Next Skills for Next Leadership. An Upskilling Only the Arts Can Do.

Next Skills for Next Leadership is a three-day executive education programme designed for leaders operating in environments of sustained uncertainty, complexity, and disruption. Moving beyond traditional, cognition-heavy leadership models, the programme integrates artistic and embodied practices to strengthen leaders’ capacity to remain present, credible, and effective under pressure. Participants develop practical leadership capabilities that enable them to stabilize teams, sustain performance, and foster collaboration in times when volatility and anxiety increasingly shape organizational life.

The first core capability, Containing, addresses a central leadership challenge of our time: the management of uncertainty and collective anxiety. Rather than focusing solely on analysis and risk mitigation, leaders learn how to recognize emotional dynamics in teams and how to create reliable psychological and relational containers. This enables teams to think clearly, speak honestly, and act responsibly even when outcomes are unclear. Leaders strengthen their ability to hold tension without rushing to premature solutions or defensive control.

The second capability, Drifting, reframes how leaders relate to the future. Instead of fixing direction exclusively through strategic planning and prediction, participants learn to sense emerging signals, work with ambiguity, and navigate disruption as it unfolds. Drifting develops the capacity to move with change rather than against it—supporting adaptive decision-making, experimentation, and responsiveness in fast-changing environments.

The third capability, Becoming, shifts leadership development from optimizing fixed strengths and compensating for weaknesses toward discovering what is not yet fully formed. Leaders explore how identity, role, and authority evolve under changing conditions and how new capacities can emerge through practice rather than prescription. Becoming supports leaders in cultivating curiosity, learning agility, and personal transformation—key resources for leading organizations into futures that cannot yet be fully defined.

Outcomes. Participants leave the programme with strengthened leadership presence, greater emotional and relational competence, and an expanded repertoire for acting under uncertainty. They are better able to contain anxiety in themselves and others, navigate disruption without paralysis or over-control, and foster environments in which learning, dialogue, and innovation can occur. The programme supports more resilient decision-making, higher-quality collaboration, and a leadership stance that combines clarity with openness in the face of the unknown.

Faculty. The programme is led by Prof. Dr. Ralf Wetzel and Jana Dörfelt, who together bridge academic rigor, executive education, and arts-based leadership practice. Prof. Dr. Wetzel is an internationally experienced organizational scholar whose work focuses on leadership, organizing under uncertainty, and applied improvisation, with extensive teaching experience in leading business schools and executive programmes and an physical theatre performer. Jana Dörfelt brings a complementary background in performative and artistic practice, specializing in the design of embodied learning environments that enable leaders to access insight, presence, and adaptive capacity beyond purely cognitive approaches. Together, they create a learning architecture that is intellectually demanding, experientially grounded, and highly relevant for senior leaders navigating complexity and disruption.

Next dates: 28-30.09.2026, Brüssel. Theatre L'Improviste, Foret

Contact for more information, price and booking: ralf@performativeinquiry.com

Participants exploring the dynamics of leading and following.