Leadership & Executive Management#1364
Advanced Leadership Training Course
Helps managers move from conventional management to high-impact leadership, building strategic thinking, decision-making, communication and influence.
5 Days·Classroom
Leading with Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Innovation Training Course
Strengthens how leaders question assumptions, separate facts from opinions, spot cognitive biases and turn creative ideas into practical innovation at work.
LEM · Leadership & Executive ManagementAll Levels#2730ClassroomEnglish , Arabic
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Free substitution at any time · 30+ days' notice: full refund minus 10%. Cancellation policy
Sectors:Business, Management & LeadershipCategories:Leadership & Executive Management
Course Overview
Effective leadership requires more than operational expertise and sound management practices. Leaders must be able to evaluate complex situations, challenge assumptions, generate original ideas, and make informed decisions in environments characterized by uncertainty, competing priorities, and continuous change. The Leading with Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Innovation Training Course equips leaders with practical approaches to strengthen these capabilities and translate them into measurable organizational improvements. The course explores the relationship between critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and innovation-driven leadership. Participants learn to distinguish facts from assumptions, assess the reliability of information, identify cognitive biases, evaluate alternative perspectives, and structure decisions around evidence, business priorities, and potential consequences. These capabilities support more consistent judgment and help leaders address complex challenges without relying solely on established routines or personal intuition. A central component of the programme focuses on developing a leadership environment where creativity can flourish while maintaining accountability, strategic alignment, and disciplined execution. Participants examine techniques for generating and evaluating ideas, reframing problems, facilitating constructive debate, and encouraging cross-functional collaboration. They also explore how leaders can challenge conventional approaches without compromising governance, operational requirements, or organizational objectives. The programme further addresses the practical management of innovation, from identifying opportunities and prioritizing promising ideas to testing solutions, evaluating results, and scaling successful initiatives. Through structured exercises, business scenarios, and leadership workshops, participants develop an actionable approach to integrating critical thinking, creativity, and innovation into strategic planning, team leadership, and everyday decision-making.
Learning Objectives
- By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Apply structured critical-thinking techniques to evaluate complex business and organizational challenges.
- Distinguish verified facts, assumptions, interpretations, and opinions when making leadership decisions.
- Identify cognitive biases and reasoning errors that may undermine judgment and problem-solving.
- Evaluate competing alternatives using evidence, decision criteria, risk considerations, and strategic priorities.
- Reframe complex problems to uncover root causes and alternative solution pathways.
- Apply creative-thinking techniques to generate diverse and commercially relevant ideas.
- Facilitate productive discussions that encourage constructive challenge and cross-functional perspectives.
- Assess innovative ideas according to feasibility, organizational value, risk, and implementation requirements.
- Develop practical experiments and pilot initiatives to test proposed solutions before wider implementation.
- Establish leadership practices that support continuous improvement, responsible experimentation, and innovation accountability.
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for senior executives, directors, department heads, business unit managers, strategic planning professionals, transformation leaders, and decision-makers responsible for organizational performance, business development, and strategic initiatives. It is particularly relevant to leaders who must navigate uncertainty, resolve complex problems, evaluate competing priorities, and identify new opportunities for organizational growth and improvement.
The programme is also suitable for project and programme managers, innovation managers, human resources leaders, operational managers, quality and continuous improvement professionals, and specialists involved in digital transformation, service development, process redesign, and organizational change. Professionals from government entities, ministries, banks, financial institutions, oil and gas companies, industrial organizations, and large corporations will benefit from the practical application of critical thinking and innovation methods to their specific operational and strategic environments.
Learning Outcomes
- Upon completing the course, participants will be able to:
- Structure complex problems into clearly defined issues, contributing factors, and decision requirements.
- Test the validity of arguments and evidence before reaching conclusions.
- Recognize common cognitive biases and apply techniques to reduce their influence on decisions.
- Use root-cause analysis and problem-reframing methods to identify underlying organizational challenges.
- Generate multiple solution options using structured creative-thinking techniques.
- Evaluate ideas against defined business objectives, resource constraints, risks, and expected benefits.
- Lead discussions that challenge assumptions while maintaining constructive professional relationships.
- Design small-scale tests and pilot projects to assess the practical value of proposed innovations.
- Establish measures for tracking innovation progress, implementation effectiveness, and realized benefits.
- Develop a personal leadership action plan to strengthen critical thinking, creativity, and innovation within their teams.
Course Outline
Critical Thinking for Effective Leadership
- The role of critical thinking in executive judgment and organizational decision-making.
- Differentiating facts, assumptions, interpretations, opinions, and conclusions.
- Evaluating evidence, information sources, arguments, and competing viewpoints.
- Recognizing cognitive biases, confirmation bias, anchoring, and premature conclusions.
- Applying logical reasoning to complex management and operational situations.
- Distinguishing symptoms from underlying problems and identifying decision-critical information.
- Using structured questions to challenge assumptions and improve the quality of analysis.
- Establishing decision criteria that reflect strategic objectives and organizational constraints.
- Practical Exercise: Analyze a complex leadership scenario, identify flawed assumptions, assess available evidence, and recommend a defensible course of action.
Advanced Problem-Solving and Analytical Decision-Making
- Defining problems accurately before selecting solutions.
- Applying root-cause analysis to recurring operational and organizational challenges.
- Using problem trees, cause-and-effect analysis, and issue decomposition.
- Evaluating alternatives through comparative analysis and decision matrices.
- Balancing short-term performance requirements with long-term organizational value.
- Assessing uncertainty, consequences, trade-offs, and unintended effects.
- Incorporating stakeholder perspectives into complex decisions.
- Developing clear recommendations supported by evidence and explicit reasoning.
