Leading Together is a five-day professional development course for people who lead, coordinate or facilitate in adult-education and community-learning settings. Much of the work of adult and community education happens through teams, partnerships, learner groups and networks that rely on collaboration rather than command and control. Leading well in these settings calls for a particular repertoire: the ability to enable others, to build trust and a shared sense of purpose, to work skilfully with group dynamics and power, and to turn diverse contributions into shared results.

 

The course is grounded in established thinking on collaborative, distributed and adaptive leadership, on group dynamics, and on community development, and it is taught through active, experiential methods. Participants do not only learn about these ideas; they practise them, reflect on their own experience, and leave with concrete frameworks and tools to use in their own settings. The principles apply wherever people work together, but the course is built around the realities of adult and community education, with examples and cases drawn from educational and community organisations.

 

The course is designed for those who work in adult and community education: adult educators, trainers and facilitators, together with the coordinators, managers and project staff who lead and organise within their institutions. It suits both those in formal leadership roles and those who shape direction and culture without a positional title. No prior background in leadership theory is required; the course meets participants where they are and is built on adult-learning principles throughout.

 

The course follows an experiential cycle: participants take part in activities and group work, reflect on what happens, connect it to wider frameworks, and plan how to apply it. The emphasis is on practice and dialogue rather than presentation, combining facilitated discussion, real case studies, simulations and structured reflection with active and creative methods that make abstract ideas concrete.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

 

Describe and apply contemporary models of collaborative, distributed and adaptive leadership.

Recognise how group dynamics and power operate, and build the trust and psychological safety on which effective collaboration depends.

Facilitate shared decision-making and create the conditions for genuine participation.

Work constructively across differences of perspective, knowledge and role, and use conflict productively.

Strengthen belonging and shared ownership within a team, organisation or learning community.

Plan how to apply and sustain collaborative practice in their own context.

Day 1: Rethinking leadership beyond hierarchy

 

Welcome, and introduction to the course

Participant introductions, ice-breakers and an overview of the programme and its aims

Introduction to leadership as a shared practice rather than a position

Exploring models of distributed, servant and adaptive leadership

Reflective work on personal leadership identity, values and assumptions

Establishing a collaborative learning culture for the week

 

Day 2: Groups, trust and power

 

How groups form, develop and function

Understanding power and the informal hierarchies present even in flat structures

Building trust and psychological safety as the basis for collaboration

Practical session: creating conditions in which everyone can contribute

 

Day 3: Participation and shared decision-making

 

Frameworks for participation, from consultation to genuine power-sharing

Approaches to deciding together, including consent-based methods

Dialogue and deliberation in practice

Core facilitation skills for guiding group decisions

 

Day 4: Collaborating across difference

 

Valuing and combining different perspectives, knowledge and expertise

Bridging formal expertise and knowledge drawn from direct experience

Working with conflict as a normal and productive part of collaboration

Practical session: difficult conversations and finding common ground

 

Day 5: Building community and sustaining practice

 

Asset-based approaches to building belonging and shared ownership

Sustaining collaborative culture and resisting the drift back to hierarchy

Developing a personal action plan to apply and share the learning

Reflection, evaluation and exchange of resources for ongoing support

Certificates: presentation of completion certificates and Erasmus+ documents