Challenge

The Network for College Success (NCS) supports high schools in improving student success and graduation rates, particularly with underrepresented and socioeconomically challenges students. NCS sought to develop leadership practices and behaviors across all levels of their organization to address critical challenges, including working across departmental silos and engaging with diverse stakeholders who held differing goals. The team needed tools to enhance collaboration, align efforts, and tailor their approaches to the complex, adaptive challenges they faced. 

Interventions

CLA facilitated a two-day Adaptive Leadership workshop for the Network for College Success, focusing on critical concepts such as leadership behaviors, authority versus leadership, and distinguishing technical and adaptive challenges. The engagement included: 

• Workshops: Sessions introduced key adaptive leadership concepts, fostering a shared language of leadership. Participants learned to see themselves as leaders regardless of position, navigate the productive zones of disequilibrium, and facilitate the success of others. 

• Adaptive Capacity Profile (ACP): Team members completed the ACP assessment, gaining insights into their adaptive behaviors. The debrief helped the team understand when and how to adjust their approaches to align with specific challenges. 

• Breakout Sessions: Small groups focused on applying these principles to real-world challenges, including working across silos and managing competing stakeholder priorities. 

Impact

The workshop equipped NCS with actionable strategies to navigate complexity and foster alignment across diverse goals. Participants gained a deeper understanding of how their approaches to challenges could be leveraged or adapted for greater effectiveness. The engagement fostered increased team cohesion and positioned NCS to more effectively tackle adaptive challenges in their mission to support high school success.