Leadership Dialogues
Change that makes sense at the edge
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Why Leadership Dialogues?
Leadership Dialogues exists because of a fundamental change in the environment social impact organisations exist in. They increasingly operate under permanent turbulence rather than episodic disruption: funding volatility, geopolitical shifts, rising community need, and demands for measurable outcomes sit in tension with the systemic, relational nature of the core work.
As a result, leaders with decision-making responsibility need to change how they lead. Many leaders developed their approach, formally or through experience, in environments that assumed relative stability and rewarded control, certainty, and linear problem-solving. Those assumptions no longer hold, but the leadership habits they learned throughout their career have become patterned behaviour that is retreated to during times of complexity, confusion and conflict.
Leadership Dialogues starts from the position that the current challenge is not primarily a skills gap, and so cannot be addressed through skills training alone. What is needed is a different kind of development: one that helps leaders examine how their identity, their learned responses under pressure, and their understanding of the systems around them are shaping what they do and why. That means tolerating more ambiguity, not less; working across difference rather than around it; and building the relational capacity on which adaptive leadership depends. The programme does not offer a framework for resolving complexity. It offers a structured space for engaging with it more honestly and a container for uncertainty that allows creativity and curiosity.
Learning arc
Presence
Beginning with the self, we explore your leadership story, habits, and values by getting honest about how they shape how you show up.
Perspective
See the systems you lead within: relationships, power, pressures, and the dynamics that enable or constrain change.
Practice
Through experimentation in real time, we learn by doing, build trust and reciprocity, and leave with the confidence and curiosity to keep learning as we navigate change.
What You’ll Learn
1 Exploring Leadership Identity in Context
In an era of political volatility, economic uncertainty, and shifting social expectations, leadership in the global nonprofit sector demands self-awareness and adaptability. This opening session invites participants to explore their leadership identity - what has shaped it, how it shows up in their current context, and where it may need to evolve.
Through guided reflection and dialogue, participants will examine how their values and leadership approaches align with today’s changing realities. We’ll position leadership as a socially constructed practice shaped by time, place, and system. By situating themselves within this wider understanding, participants will consider how their leadership story both reflects and shapes the systems they inhabit, setting the foundation for growth throughout the series.
Learning Outcomes:
A critical reflection on Leadership as practice.
How your own leadership has been shaped and crafted.
An understanding of where your leadership approach is supportive of the current moment and where it is lacking.
2 Mapping the Leadership Ecosystem
Change rarely happens in isolation. Economic disruptions, shifting power dynamics, and new forms of global cooperation are reshaping the ecosystems in which nonprofit leaders operate. Building on their understanding of leadership identity, participants will map the systems that influence their work, surfacing the relationships, structures, and informal networks that shape how leadership functions across contexts.
This practice reveals sources of influence, hidden barriers, and opportunities for collaboration, helping leaders identify where alignment and leverage are most needed. The session equips participants to act with greater systems awareness and intention amid growing complexity
Learning Outcomes:
The ability to conduct an ecosystem mapping exercise.
How to analyse your ecosystem map and develop appropriate actions.
3 Leading Through Change: From Awareness to Action
Periods of disruption call for leadership that is both reflective and action-oriented. As nonprofits navigate crises from funding volatility to political polarization, leaders must continually adapt how they lead change. This session moves from insight to implementation, guiding participants to identify concrete areas for growth in their practice. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s psychodynamic theories, we’ll explore how unconscious patterns and organizational dynamics can reinforce resistance to change
Through peer coaching and feedback, participants will surface limiting beliefs and experiment with new approaches to leading transformation.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand some of the basics of leadership psychology
Gain experience using Action Learning Sets as a method of learning by doing.
4 Leading with Reciprocity: Building Trust and Mutuality Across Boundaries
As global systems shift, the nature of partnership in the nonprofit sector is being redefined. Effective leadership now requires fostering reciprocity - leading with others rather than over them.
This session explores how mutual accountability, shared decision-making, and co-created approaches can strengthen relationships across boundaries. Participants will contrast transactional and reciprocal models of leadership, examining how shifts from control to co-creation and from compliance to collaboration can unlock collective capacity. Through dialogue and applied exploration, they will identify strategies to operationalize reciprocity and build partnerships that not only withstand uncertainty but generate new possibilities for transformation.
