Leadership Fluency

Why This Workshop?

When you step into a leadership role, you take on four distinct areas of responsibility: holding and communicating vision, defining outcomes and targets, running the business, and developing talent.

Each requires a different type of conversation—leading, directing, managing, or coaching.

What makes this hard is that in any given moment, you need to sense which conversation the situation calls for. Does this person need you to connect them to purpose and possibility? Do they need a clear outcome defined? Do they need structure and accountability? Or do they need space to discover their own answer?

Most leaders default to the conversations that feel most natural to them.

The visionary keeps casting vision when people need clear targets. The directive leader sets outcomes when people need inspiration. The process-oriented leader creates structure when people need clarity about what success looks like. The naturally coaching leader asks questions when someone just needs a decision.

Leadership fluency develops through practice and reflection.

This workshop creates space to experience the distinctions between leading, directing, managing, and coaching conversations, map your current challenges through each lens, and build awareness of your patterns and possibilities. You’ll leave with expanded range and the ability to consciously choose your response rather than default to habit.

Who this is for

This workshop is designed for leaders who have a foundation in leading, directing, managing, and coaching and are ready to develop greater fluency in moving between them.

You’ve been in a leadership role long enough to know your strengths and recognize your go-to mode. Maybe you’re a director navigating increasing complexity, a senior manager building your range, or an executive refining how you show up.

Whatever your seniority, you’ve started realize that the way you lead isn’t always producing the results you want. Sometimes you leave conversations surprised by what happened (or what didn't happen) wondering where the gap in understanding, communication, or execution came from.

The solution isn't necessarily in saying things more clearly or managing more closely, but in choosing the right conversation for each situation. When leaders have the fluency to step into leading, directing, managing, and coaching as needed, conversations are transformed and results follow.

This workshop serves leaders who:

• Have responsibility for teams, projects, or functions (at any level)
• Feel exhausted from having to manage everything so closely
• Want to expand their conversational capacity beyond their go-to mode
• Are navigating situations that require flexibility in how they show up
• Value experiential learning and are willing to work with their real challenges

Whether you’re newer to leadership with a solid foundation or a seasoned executive deepening your craft, this work meets you where you are and helps you expand what’s possible.

What you can expect

This workshop combines experiential learning with conceptual frameworks to help you expand your leadership range in a supported environment.

You’ll work with real leadership challenges—both your own and case studies that mirror organizational complexity—to discover the distinctions between leading, directing, managing, and coaching through direct experience. Through hands-on practice you’ll get familiar with different approaches and observe what each reveals, building understanding that goes beyond theoretical knowledge.

Through structured exercises and reflection, you’ll map your current challenges through multiple lenses to see what you might be missing. You’ll identify which conversations feel most natural to you and where you want to expand your range. This includes developing awareness of how different leadership modes appear in your body and behavior—the somatic dimension that often goes unnoticed but deeply shapes how you lead.

The workshop creates space to practice all four roles in a setting where experimentation is encouraged. You’ll develop your capacity to sense what’s needed in each moment rather than automatically reverting to your go-to mode.

You’ll leave with practical integration practices designed for daily leadership—ways to continue building your fluency without requiring separate development time—and a clearer awareness of your strengths, edges, and the conscious choices available to you.

Syllabus

Leadership Fluency builds capacity through progressive layers of experience and practice, drawing from organizational development, experiential learning, and embodied leadership practices.

Pre-work

Brief reflective exercises to surface your current leadership challenges and identify situations where you’re unsure which approach serves best. This preparation ensures you arrive ready to work with real complexity.

Leadership Fluency Framework

Learn the distinctions between four fundamental types of leadership conversations—leading (vision and meaning), directing (outcomes and targets), managing (structure and clarity), and coaching (discovery and growth)—and develop the capacity to recognize what different situations need.

Scenarios and Case Studies

Practice recognizing and responding to different leadership situations through structured scenarios. Work with case studies that mirror organizational complexity, exploring how different approaches create different outcomes.

Real Leadership Challenge

Map and work with a current leadership challenge you're facing, examining it through multiple lenses and practicing different responses. Receive peer consultation to expand how you see the situation and what's possible.

Learning Plan

Identify your go-to mode, recognize where you want to expand your range, and create specific practices to continue developing your leadership fluency in daily work.

30 Day Check-in

A follow-up session to reflect on what you’ve noticed, what’s shifted in your leadership, and how to continue building your range. Share insights with the cohort and troubleshoot challenges.

Logistics

• 4 hour intensive workshop via Zoom
• Pre-work to surface current leadership challenges and go-to modes before the session
• Experiential learning through scenarios, case studies, and peer consultation
• Comprehensive reference materials including frameworks and integration practices
• 30-day integration check-in to support ongoing development
• Workshop recording
• $649, with discounts for folks in non-profits and government services

For Teams and Companies

I run Leadership Fluency in-house for organizations that want to support their leaders in becoming more adept at inspiring others, defining clear outcomes, running the business, and developing talent. If you would like to run this program for your team, please reach out.