Mastering the Art of Leadership

The one-week course Mastering the Art of Leadership course provides participants with the space to reflect on and develop their leadership skills together with peers and facilitators. The course concept is based on the idea that a guided journey, which links personal values, personality and experience working in fragile environments with your leadership skills, is the best way to improve and eventually ‘master’ leadership.

Peace operations of the UN, EU, and OSCE, as well as other international interventions in fragile environments operate in a context that is characterised by diversity, insecurity, fragility and uncertainty. Highly skilled leadership is all the more crucial in these environments, as a decisive factor in effective mandate implementation, the legitimacy and reputation of international actors, and the welfare and well-being of staff.

The course broadly follows the logic of “Theory U”, a concept developed by Otto Scharmer.

PLEASE NOTE: This course focuses on leadership, not on management.

• To gain an awareness of behavioural patterns and automatic reactions that affected your past leadership experience;
• To apply new tools to break with behavioural patterns that have posed leadership challenges in the past;
• To gain insight into the perspectives of colleagues from different backgrounds (civilian, police and military) on leadership challenges and successes;
• To gain motivation, insight and concrete approaches on how to improve your performance as a well-rounded leader;
• To heighten your awareness of “self” and “team” as well as the “wider context” in a group situation, gaining insights into team dynamics and your personal influence and reaction to them.

The course is directed at civilian, police and military experts who have held leadership positions in peace operations and who are interested in further developing their leadership skills.

Please note: Members of the ZIF Expert Pool (German nationals only) have to be nominated by ZIF Human Resources to participate in this course.
 

• Reflecting on perceptions;
• Roots of personal leadership;
• Emotional needs ;
• Leading intercultural teams and intercultural communication;
• Strengthening team resilience;
• Creating a team vision;
• Empowerment and motivation;
• Coaching und feedback;
• Strategies for self-care as a leader.

In order to participate in the course, you must be nominated by a member of the German Training Partner Platform.

Location:

This course takes place at different locations in Germany.

ZIF Trainings:

ZIF Trainings are practice-oriented and reflect the operational reality of peace operations and (post-)conflict areas through exercises, role plays and scenario-based courses. Moreover, our trainings focus on the main areas of competence outlined in the ZIF Concept “Civilian Expert”. Additionally, we base our courses on contemporary concepts of adult education and peer learning. We try to create a joint learning space in which participants and the training team can exchange freely and critically, and which provides room for self-reflection. Another important goal of our courses is to encourage a change of perspective. One way of achieving this is by mainstreaming the comprehensive approach (civilian, police, military), which is made possible through our cooperation within the German Training Partner Platform.