Learning Outcomes:
Discover why reciprocity is essential in external partnerships during times of volatility.
Learn practical leadership practices to strengthen trust and collaboration with partners.
5 Relational Leadership: Strengthening Trust and Relational Authority
In times of systemic flux, relationships manifest stability. This session explores Relational Leadership: leading through connection, trust, and shared meaning. As organizations face rapid change, the ability to build and sustain trust becomes central to collective resilience. Participants will examine how trust is built, maintained, and repaired through practices such as narrative stewardship, conflict fluency, and relational contracting. They will also consider how to cultivate relational authority - influence grounded in credibility, empathy, and reliability rather than hierarchy.
Learning Outcomes:
Tools to build and sustain trust, foster learning and align teams amid change.
6 Theory in Practice
The concluding session of the Leadership Dialogues series brings the journey full circle, moving from reflection to application. As nonprofit leaders navigate complex political, economic, and social shifts, the capacity to experiment becomes essential.
In this session, participants will apply and test key concepts from the series through realistic scenarios drawn from their own contexts, strengthening their ability to translate insight into action. Theory in Practice reinforces that leadership is a continual cycle of experimentation, reflection, and adaptation, inviting participants to leave not with fixed answers, but with the curiosity and confidence to keep learning through change.
Learning Outcomes:
How key concepts from the programme can be applied in practice.
How to access Leadership Dialogues
Networks and large organisations have benefited from bespoke cohorts delivered exclusively to select audiences. Contact us to discuss these options.
Every year there is a selection of public opportunities to engage. Click here to see what is up coming.
Meet Your Facilitators
Rachel Logel-Carmichael
“Leadership growth begins with investing in oneself, but it flourishes through shared learning.
Leadership Dialogues offers nonprofit leaders that rare opportunity to learn with peers, explore new tools, and strengthen our ability to navigate uncertainty together.”
Rachel Logel Carmichael is a senior nonprofit leader, strategist, and certified change management professional with over two decades of experience advancing human rights, humanitarian action, and international cooperation.
As Principal at Ephemeris Strategy, she helps nonprofits design and deliver strategies that strengthen impact, growth, and systems change.
Driven by the belief that effective leadership is key to sustainable social impact, she supports leaders to navigate disruption, build resilience, and foster healthy, purpose driven organizations.
Previously, Rachel held senior roles with Save the Children and World Vision, leading major international programs and humanitarian responses across Canada, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Her work consistently aligns strategy with purpose and cultivates leadership cultures that enable people to thrive and deliver lasting change.
Thomas Jepson-Lay
“Turbulent change is unforgiving, the Leadership Dialogues is an opportunity for me to help others experience the same successes I have in navigating uncertainty whilst staying connected to your purpose”
Thomas is a leadership development professional and former humanitarian leader with nearly two decades of experience guiding teams through large scale crisis responses and organizational change.
He now helps purpose-driven leaders build comfort with discomfort, developing the clarity, courage, and adaptability needed to lead through turbulence and complexity. Drawing on his experience leading responses to some of the world’s most acute emergencies, Thomas supports leaders to deepen awareness, strengthen relationships, and create conditions for people and organizations to thrive amid uncertainty.
Before founding his own leadership practice, Thomas held senior roles with Save the Children and other international organizations, leading multi-country programs and transformations across East and Southern Africa. His work continues to focus on helping leaders align purpose, impact, and resilience to create meaningful and lasting change.
Leadership Footprint
Your Questions, Answered
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The intention of this six week journey is to learn, whether that is through facilitated sharing of information or from peer perspectives. The space will give leaders the opportunity to explore concepts they are grappling with as they navigate a changing social-impact sector.
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The format, the catalyzing moment and the facilitators provide a unique experience: the journey arc has been thoughtfully developed to mobilize around topics, with participants using their experiences to connect; the facilitator have lived-experience as nonprofit leaders working in complexity.
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Due to the nature of the format, which will involve dialoguing with the facilitators and peers, the sessions will not be recorded. Each session will build on the one before; the participant will receive a better quality experience by attending each session. Participant feedback also notes the disruption caused by some people missing sessions so we encourage people to attend every session for their own experience and that of fellow cohort members.
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There will be standalone webinars later in 2026 and there are plans for a self learning online option. However the six session experience will remain the focus for the peer to peer learning.