STAND-UP FOR LEADERSHIP:
complexity, compassion, and comedy

Navigating complexity means focusing on patterns, not problems. It helps us engage with ourselves, as well as the colleagues and environments we cannot predict or control. It inspires and enables us to see, understand, and influence change as it happens, even in the most chaotic of times. As a leader, it helps you know when to flex and when to hold firm.

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Comedy helps you notice and articulate patterns of experiences that most people take for granted. Through the lens of comedy, you can understand how those patterns may change as they expand and emerge across time and space. When you are laughing, you see new things and see old things in new ways. Laughter inspires new energy and helps you lead toward emerging possibilities.

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And doing both comedy and navigating complexity with compassion leads us to a different quality of communication, thought, and action for people, power and possibility. So we’re going to put compassion at the heart of this course.

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As a participant, you are invited to bring one of your wicked issues. One for which you feel stuck. An issue that if you could find a way forward, would be deeply meaningful to you and your organisation.

 

Day 1: Compassionate comedy for Leaders

 

“Compassionate comedy expands our minds, stretches our hearts, and heals our communities." – Belina Raffy

 

Actively finding 'the funny' helps us to more deeply notice and examine a pattern, especially a pattern which creates tension. And what we notice can often unlock our fixed, "just get it done" mindset and shift us to a mindset which is more filled with creativity and possibility.

 

On our first day, we:

• Discover the expansion in our perception of possibilities when we separate "serious" and "solemn".

• Notice what areas of our serious work need more joy, motivation, lift and expansive creativity.

• Explore what is silly and sublime about the patterns in our organisations and the world. 

• Workshop our first jokes related to our wicked issue.

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Day 2: Complexity for Leaders

 

You only embrace complexity when you begin to think differently.” – Glenda Eoyang

 

Our linear thinking is not well suited to the complex, dynamic world that we belong in. Trying to operate in that way is frustrating and sometimes funny, but not effective.

 

On the second day we:

• Find new options for action when we shift problems to patterns.

• Learn new models (to see) and methods (to influence) change in complex human systems.

• Practice analysing patterns to see simplicity in complexity, to find energy in difference, and to identify possibilities for powerful leadership action.

• Refine and deepen our insights into our wicked issues through refining our jokes.

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Day 3: Compassion, Comedy and Complexity for Leaders

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​​​"Compassion creates a regenerative, productive ecology of action." – Belina and Glenda.

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On our third day, we:

• Lean in to deepening the compassion of our thinking and speaking around the patterns we live and work in, and the bigger picture.

• Engage with the sometimes challenging constraints of reality to see how our capacity for comedy, complexity and compassion help create a new imagined future.

• Have our own mini-comedy show where you share insights into your wicked issues, the patterns, and starring you and your fellow participants.

• Consider what it will mean to share what we have experienced with those we love and lead.

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