A process of active listening to quickly offer new perspective on your leadership challenge, empowering you to take next steps to address root causes.

As a ministry leader you may face an adaptive challenge - a problem with no clear choices, known solutions, or technical fixes. Our team cares about challenges like yours. To help you take your next step forward we will bring together an interdisciplinary team of peer consultants who will listen carefully and offer possible interpretations and reframing of the challenge. Our hope is to empower you with a list of small action steps from which you can choose 3-4 to do in the next six weeks in order to get unstuck.

Time: 2 hours
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This process was developed by the Kansas Leadership Center and Cambridge Leadership Associates.

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Testimonies

“The strength of unconnected people is that they aren’t constrained by [my immediate] complexities and from 100 ideas might come one that is significant. In any case the exercise was enjoyable and a stimulus to thinking through the issues at hand.”

A physician in Southeast Asia whose hospital was financially devastated by the government lock-down

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“Everyone who participated had active-listening ears and were not judging but giving valuable advice and raising excellent questions in one hour– I found that very effective, uplifting and they gave me new insights."

A refugee worker in Europe

About the Unstuck Peer Consultation Process

The Peer Consultation process, developed by the Kansas Leadership Center and Cambridge Leadership Associates, helps leaders to see their challenge and the issues at stake from new perspectives. This leads to new insights, next steps, and emerging solutions to complex challenges.

Peer Consultation Steps

Step 1: Case Presentation – 5 min.
The presenter shares his or her leadership challenge

Step 2: Data Gathering Questions – 10 min.
Peer consultants ask for further information to understand the challenge

Step 3: Diagnostic Brainstorming – 15 min.
Peer consultants consider alternative interpretations of the challenge and illuminate new ways to understand the case

Step 4: Action Step Brainstorming – 5 min.
Peer consultants offer possible smart risks and experiments for the case presenter to consider in an attempt to make progress.

Step 5: Presenter Reflections – 5 min.
The presenter offers initial reactions and considers possible actions to take

The Peer Consultants

Peer consultants help you to see your challenge from new angles, considering other interpretations of the problem and ways forward. QRI will provide the process facilitator and a notetaker so you can focus on listening for new insights and next steps to consider.

​Our Peer Consultant Partners

Our peer consultants are drawn from the Ralph D. Winter Launch Lab, as well as experienced consultants trained at Kansas Leadership Center and Christar’s Aspire Academy.

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​Technical vs Adaptive Leadership Challenges
   
What's the Difference?

Kansas Leadership Center defines adaptive challenges as:

"Technical problems are easy to recognize....You either know the steps to solve them, or you can depend on someone else to make it happen.

Adaptive challenges are different; they are not clearly defined and require learning to understand what is going on....Systems will need to reinvent themselves."

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Adaptive Leadership (this explanation is taken largely from the CLA site) is a practical leadership framework that helps individuals and organizations adapt and thrive when facing complex challenges. It is being able, both individually and collectively, to take on the gradual but meaningful process of change. It is about diagnosing the essential from the expendable and bringing about a real challenge to the status quo.

When you realize that your organization’s aspirations- the innovations and progress you want to see- cannot be attained through your current approaches, Adaptive Leadership is the framework you need to diagnose, interrupt, and innovate to create the capabilities that match your organizations aspirations. Adaptive Leadership is purposeful evolution in real time. Adaptive Leadership emerged from thirty plus years of research at Harvard University by Dr. Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, defining the frontier of leadership training and development. Our own understanding of Adaptive Leadership and its application to complex problems has occurred through collaboration with the Kansas Leadership Center.