Course techniques

Common Purpose deals with real life issues and insights, so our courses are neither classroom nor lecture based. We go beyond standard leadership models and learn instead from the successes and failures of leaders from all sectors. This takes participants out of their familiar environment so that they re-examine why, when and how they lead, but roots them in reality so that they can translte their learning back into their daily lives.

Our courses are best described as experiential learning. This encourages individual participants to take responsibility and be actively involved in their own learning in a structured way. Participants are thrown into unfamiliar situations with fellow participants from very different backgrounds. They are challenged to analyse the task, the environment and their own, and fellow particpants', responses. They carefully reflect - together and individually - on the experience so that they can use this as a basis for future action.

Common Purpose staff create a learning environment in which people can both 'have' an experience and 'know' it as they are put into different situations and draw learning from them. Given the diversity of the Common Purpose participant groups, there is a real exchange of knowledge across traditional boundaries.

Many tried and tested experiential learning techniques are used - such as facilitated dialogue, peer coaching and role play. We put great care into developing courses tailored for each participant group in each local area.

This approach allows participants to practice leadership as they go and, because the experience is so close to reality, it is easier to transfer the learning into reality. For many it is a delight - after many experiences of learning by sitting, listening and modeling - to learn in new ways. Participants also enjoy the local nature of the experience as well as the challenge to look outwards on Quests. By using experiential learning techniques we also make the diversity of the participant group an essential and exciting - rather than frightening - factor in the learning process.

All our courses run under the Chatham House Rule to encourage free debate.

Participants are also asked to abide by the Common Purpose course conventions.

Real life case studies: Participants are challenged to find solutions to unfamiliar and complex problems. These are likely to be about very real local issues. In most cases the people who make the decisions from the many stakeholder groups will develop the case study with Common Purpose staff and then attend on the day to advise and give feedback on the participants' findings.

Quests: We take participants to cities in other parts of the UK and in other countries so that they put together the jigsaw that is the new place by meeting with its leaders. On their return they will analyse and reassess their own place.

Immersions: A period of time going deep into an organisation which is very unfamiliar to the participant, requiring him or her to develop ideas or solutions which will work in this new and strange environment.

Action Learning Groups: Participants form small groups over the length of the course. They meet regularly to discuss their own actual leadership challenges and work on them together. This is a particularly powerful experience given the diversity within the group. It guarantees that very different approaches will be considered. Action Learning Groups work well alongside Peer Coaching on the courses.

Simulation: We have developed a simulation experience which we tailor to the local situation. The aim is to challenge participants to work out how the microcosm of the place in which they are based works and how the many stakeholders interconnect. From this they must negotiate partnerships that will benefit the place as a whole. Contributors from many sectors join in to offer insights and question assumptions.

Diversity Exercise: The diversity exercise is a structured group activity that uses deliberately contentious statements to get the group expressing different opinions. The exercise is designed to reveal different points of view, how leaders respond to difference and how they overcome their own biases in different situations.

As participants often work in groups, individual learning logs, storytelling and 360 feedback are used to help participants to assess their learning.

Masterclasses: An opportunity for participants to ask tough questions and interview role models and experts in different areas of leadership and a variety of sectors within the local area.