Navigating Complexity 2.0: Leadership as Cultivating Collective Sensemaking to Build Trust
Professional Development Workshop
Date: Wednesday 28 October
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $75
Location: The Westin Harbour Castle, Toronto, Room TBD
This event is sponsored by ILA’s Trust and Leadership member community.
Ticket prices do not include food or beverage. Bring along your favorite coffee or snack, and plan to grab lunch during the break!
Short Description
Following a successful pre-conference workshop delivered in Prague, this second-generation (2.0) workshop extends the original design into a longitudinal leadership learning journey. The workshop invites participants into an evolving community of practice focused on sensemaking and trust as core leadership capacities for navigating complexity.
The Toronto session serves both as a standalone immersive experience for newcomers and as a culminating sense-making and integration space for participants who have been engaging throughout the year in an ongoing trust and leadership community. Through collective dialogue, case-based inquiry, and the use of an AI-enabled sensemaking tool, participants will share lived leadership and trust stories and surface patterns across contexts. Participants can then implement this process in future workshops, coaching sessions, team interventions and leadership developmental programs.
People navigate organizational and societal complexity through individual and collective sensemaking processes. This is both an emotional and cognitive activity through which people interpret evolving situations, connect disparate pieces of information, and construct meaning that informs decision-making. In complex environments, leaders must intentionally guide and support this collective process. Without such guidance, organizations risk becoming reactive, fragmented, and unable to align around shared purpose.
Sensemaking leadership therefore demands more than authority or expertise. It requires the capacity to create and sustain a holding environment that engages diverse perspectives, supports dialogue across differences, and fosters continuous learning. Effective leaders recognize that complexity cannot be reduced to simple solutions; instead, it calls for collective inquiry that enables adaptive thinking and more nuanced responses to unfolding challenges.
This collective sensemaking process fundamentally depends on trust. In contexts marked by uncertainty, skepticism, and rapid change, leaders must cultivate trust to invite engagement and sustain it over time. Without trust, sensemaking breaks down, participation diminishes, and even well-intentioned strategies falter as people resist the changes they themselves may recognize as necessary.
This workshop, Navigating Complexity: Leadership as Cultivating Collective Sensemaking to Build Trust (2.0), builds on established research on sensemaking, trust and leadership and is grounded in iterative learning drawn from prior delivery, participant feedback, and year-long engagement within the ILA trust and leadership community. Based on participant feedback, the design has evolved to incorporate longitudinal learning, drawing on insights generated through the ongoing activities of the trust and leadership community. At the same time, the workshop is intentionally designed to remain fully accessible and valuable for participants joining for the first time.
Participants will work with a collective sensemaking process and a trust-building model, applied to their own leadership cases. In addition, an AI-enabled sensemaking process will be introduced. Rather than using AI as a source of information, expert or decision-maker, it is used as a reflective sensemaking process companion, supporting participants in storytelling and recognizing patterns across shared leadership stories, while keeping judgment and relational accountability firmly human. Participants will experience how such a tool can ethically augment sensemaking and trust-building in workshops, coaching sessions, team interventions, and leadership development programs—while keeping human judgment, relational awareness, and ethical responsibility at the center.
The workshop will enable participants to deepen their capacity to make sense of complex challenges, lead with greater clarity, and intentionally cultivate trust to support adaptive and regenerative leadership.
Learning Objectives / Key Takeaways for Participants
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Practice collective sensemaking as a core leadership capability for navigating complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
- Apply a trust-building model to support engagement, collaboration, and sustained participation in complex change processes.
- Strengthen their ability to create and hold environments that enable shared meaning-making across diverse perspectives.
- Explore the ethical use of AI-supported sensemaking processes to enhance reflection, pattern recognition, and learning without displacing human responsibility.
- Translate sensemaking and trust practices into practical applications for leadership development, coaching, team interventions, and organizational contexts.
- Deploy practices and AI-supported processes in their own organizations and learning environments, extending the impact beyond the conference.
Design
30 min. | Welcome & Framing the Session
Introduction: Set expectations, workshop objectives, and participant introductions.
Pre-Workshop Reflection Discussion:
- Review participants’ responses to pre-workshop questions. (based on a questionnaires send out before: 1) a few times during the year within trust & leadership community or 2) three weeks before the session )
- Group discussion: Common themes, challenges, and expectations.
- Connect responses to the workshop’s core themes: Complexity, Sensemaking, and Trust.
Agenda Overview: How sensemaking leadership and trust will be integrated into the session.
50 min. | Part 1: The Complexity Challenge
Objective: Explore the challenges leaders face in complex environments and introduce sensemaking as a key leadership tool.
