Coaching & Consulting
In a rapidly evolving world, we help organizations and leaders create value by promoting human dignity and well-being. We work with organizations globally (in a variety of industries) to develop humanistic leaders who promote a culture of equity, respectful dialogue, and positive interactions. Our approach helps leaders and organizations adopt responsible, humanistic and inclusive ways to address societal and organizational challenges. Join us on our journey.
We offer a wide range of services to include organizational consulting, leader coaching, training and facilitation, and (evidence-based and research informed) signature programming.
Contact us for a free consultation.
Signature Workshops
DEI Discovery: Identity, Awareness, Intention, & Impact: Discovering DEI means understanding your own identity. Making progress in this journey requires becoming aware of the diversity of DEI learners and strengthening your intention and impact. With this in mind, this workshop generates awareness of our salient and non-salient identities at work, presents the DEI learner archetypes, and discusses ways in which you can use your identity and these archetypes to become more attuned to your intent for a collective impact within your organizations.
Additional Information and schedule coming soon
Signature Models
All of these models are the intellectual property of the authors and The Humanizing Initiative. For questions, please contact us.
Humanistic Leadership Development Model, Jason Smith
Academic Katrin Muff describes the challenge of developing humanistic leaders as requiring a different approach than most leadership development programs. She says that rather than acquiring desirable traits or isolated knowledge, the educational challenge of developing globally responsible leaders hinges on developing the potential of a person to act consistently on behalf of society, including the ability to embrace complex trans-disciplinary issues and hands-on collaboration with other members of the larger community (p. 490). Drawing from that statement, a humanistic leadership development program would blend informational and transformational learning approaches to both fill a participant’s toolbox with carefully curated content teaching humanistic leadership tools—including critical thinking, decision-making, adaptive leadership, and coaching—and increase the size of the toolbox itself to absorb more meaning through potentially transformative experiences around topics like self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Such a program also would include experiential learning and collaboration techniques, like Collaborative Inquiry and Muff's interactive problem solving space she calls "The Collaboratory", to create greater awareness of humanistic challenges in the participant's external context and further sharpen humanistic leadership tools to tackle them.
For questions on this model and or ways to incorporate this model in your organization, please email Jason Smith.
Humanistic Leader Model, Jason Smith
Research into academic and leadership development practitioner literature on humanistic leadership suggests that humanistic leaders share a few common characteristics that allow them to better navigate our Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. They are self-aware, emotionally intelligent, mature, and open. These traits can be seen in more detail in the following model of a humanistic leader.
For questions on this model and or ways to incorporate this model in your organization, please email Jason Smith.
Leadership Education & Development MODEL (Organizational Level), Shaista E. Khilji
For an organization to develop its leadership, it is important to (first and foremost) know the environment, within which any leadership development/ educational program would be offered. The context should be relevant to identifying challenges (and opportunities) and highlighting trends that may shape the context and curriculum. These general trends and issues determine ‘why leadership education matters’. In addition, we also know that a rigorous leadership program should be founded on values that underpin its educational philosophy. In any leadership development program, values serve as the identity and communicate what the program stands for. It is the underlying values that would help determine the most suitable pedagogical approaches and tools. Finally, teaching and learning in (and from) the program (through interactions with the learners, research, and review of other programs) influence various program outcomes. Fresh insights and exposure to new concepts gained from curriculum review can result in further exploration of the the curriculum to strengthen different components of the program.
This model has been published in Journal of Management Education and presented at the Academy of Management conference. For questions on this model and or ways to incorporate it in your organization, please email Shaista E. Khilji.
HUMANIZING Leadership Education & Development MODEL (Organizational Level), Shaista E. Khilji
Humanizing education serves as the central tenet, around which organizations can structure/ build different pedagogical approaches and tools to offer new insights to leaders. Think about creating leadership learning laboratory and identity spaces, where leaders learn to challenge and are challenged, co-construct learning with peers, engage in meaning making through reflection and dialogues, develop ‘learner’ mindset through question thinking, and increasing self-awareness, and other awareness. These outcomes help leaders not only develop a more realistic understanding of leading in today’s complex environment, but also offer them the skills and the mindset that is required for them to succeed in a rapidly changing environment. In the process of changing learner mindset (and with the purpose of humanizing leaders), it is important to focus on infusing responsibility, and humanism with some idealism to place an emphasis on wisdom.
This model has been published in the Journal of Management Education and presented at the Academy of Management conference. For questions on this model and or ways to incorporate it in your organization, please email Shaista E. Khilji.
