Leadership & Organizational Development

I am a leadership educator and researcher. I have worked with hundreds of people at Harvard and with various clients across the US and the Middle East, teaching and coaching based on the principles of adaptive leadership, group relations, and adult development. My work aims to build the capacity of individuals and communities to hold conflict and navigate complexity across various levels of authority, from ministers in government to activists. I also design workshops drawing on AI to develop our own abilities to lead from a place of deep listening.

I am a PhD candidate at the UC Berkeley Rhetoric Program, where I study the theoretical and educational implications of generative AI programs like ChatGPT. I also hold a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. If you're interested in working with me on such a challenge, please reach out for a free consultation.

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Services

I provide leadership development workshops and training, one-on-one coaching, and organizational consulting to different clients across the world.

Leadership Development

I provide training and workshops to organizations on the principles and practices of adaptive leadership, such as distinguishing between technical and adaptive problems, mobilizing people to confront difficult realities when they would rather not, and fostering a culture of learning and experimentation.

One-on-one coaching

I offer one-on-one coaching and consultations on leadership cases using adaptive leadership and social transformation frameworks, from both the inside-out and outside-in. This means that I help clients explore their own values, beliefs, and assumptions, as well as the external factors that influence their capacity to exercise leadership on an adaptive challenge.

Organizational Consulting

I consult for organizations as they work difficult adaptive challenges, helping them diagnose the problem they are facing, engage different stakeholders, work conflict, and facilitate learning and feedback. I help stakeholders within an organization generate more action options than they currently see by using adaptive leadership techniques to challenge their assumptions.

What is my approach?

My approach is based on the adaptive leadership framework developed at Harvard. I believe that leadership is not a position, but a practice that anyone can exercise to mobilize others to tackle complex challenges. It is also a collective endeavor, rather than an individual one. I help individuals and organizations develop their leadership potential by providing coaching, training, and consulting services tailored to their context.

I believe that all leadership coaching must start with the unique external context someone is trying to exercise leadership in and then must trace the thread of their perspective inwards, to the unique internal landscape that makes up each person. The internal without the external and the external without the internal are insufficient to truly work an adaptive challenge. I draw on my experience as a leadership coach and research fellow at Harvard with Professors Ron Heifetz, Houman Harouni, Tim O'Brien, Farayi Chipungu, and Hugh O'Doherty, as well as my background in public policy and democracy reform work.

What is adaptive leadership?

The world is always changing. Some organizations or groups adapt; others die off. In some cases, technical work can address challenges facing these groups: organizations can solve the problem with time, money, and expertise – for example, they can make committees or hire consultants. In many cases, however, adaptive work is required: time, money, and expertise are insufficient, because the real obstacles are people’s values, assumptions, and practices. Adaptive leadership, then, is the activity of mobilizing people to address difficult realities they would rather avoid. In these cases, the people with the problem are the problem – and the solution.

Adaptive leadership is a framework developed at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) via forty years of studying leadership successes and failures. It has been applied to seemingly intractable problems in government, industry, and other sectors, ranging from the Colombian peace process to changing cultures at large multilateral organizations. In an adaptive leadership course or workshop, participants gain the tools, insights – and most importantly, hands-on practice – required to make progress on complex, human challenges. I draw on the two parts of the framework in my work:

Leadership from the outside in. Together, we analyze the social and political dynamics of problem-solving common to many teams facing challenges. In particular, you learn to observe, interpret, and influence the evolving dynamics of a group of people with a common purpose.

Leadership from the inside out. We explore how self-knowledge and self-discipline form the foundation for making progress on complex challenges. In particular, we analyze the identities you carry and the messages you have internalized from your ancestral, social, and professional spheres, which serve as both resource and constraint. By engaging in this introspective process, you learn to better manage your vulnerabilities as you navigate chaos, conflict, and ambiguity.

What clients & students say

“Dana is brilliant. Her intellectual and emotional capacity to hold people as they process traumatic situations is unmatched. She does not shy away from the difficult emotions this [work] often brings up, and she holds people in a way that is empowering."

Writing & Thought

ChatGPT Is Unoriginal—and Exactly What Humans Need

Published in Wired, with Houman Harouni

"We believe that AI language models like ChatGPT can act as catalysts in settings where predictable responses have repeatedly failed us: climate change, race relations, income inequality, and more. They could indeed increase our “productivity,” not by providing us with better answers, but by confronting us with unoriginal and average-of-everything-on-the-internet responses, so that we can move into the realm of new alternatives that ChatGPT cannot predict. In a way, ChatGPT can act as unintentional satire, showing us how insufficient and bland our solutions can be."

Full article here.

ChatGPT: A Partner in Unknowing

Published in Emergence Magazine

"That is, until one of my colleagues asked, and I do not exaggerate this, “What’s the point of living if AI can have better ideas than I can, quicker?” The incredulity I felt hearing this question, and the smart answers I came up with (family? friends? trees?), quickly gave way to the notion that he was pointing to something profoundly disturbing in our culture that could be grasped in our reactions to and interactions with ChatGPT. It struck me that ChatGPT itself could probably simulate the conversation we had been having around its dangers to a reasonable level of accuracy, and later that night I confirmed that hypothesis. But what it could not simulate was the fear behind my colleague’s very human question, which inadvertently had pointed me to the real source of the group’s despair: This wasn’t about ChatGPT. It was about us."

Full article here.

Working Together

During a free 30-minute consultation call, we’ll talk about you or your organization's challenges, goals, and expectations. I’ll answer any questions you have and we’ll discuss what service or combination of services best suit your situation, as well as making sure we’re a good fit to work together.

To schedule our consultation, or for any further questions, contact me using the form below or by email at danarkarout@gmail.com (please note the r between dana and karout). I look forward to connecting.

Dana Karout