Riding Tigers and Eating Elephants

Programs for Leading Effectively and Sustainably During Chaos

What got you here won’t get you there. – Marshall Goldsmith
Who rides on the back of a tiger cannot dismount. – Chinese Proverb
The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. – Creighton Abrams

We have learned – because Culture has told us so – the only way to succeed is to work harder, push to do more and do it faster and better than anyone else. As a result, leaders committed to excellence often resemble someone trying to ride a charging tiger without falling off, while simultaneously attempting to eat an elephant.

Unquestioned urgency has become the norm, and when real urgency occurs, people often lack the reserves needed to ramp up to effectively meet:

  • The rapid pace of change in today’s world, and –
  • The increasingly complex challenges accompanying change.

Leaders tell me they are in uncertainty overload – and that was before a global pandemic spiked uncertainty to new levels.

They also share feeling bone weary and at times, unable to muster the passion that brought them into their careers. Fuses are shorter and emotional reactivity is far more pronounced, both for leaders and those they lead.

Compounding the problem? Trying to lead from yesterday’s perspectives and practices, because yesterday’s approaches won’t work with tomorrow’s challenges. They aren’t working now with the challenges we face today.

So what is a committed, well-intentioned leader to do, especially once you’ve decided you can no longer keep throwing yourself against the walls that have been stopping you?

Keep reading. Riding Tigers, Eating Elephants may be exactly what you need.

Delivered in a distance-learning, modularized format, the RTEE programs offer leaders a facilitated experience and framework for updating old narratives, boosting emotional literacy and evolving conversations – all critical aspects of leading teams through highly variable and unfamiliar landscapes.
RTEE programs provide leaders with the critical awareness and skills required for successfully navigating unexpected and disruptive change, particularly when faced with escalating or prolonged uncertainty, so those leaders are able to:
Continue to evolve and advance missions. Translation: Leaders and teams can continue to move forward during chaotic times.
Build the crucial capacities needed for resilience and adaptivity. Translation: Leaders experience less stress and overwhelm, and up-level sustainable performance.
Continue to deepen and broaden in-house talent pools and knowledge base. Translation: Leaders Improve talent retention, improve cross-silo information and knowledge sharing, advance operational resilience.
Enhance team cohesiveness, resilience and effectiveness. Translation: Team members experience less lost productivity due to frustration and conflict as trust and engagement improve.
Elevate organizational culture from “culture by default” to an intentional, co-created culture designed to elicit the best in those who make up the organization. Translation: Leaders and team members are able to more quickly identify and address old patterns of behavior and thinking that compromise the agility, responsiveness and sustainability crucial in today’s world.

Module 1: Riding Tigers – Introduction to Leading During Chaos

All sessions are delivered via teleconferencing or online video platforms.

Month 1: Setting the Foundations

Participants explore approaches for learning to self-monitor and self-regulate reactivity, based on emerging and established research in the neurobiology of leadership.

Why people do what they do, why they don’t do what they say they want to do, and how we can help ourselves unlock new aspects of personal potential.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions and one, 1-hour personal benchmarking session with the program facilitator.

Month 2: Surfacing the Story

Participants identify outdated and unconscious narratives that drive behavior, skew perceptions, derail conversations and limit performance.

Why we need to reclaim the keys to the bus when our personal and collective histories have hijacked the bus – and how we go about it.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions.

Month 3: Building Resilience

Participants learn how to identify core capacities leaders need for sustainable success in today’s world and explore how to apply specific practices for actively building those capacities.

Why we need to move beyond knowing (and parroting) developmental concepts to actually living them – and what is needed before this can happen.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions and one, 1-hour personal benchmarking session with the program facilitator.

Each participant experiences a total of six (6) group learning sessions and two (2) personal benchmarking sessions in the Riding Tigers module.

See Requirements for Completion below.

Participants leave Module 1: Riding Tigers with :

  • Greater self-awareness as a foundation for increased emotional responsibility.
  • At least one area of development clearly defined for continued boosting of emotional resilience.
  • At least three tools for reducing reactivity, stress and overwhelm.
  • Greater self-agency leading to increased confidence when navigating unfamiliar circumstances.

Module 1 Fee: $1197 USD per participant / $997 per participant for groups of 10 or more.

Module 2: Eating Elephants – How to Avoid Choking During Chaos, Rapid Change and Heightened Uncertainty

All sessions are delivered via teleconferencing or online video platforms.

Prerequisite: Participants are required to complete Module 1: Riding Tigers within six months of enrolling in Module 2: Eating Elephants.

Month 1: Changing the Conversation

Participants explore what makes difficult conversations “difficult,” and are introduced to a key perspective shift that dramatically expands what is possible inside conversation.

Why we need new kinds of conversations to tackle new kinds of challenges, and how we use the concepts and practices from Modules 1: Riding Tigers, to help foster the conversations needed.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions and one, 1-hour personal cast study development session with the program facilitator.

Month 2: The New Accountability

Participants learn a much more sustainable approach to accountability that actually helps develop both leaders and those being led, and stands up much more effectively in remotely led, geographically diverse teams.

Why yesterday’s “power over” approach to accountability shows diminishing efficacy in the face of the complex challenges and rapid change of today’s world, and how we need to adapt now.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions.

Month 3: Integrating the Learning

Participants present their case studies to detail what they have learned in the program, how the learning has been applied and what has resulted, as the foundation for moving into exploration of a co-created, intentional culture and design of next steps for this group.

Consists of two, 1-hour group sessions and one, 1-hour personal cast study development session with the program facilitator.

Each participant experiences a total of six (6) group learning sessions and two (2) personal cast study development sessions in the Eating Elephants module.

See Requirements for Completion below.

Participants leave Module 2: Eating Elephants with :

  • Three tools for transforming difficult conversations, which means performance correction becomes easier which means it is much more likely to be addressed and at an earlier stage.
  • A powerful new approach for cultivating accountability, even when leading remotely.
  • The increased confidence and deeper (translation: sustainable) learning from applying concepts from both Modules 1 and 2 to a real life situation and reporting on that experience in a case study.

Module 2 Fee: $1197 USD per participant / $997 per participant for groups of 10 or more.

Requirements for Completion:
In order to receive a certificate of successful completion for each Module, participants are required to:

  • Attend 85% of the tele-conferenced or web-based live sessions – applies to both modules.
  • Meet twice with course facilitator for internalization and progress checkpoints – applies to both modules.
  • Present a case study demonstrating how they have applied new concepts and behaviors, and the results observed.
Ready to start or need more information? Contact Lyn Today!