- Practical Exercise: Investigate a business or public-sector performance problem, identify its underlying causes, compare potential interventions, and present a structured recommendation.
Creative Thinking and Innovation-Oriented Leadership
- Understanding the difference between analytical thinking, creative thinking, and innovation.
- Identifying opportunities through customer, employee, operational, and market insights.
- Applying brainstorming, mind mapping, SCAMPER, and alternative-perspective techniques.
- Reframing constraints to identify new approaches and overlooked opportunities.
- Overcoming habitual thinking and organizational barriers to creativity.
- Encouraging constructive disagreement and collaboration across functions.
- Separating idea generation from idea evaluation to improve creative output.
- Screening ideas for relevance, originality, feasibility, and potential organizational value.
- Practical Exercise: Conduct a facilitated innovation workshop to generate and shortlist solutions to a defined organizational challenge.
Leading Innovation and Turning Ideas into Results
- Aligning innovation initiatives with strategic objectives and organizational priorities.
- Developing clear innovation proposals, value hypotheses, and expected outcomes.
- Assessing feasibility, resources, risks, dependencies, and implementation constraints.
- Designing prototypes, pilot projects, and controlled experiments.
- Defining success criteria, performance indicators, and feedback mechanisms.
- Managing resistance to new ideas and building stakeholder commitment.
- Establishing accountability, decision gates, and governance for innovation initiatives.
- Learning from unsuccessful experiments and using evidence to refine solutions.
- Practical Exercise: Develop an innovation proposal and pilot plan, including objectives, stakeholders, resource requirements, risks, milestones, and success measures.
Building a Culture of Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Continuous Innovation
- Embedding evidence-based reasoning into management meetings and decision processes.
- Creating a team environment where assumptions can be challenged constructively.
- Encouraging employee contributions and cross-functional knowledge sharing.
- Integrating critical thinking and creativity into strategic planning and performance improvement.
- Establishing innovation portfolios, prioritization criteria, and review mechanisms.
- Measuring the effectiveness of innovation initiatives and validating realized benefits.
- Identifying organizational barriers, capability gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
- Developing leadership routines that support experimentation, learning, and accountability.
- Final Workshop: Prepare a practical leadership action plan that integrates critical-thinking practices, creative problem-solving methods, innovation priorities, performance measures, and implementation milestones for the participant’s organization.
Upcoming Dates
Selected date
Geneva · 14 – 18 Dec 2026 · Classroom
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| City | Dates | Price per Participant | Early Bird | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
BakuScheduled | 2 – 6 Nov 2026 | €4,800 | — | |
AbujaScheduled | 2 – 6 Nov 2026 | €5,100 | — | |
BangkokScheduled | 9 – 13 Nov 2026 | €6,100 | — | |
BarcelonaScheduled | 16 – 20 Nov 2026 | €5,400 | — | |
CairoScheduled | 23 – 27 Nov 2026 | €3,300 | €2,970until 2 Nov | |
AccraScheduled | 23 – 27 Nov 2026 | €5,100 | €4,590until 2 Nov | |
DammamScheduled | 30 Nov – 4 Dec 2026 | €4,200 | €3,780until 9 Nov | |
DohaScheduled | 7 – 11 Dec 2026 | €4,400 | €3,960until 16 Nov | |
AmmanScheduled | 13 – 17 Dec 2026 | €3,100 | €2,790until 23 Nov | |
DubaiScheduled | 13 – 17 Dec 2026 | €4,400 | €3,960until 23 Nov | |
GenevaScheduled | 14 – 18 Dec 2026 | €6,300 | €5,670until 23 Nov | |
HamburgScheduled | 21 – 25 Dec 2026 | €5,800 | €5,220until 30 Nov | |
IstanbulScheduled | 28 Dec 2026 – 1 Jan 2027 | €4,700 | €4,230until 7 Dec | |
JeddahScheduled | 3 – 7 Jan 2027 | €4,200 | €3,780until 14 Dec | |
AmsterdamScheduled | 4 – 8 Jan 2027 | €5,400 | €4,860until 14 Dec | |
Kuala LumpurScheduled | 11 – 15 Jan 2027 | €4,400 | €3,960until 21 Dec | |
BakuScheduled | 18 – 22 Jan 2027 | €4,800 | €4,320until 28 Dec | |
LisbonScheduled | 18 – 22 Jan 2027 | €5,400 | €4,860until 28 Dec | |
MadinahScheduled | 25 – 29 Jan 2027 | €4,200 | €3,780until 4 Jan | |
LondonScheduled | 25 – 29 Jan 2027 | €5,600 | €5,040until 4 Jan | |
MadridScheduled | 1 – 5 Feb 2027 | €5,400 | €4,860until 11 Jan | |
BeirutScheduled | 7 – 11 Feb 2027 | €4,000 | €3,600until 18 Jan | |
MakkahScheduled | 8 – 12 Feb 2027 | €4,200 | €3,780until 18 Jan | |
ManamaScheduled | 15 – 19 Feb 2027 | €4,700 | €4,230until 25 Jan | |
MarbellaScheduled | 22 – 26 Feb 2027 | €5,400 | €4,860until 1 Feb | |
Cape TownScheduled | 1 – 5 Mar 2027 | €5,100 | €4,590until 8 Feb | |
MarrakeshScheduled | 1 – 5 Mar 2027 | €4,300 | €3,870until 8 Feb | |
MilanScheduled | 8 – 12 Mar 2027 | €6,000 | €5,400until 15 Feb | |
MuscatScheduled | 15 – 19 Mar 2027 | €5,300 | €4,770until 22 Feb | |
OnlineScheduled | 21 – 25 Mar 2027 | €1,700 | €1,530until 1 Mar |
Available in: Istanbul · Dubai · London · Riyadh · Doha · Amsterdam
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