Adaptability for Leaders

Navigating resilience, technology and global change

Today’s leaders face rapid advances in technology, shifting workforce expectations, geopolitical uncertainty and global disruption. For senior executives, adaptability presents a strategic advantage for their organizations. Rather than preparing for any one challenge, this three-day program develops adaptability as an enduring leadership capability, helping leaders prepare for whatever disruption comes next.

Through a behavioral science lens, participants examine adaptability at three interconnected levels: the self, the organization and the external environment. They explore how people respond to uncertainty, make decisions under pressure and adapt to global changes, developing a playbook and the confidence to respond when their organizations need to adjust quickly.

Participants leave this program with the confidence and frameworks needed for responding to the rapidly changing workplace, and the preparation for action when their organizations must adapt quickly.

Who Should Attend

Senior executives responsible for leading people and organizations through significant change, including:

  • C-suite executives and senior business-unit leaders
  • People and organizational leaders
  • Technology, AI and digital transformation leaders
  • Strategy, risk, crisis management and sustainability leaders
  • Nonprofit leaders

Key Benefits

  • Build the psychological skills to improve personal adaptability and to improve your capability to learn and lead change
  • Create more resilient organizations to lead through technological and strategic changes, and respond intentionally to geopolitical and societal shifts
  • Navigate political and economic uncertainty with greater confidence
  • Diagnose sources of resistance to change and reduce frictions that prevent people and organizations from adapting
  • Assess how AI and other technology disruptions are changing work

Program Content

Day 1: Personal adaptability and resilience (the person)

  • Learning vs. performance goals
  • Flexibility and growing with grit

Day 2: Leading adaptation in the advanced AI age (the organization)

  • Adapting to AI disruptions
  • Identify and tackle frictions that may hinder innovation

Day 3: Adaptability to geopolitics and global change (the world)

  • Navigating politically sensitive topics
  • Managing diversity and inclusion

Faculty

Adam Waytz - Academic Director; Professor of Management & Organizations

Heather Barnes - Adjunct Lecturer in Leadership Development and Communications

Loran Nordgren - Professor of Management and Organizations

Nancy Qian - James J. O’Connor Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences (Center); Co-Director, Global Poverty Research Lab

Nicole Stephens - Associate Professor of Management and Organizations

Dashun Wang - Kellogg Chair of Technology; Professor of Management and Organizations; Professor of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences; Director, Center for Science of Science and Innovation; Co-Director, Ryan Institute on Complexity; Director, Northwestern Innovation Institute

Personal Consultation

Please contact us to schedule an advising session


Upcoming Sessions

June 8-10, 2027

Start: June 8 at 1:00 PM

End: June 10 at 2:30 PM


Format: In-Person at Wieboldt Hall on Chicago Campus

A preferred hotel rate is available at the Omni Chicago.

$8,950

Fee does not include accommodations.

Kellogg School of Management

Kellogg Executive Education
2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208
Directions
847.467.6018