What are Thought Leader Forums
Thought Leader Forums are small-scale interactive learning events that bring together business thought leaders, executives, the Creative Leadership Forum faculty, and artists in order to engage in exploration and dialogue on a current leadership topic,issue, or question.
The process of inquiry is facilitated through a specific artistic medium that has been identified to best compliment the particular topic / issue / question.
The Thought Leader Forums are also designed to assist in identifying and exploring new learning processes, content development for internal organizational development initiatives, relationships / team building, as well as the formation of new networks and the publication of articles and research papers.
Some of the many benefits of the Forums include:
- A novel approach to inquiry around an organizational challenge or question
- A chance for leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of business to meet and build new relationships and networks
- The development of non-traditional approaches to defining and discovering new innovative leadership capacities
- A valuable opportunity for personal learning and professional development
The purpose of a Thought Leader Forum is to
- work with peers - business executives, academics, consultants, creative practitioners - to surface existing knowledge and understandings in organisations around this theme
- explore and experiment with methodologies and processes around the theme through presentations by experts, followed by facilitated participant dialogues
- find new ways of creating new knowledge around the use of arts based processes and creative practices generally.
One of the most unique elements of the Thought Leader Forum process is it’s utilization of artistic process as a means
to accelerate group learning. From our experience arts-based learning processes and exploratory artistic practices
considerably increase and enhance group interaction and understanding. Selected artistic processes (e.g. theatre arts,
visual arts, music, creative writing) can be used as a highly engaging and dynamic way to structure group interaction,
resulting in a deeper and broader understanding of the issue / theme / question.
Learning format
Thought Leader Forums are typically held over three days and are structured as a dynamic interplay between creative (right
brain) and analytical / debriefing (left brain) sessions that enhance whole-brain thinking. This process of divergence and
convergence creates a powerful Action-Reflection praxis:
• Right Brain - Divergent thinking – generating lots of options
By engaging in creative & experiential activities participants experience a process that is rich in surfacing right brain
characteristics: Gut feeling, synthesizing, visualizing, visual memory, recognizing patterns, relating things to the present,
integrating many inputs at once, holistic perceptions or thinking, seeing whole solutions at once, seeing similarities,
heightening intuition.
• Left Brain - Convergent thinking– judging options, focusing thoughts, making decisions
By engaging in debriefing of the creative experiences through journaling, reflection, and group dialogue, the
participants experience a process that is rich in surfacing left brain characteristics: Abstracting, idea-linking, analyzing,
categorizing, logical reasoning.
Collaboration to Commercialization Pathway
A Thought Leader Forum constitutes the first phase, Collaboration - Incubation, of the five phases within the Creative Leadership Forum Design methodology of idea to action:
1) Collaboration /Incubation
2) Create/Project Development
3) Alpha Testing
4) Beta Testing
5) Commercialisation/Viable