Key Content & Activities:
Mini-Lecture: The Complexity Gap & Adaptive Leadership
- Why traditional leadership approaches fail in complexity.
- Introduction to Sensemaking: What it is and why it matters.
Interactive Exercise: Mapping Micro-Stories of Leadership Challenges
- Participants describe a real-life complex challenge they face.
- Use an online tool and group discussion to analyze patterns.
Discussion:
- How do different leaders make sense of complexity?
- What insights emerge from the shared stories?
Key Takeaway: Leading in complexity requires active and intentional sensemaking.
Break (15 min.)
50 min. | Part 2: Sensemaking in Leadership
Objective: Introduce a structured collective sensemaking process as a tool for navigating complexity.
Key Content & Activities:
Group Work: Applying a Structured Sensemaking Process
- Participants work in small teams to analyze challenges using structured sensemaking steps.
- Guided reflection: How does sensemaking change perspectives on challenges?
Breakout Groups:
- Each group shares key takeaways from their analysis.
- Discussion on how to enhance collective sensemaking in leadership practice.
Key Takeaway: Collective sensemaking improves clarity and decision-making in complexity.
Lunch Break
50 min. | Part 3: Trust as the Foundation for Leadership
Objective: Understand trust-building as a key leadership competency.
Key Content & Activities:
Short Presentation: How Trust Matters in Leadership
- The three levels of trust: Personal, Team, and Organizational.
- How trust impacts decision-making, innovation, and resilience.
Self-Reflection & Group Discussion:
- Participants assess their trust-building strengths and gaps.
- Peer discussion: What makes trust in leadership fragile?
- Discuss how trust appeared in the sensemaking process.
Practical Application: Trust-Building Strategies
- Trust Exercise: Reframing Difficult Conversations with Transparency & Empathy.
- How to rebuild trust after a breakdown.
Key Takeaway: Trust is an active, ongoing process—leaders must cultivate it intentionally.
Break (15 min.)
50 min. | Part 4: Integrating Sensemaking, Leadership, and Trust
Objective: Bring all concepts together through real-world applications.
Key Content & Activities:
Group Challenge: Applying Sensemaking & Trust to a Leadership Scenario
- Participants work in small teams on a real-world leadership challenge.
- Use sensemaking, leadership, and trust-building strategies to develop an action plan.
Case Study Reflection:
- How did different teams interpret the same challenge differently?
- What strategies were most effective?
Key Takeaway: Leaders who integrate sensemaking & trust create stronger, more adaptive organizations.
30 min. | Closing: Commitments & Next Steps
Objective: Ensure practical application beyond the workshop.
Key Content & Activities:
Final Reflection:
- What is your one key takeaway from today’s session?
- What new leadership insight or skill will you apply immediately?
Action Planning:
- Participants write a personal commitment statement on how they will apply their learning.
- Pair discussion: How can we support each other beyond this workshop?
Q&A and Closing Remarks
Final Deliverables for Participants:
A Sensemaking & Trust Leadership Toolkit with practical frameworks. A personalized Complexity Leadership Action Plan – based on interactive AI agent developed during the session. Access to further readings & resources.
Facilitators
Ted Baartmans, works as trainer, coach and consultant to improve personal communication. His background in Education, Geography, Anthropology, Public Administration, Governance and Communication enables him and his group to develop unconventional insights and perspectives to deal with sincere human responsibilities. He is known to transform these insights in consulting, coaching and training experiences into opportunities for others to be at their best.
Ted’s clients are working globally. They include company leaders and boards, governments and NGOs. He also supports global associations and communities in education, research, environment, government, healthcare, politics and logistics. Ted is a guest lecturer and scholar at universities in China, the Czech Republic, the UK, Iran, Mexico, Slovakia, the Netherlands and the USA.
In 2001, he joined the International Leadership Association (ILA). He served the Association until 2009 and 2023 as a board member and VP dealing with globalization and expansion of regional activities. Ted is a Fellow of the McGregor Burns Academy and a certified advanced trainer for the Connective Leadership Institute in Pasadena, The Leadership Circle in Salt Lake City, Immunity to Change in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and Action Inquiry in Boston. In 2018, he agreed to join the Churchill College University of Cambridge as visiting leadership scholar until 2021.
Jonathan Reams, PhD, practices the cultivation of leadership through consulting, coaching and action research on leadership development program design and delivery. He is a co-founder of and Chief Creative Officer at the Center for Transformative Leadership and co-founder of the European Center for Leadership Practice Jonathan also was the Editor-in-Chief for Integral Review from 2005-2023 and held a position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) from 2007-2024. Jonathan focuses on the inner workings of human nature and developing micro-development processes to support building robust leadership capacities for today’s complex challenges.