Leading with purpose
ACT strategies for resilient and authentic leadership
This workshop will introduce you to fresh and practical approaches to support leaders, showing how key skills rooted in behavioural science can help them develop and sustain their authentic leadership style. These skills are designed to enhance resilience, focus, and effectiveness, while supporting leaders to navigate the pressures and complexities of modern workplaces with clarity and purpose.
Authentic leadership is about staying true to what matters most, even in challenging circumstances. You will learn how to offer leaders actionable strategies to remain adaptable, build trust, and lead with integrity, helping them to inspire others and create meaningful impact.
Background to the workshop
The world of leadership is inundated with a bewildering array of models, each promising to enhance effectiveness. Yet, when leaders attempt to rigidly align with these frameworks, they risk losing their individuality and authenticity. This can lead to a narrow behavioural repertoire, leaving leaders feeling constrained and disconnected from their true selves.
At the heart of Ross’s ACT-based approach is the individual leader. This programme will help you help leaders to reconnect with what truly matters to them and use those values as a guide to navigate the myriad of challenges they face daily, including decision-making, communication, empowering others, setting direction, and leading through complexity. By placing meaning, awareness, and adaptability at the core of leadership, this approach enables leaders to respond effectively to shifting contexts while remaining grounded in their values.
What you will gain from this workshop
Participants in this programme will:
- Gain an understanding of how ACT principles can support authentic leadership development.
- Learn four key leadership skills—pause, awareness, authentic action, and adaptability—and how to apply them to decision-making, communication, and other leadership challenges.
- Explore how ACT can help foster psychological safety within teams, supporting collaboration and trust.
- Develop tools to prepare for and navigate challenging conversations with clarity and compassion.
- Learn strategies to manage imposterism and avoid burnout while prioritising well-being and self-care.
- Discover how ACT integrates with other evidence-based research, such as growth mindset, to create a comprehensive and sustainable leadership approach.
These skills are not only relevant to current leadership roles but are also portable, supporting leaders as they advance to new roles or organisations.
About this workshop
This programme consists of three interactive sessions, each 2 hours in length (6 hours in total). It is centred around the ACT matrix, a practical perspective-taking tool that helps leaders reflect on their behaviour, relationships, and challenges. Participants will engage in experiential exercises, explore real-world case examples, and observe live demonstrations to ensure they leave with actionable skills they can immediately apply to their roles.
Who will benefit from this workshop?
This programme is designed for professionals who work to support leaders in the workplace, including coaches, organisational consultants, HR professionals, and psychologists. Although this is not the focus of the training, the workshop will also be highly beneficial for leaders themselves, whether emerging or experienced, looking to use behavioural science to evolve and develop their leadership style. No prior experience with ACT is required.
Programme of 3 sessions
Session 1: ACT for authentic leadership (2 hours)
In this session, Ross will present his conceptualisation of how ACT principles can be packaged to support leaders. The session will focus on the importance of context and how ACT can help leaders explore why they lead, what they lead, and how they lead. Ross will also demonstrate how ACT can blend with Dr Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset to help leaders foster curiosity, adaptability, and the evolution of their style.
Ross conceptualises ACT to nurture authentic leadership through four distinct but interrelated skills:
- Skill 1: The pause
The ability to pause is a cornerstone of psychological flexibility. Ross distinguishes between macro and micro pauses, which help leaders respond thoughtfully to their context rather than react on autopilot. - Skill 2: Awareness
Leaders will learn to build awareness of themselves and their environment. In high-pressure settings, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s happening around them or become disconnected from their impact. This skill helps leaders stay present and intentional. - Skill 3: Authentic action
Ross will guide participants in starting conversations around personal values and using them as a guide for their behaviour. Leaders will learn how to consistently “show up” for others in a way that aligns with what truly matters to them. - Skill 4: Adaptability
Finally, the session explores how to help leaders adjust their trajectory to respond to shifting contexts while managing the unhelpful thoughts their minds may generate. Participants will learn strategies to help leaders stay aligned with their values, even in challenging situations.
Session 2: Leading with trust: fostering psychological safety and handling challenging conversations (2 hours)
This session focuses on how the ACT matrix can be used to help leaders foster psychological safety in their teams—a key ingredient for trust and collaboration. Drawing on research by Amy Edmondson, Ross will explore the four components of psychological safety as outlined by Timothy Clark:
- Inclusion safety: Team members feeling safe to belong.
- Learner safety: Team members feeling safe to learn and ask questions.
- Contribution safety: Team members feeling safe to contribute ideas.
- Challenger safety: Team members feeling safe to question and challenge ideas.
Ross will also demonstrate how the ACT matrix can help leaders prepare for challenging conversations—one of the most common and complex issues leaders face. Participants will learn strategies to navigate the unexpected while delivering messages that are both clear and human.
Session 3: Sustaining leadership: prioritising well-being, setting boundaries, and overcoming imposterism (2 hours)
In the final session, Ross will address the importance of well-being and avoiding burnout. Drawing on research into leisure time recovery, self-care, and compassion-focused therapy (CFT), participants will learn how to help leaders to disconnect from work and create boundaries that support sustainable leadership.
Ross will also explore the impact of imposterism on leadership behaviours. Using ACT principles, he will show you how to guide leaders in relating to these thoughts and feelings in a way that supports their authentic stance and allows them to move toward what truly matters.
At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify leadership behaviours with personal values.
- Adapt leadership approaches to meet the demands of different contexts.
- Foster psychological safety to build trust and collaboration within teams.
- Approach difficult conversations with clarity, confidence, and compassion.
- Establish boundaries and prioritise self-care to maintain well-being.
- Address imposterism and self-doubt to lead with authenticity and purpose.
Continuing education credits are available both for attending the live workshop and for completing the workshop by viewing the recording of the live event.
APA psychologists: This program is sponsored by Contextual Consulting and is approved for 6 CE credits for psychologists. Contextual Consulting is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Contextual Consulting maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
Nationally certified counselors: This workshop is available for 6 credit hours. Contextual Consulting Ltd. has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7578.
To find out more, including attendance requirements and how to access your certificate, go to our continuing education information page.
If you have disability and require adjustments or accommodation, please email us at admin@contextualconsulting.co.uk to discuss your needs and we will do our best to help you.
Booking cancellation
The registration fee will be refunded minus a administration charge if cancellations are received at least two weeks before the workshop date.
Cancellations within two weeks of the event date are charged the full registration fee, other than in exceptional circumstances that can be verified.
Event cancellation
In the event of cancellation of the course outside of our control we will not be held accountable for travel and/or accommodation costs incurred. However, the workshop fees will be refunded.
All workshops will be subject to minimum delegate numbers being met; in the event that a workshop should be cancelled delegates will be given no less than 2 months’ notice.
Replacing delegates
If a delegate is unable to attend and a replacement is nominated there may be a charge depending on the individual circumstances, this will be advised at the time. Please contact the us to request a replacement of delegates at least a week before the workshop date.
Contextual Consulting is committed to the identification and resolution of potential conflicts of interest in the planning, promotion, delivery, and evaluation of continuing education. Potential conflicts of interest occur when an individual assumes a professional role in the planning, promotion, delivery, or evaluation of continuing education where personal, professional, legal, financial, or other interests could reasonably be expected to impair their objectivity, competence, or effectiveness.
There was no commercial support for this event. None of the planners or presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.