immunity to Change map linking improvement goals and competing commitments
  • Distinguish protective routines from valid constraints through ladder-of-inference inquiry
  • Vertical development assessed using action logics and meaning-making capacity
  • Heat experiences selected to test assumptions without creating avoidable organisational risk
  • Peer feedback contracted with confidentiality, candour, and observable behavioural evidence
  • Developmental edge translated into weekly experiments and reflection prompts

Participants can communicate a credible direction that connects strategic choices to shared purpose and action.

  • Strategic intent converted into a credible change narrative and priorities
  • Future-back planning connects desired outcomes, milestones, capabilities, and present choices
  • Sensemaking messages separate facts, interpretations, uncertainties, and commitments
  • Use the Golden Circle to connect purpose, choices, and contribution
  • Strategic stories constructed around tension, choice, consequence, and shared agency
  • Message architecture tested for audience relevance, credibility, and behavioural direction

Participants can structure a transformation programme with clear sponsorship, readiness measures and benefits tracking.

  • Kotter’s eight steps adapted to complex, multi-stakeholder transformation programmes
  • Change portfolio separates enterprise shifts, local initiatives, and business-as-usual improvements
  • Readiness assessment scores sponsorship, capacity, commitment, and implementation conditions
  • Build a sponsor coalition with explicit roles, decisions, and escalation routes
  • Transition risks tracked through assumptions, dependencies, resistance signals, and mitigations
  • Benefits realisation measures adoption, capability, service, financial, and trust outcomes

Participants can build influence strategies for stakeholders with competing interests, authority and incentives.

  • Political mapping identifies formal authority, informal brokers, and veto holders
  • Stakeholder salience assessed through power, legitimacy, urgency, and network position
  • Interest-based negotiation separates positions, interests, options, and objective criteria
  • Influence strategies matched to supporters, persuadables, blockers, and critical neutrals
  • Difficult conversations planned using the SBI model and mutual-purpose framing
  • Ethical influence boundaries tested against public commitments and decision rights

Participants can identify culture signals and establish leadership routines that support speaking up and accountability.

  • Culture diagnosed through artefacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions
  • Psychological safety assessed through speaking-up, learning, inclusion, and response patterns
  • SCARF threats and rewards considered during high-stakes communication design
  • Inclusive leadership routines counter status bias, affinity bias, and silence
  • Accountability conversations distinguish intent, impact, repair, and repeat commitments
  • Culture signals aligned across leader behaviour, decisions, recognition, and consequences

Participants can improve senior-team performance through explicit purpose, decision rights and constructive conflict.

  • Senior-team charter defines enterprise purpose, membership, authority, and meeting cadence
  • Collective leadership roles clarified using RACI and decision-rights matrices
  • Constructive conflict governed through protocols for dissent, challenge, and closure
  • Team effectiveness reviewed using Lencioni’s five dysfunctions diagnostic
  • Cross-functional dependencies managed with interface agreements, handoffs, and service levels
  • Board and executive interactions prepared through decision papers and pre-wiring

Participants can select decision approaches suited to uncertainty, complexity, risk and reversibility.

  • Cynefin categorises contexts before selecting leadership and decision approaches
  • Decision quality improved through premortems, red teams, and dissent protocols
  • Bias interruption addresses overconfidence, confirmation bias, groupthink, and escalation
  • Strategic choices documented with decision criteria, trade-offs, and reversible options
  • Scenario planning tests strategic responses against plausible disruptive futures
  • Decision review distinguishes process quality from outcome luck and hindsight

Participants can grow leadership capacity through coaching, calibrated delegation and succession planning.

  • Situational Leadership II matches direction and support to follower readiness
  • Coaching conversations use GROW questions, active listening, and contracting
  • Delegation levels agreed through decision boundaries, checkpoints, and risk tolerance
  • Succession slates assess performance, potential, readiness, and development exposure
  • Talent conversations separate observed evidence from attribution and reputation
  • Leadership bench plans assign sponsors, experiences, feedback, and review dates

Participants can consolidate course methods into a measurable plan for leading a current transformation challenge.

  • Transformation agenda integrates strategic outcomes, stakeholder commitments, and behavioural shifts
  • Personal leadership charter records purpose, non-negotiables, strengths, and development edge
  • First ninety days sequenced through priorities, sponsors, signals, and reviews
  • Leading indicators define adoption, trust, capability, and delivery progress
  • Accountability partner agreements establish challenge, confidentiality, and follow-through
  • Application plan links weekly actions to evidence, reflection, and adjustment

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

What you take back to work

  1. Adaptive leadership diagnostic
  2. Immunity to Change map
  3. Strategic change narrative template
  4. Stakeholder influence and sponsor map
  5. Senior-team decision-rights matrix
  6. 90-day transformational leadership plan

Who should attend

  • Executive Directors — leading enterprise priorities requiring cross-functional commitment
  • Senior Managers — moving from operational control to wider organisational influence
  • Transformation Directors — sponsoring change where adoption and culture determine results
  • Business Unit Heads — aligning strategy, talent and delivery through uncertainty
  • Public Sector Leaders — building support across political, professional and community interests
  • High-Potential Leaders — preparing for broader authority and enterprise-level accountability

Skills and tools covered

Adaptive leadership diagnosisTransformational change leadershipStakeholder influenceStrategic decision-makingSenior-team effectivenessLeadership development planning

Tools and standards

Heifetz Adaptive Leadership, Immunity to Change, Kotter’s 8-Step Process, Cynefin Framework

How the course runs

Training methodology

The programme uses short faculty briefings to introduce each framework, followed by sector-relevant case work, small-group analysis, leadership simulations and structured peer challenge. Participants test methods against a current strategic issue, such as service reform, merger integration, digital change, regulatory remediation or culture renewal. Reflection periods connect feedback to observable leadership behaviour. The final sessions convert learning into a personal leadership charter, transformation agenda and 90-day application plan with measures for progress.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have substantial management or leadership experience, typically including responsibility for teams, budgets, programmes, functions or major stakeholder relationships. They should be familiar with organisational strategy, performance management, change initiatives and difficult workplace conversations. The course assumes participants can reflect candidly on their own leadership behaviour and bring a current organisational challenge for application. No formal leadership qualification, psychometric certification, project-management credential or prior study of change-management models is required.

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

This is an advanced course for people who already lead teams, functions, programmes or major stakeholder relationships. Participants should be comfortable discussing real organisational challenges and receiving candid peer feedback.

Bring details of one current leadership or transformation challenge that requires action after the course. This may involve a strategic change, difficult stakeholder relationship, culture issue, senior-team problem or succession concern.

It suits executives, directors, senior managers, transformation leaders and high-potential leaders preparing for broader responsibility. It is less suitable for new supervisors seeking introductory people-management skills.

The course concentrates on senior-level judgement: adaptive challenges, power, culture, strategic choices and collective leadership. It goes beyond foundational supervision, project planning or standard communication techniques.

Participants use a live organisational issue to test the methods during the programme. They leave with practical documents that can be used in sponsor discussions, team meetings, decision forums and development conversations.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. Time is divided between faculty input, cases, simulations, peer analysis, reflection and application planning across 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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