Client Context
An established engineering firm approached us during a period of significant industry disruption. The business was grappling with the need to evolve its leadership approach in response to growing ambiguity, shifting workforce expectations, and increasingly complex technical challenges.
To remain competitive and sustainable, they recognised the importance of developing leaders who could confidently navigate the unknown — not just manage today’s work, but lead tomorrow’s change.
Our Approach
We partnered with the client to design and deliver a leadership development program for a cohort of senior leaders, in collaboration with RMIT University in Melbourne.
The program was grounded in adaptive leadership — a proven framework that helps leaders step beyond technical expertise and embrace the discomfort of complexity, change, and uncertainty.
The focus wasn’t on adding more knowledge. It was about building the mindsets, behaviours, and trust needed to lead through ambiguity, engage diverse perspectives, and deliver innovation in the face of pressure.
What We Delivered
- A tailored, multi-session leadership capability uplift program
- Practical, behaviourally anchored learning — not theory
- Real-world exploration of the client’s most pressing challenges
- Support for embedding new ways of thinking and leading back in the business
Why Adaptive Leadership?
Adaptive leadership helps organisations and their leaders:
- Build resilience in uncertain times by fostering flexibility and experimentation
- Empower people at all levels by shifting from command-and-control to collaborative leadership
- Address root causes of cultural or strategic friction rather than surface-level symptoms
- Promote continuous learning, especially in high-pressure or high-stakes environments
- Build trust and engagement by creating safe space for reflection and challenge
- Foster innovation through calculated risk-taking and collective problem-solving
The Result
Leaders walked away with a new shared language for change, a stronger sense of cross-functional alignment, and a toolkit of adaptive leadership behaviours they could immediately apply.
More importantly, the program began to shift how leadership showed up across the business — creating space for greater curiosity, courage, and collaboration.
What This Means for You
If you’re leading an organisation through change — or preparing your team to face the challenges that haven’t yet emerged — adaptive leadership may be the difference between reacting to change and leading it.
Whether you’re a CEO, HRD, or operational leader, we’d love to talk about how we can help equip your next wave of leaders to thrive in complexity and lead with clarity.
Drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you.
We’re helping CEOs and senior leader in small-to-medium organisations overcome challenges with growth, change or chaos by enabling leaders and organisations to drive their success. If you are keen to have a chat, then enquire below.
