Adaptive Leadership Practitioner Program
December 2026
You know Adaptive Leadership. But how well do you know your own practice? When was the last time you deliberately mixed it up?
Take a closer look at your facilitation practice. Has it become too familiar or predictable? What do you do in the room? How do you hold yourself while doing it? What is your go-to under pressure?
What becomes possible when you have more choices available?
Most Adaptive Leadership development builds your understanding of the approach. This program is designed for practitioners with a working familiarity of adaptive leadership and an active facilitation practice. It will focus on building your capability to facilitate adaptive work.
Across the three days, you will examine how you show up in the room, which modes you default to under pressure, how those choices land with the groups you work with, and what might need to shift. You will be asked to do the same work you ask of your own participants – holding authority and leadership at the same time.
You will facilitate in front of peers, experiment with different approaches, and receive kind but candid developmental feedback from faculty and fellow practitioners.
The program provides a rare opportunity for you to work alongside other practitioners – seeing how they facilitate, learning from the choices they make, and building stronger professional relationships with peers who understand the work from the inside.
What will you gain?
A clear read on your current practice: your default mode under pressure – where it enables you and where it costs you.
Structured, candid feedback: from faculty and peers, assessed against AALI’s facilitation framework.
Judgement and a wider repertoire: the ability to read what a group needs in the moment and adapt your approach rather than reverting to habit.
One concrete shift: named by you and held to account by colleagues who watched you work.
Greater confidence with clients: explaining why an adaptive approach fits their challenge and how to scope it.
This is a practice-based experience. You choose the level of challenge you take on, what you experiment with, and where you want to push your own edge.
Faculty
Ananth Gopal
Ananth works at an unusual intersection: a geographer by training, a decade as a professional actor, and host of an ABC television program on community development and agriculture. That range isn’t incidental. He reads a room like a performer and thinks about organisational culture the way a geographer observes landscape, shaped by history, movement and use rather than stated intention. As Co-Director of Polykala, the leadership development and organisational culture consultancy he co-founded with Tom Henderson in 2012, he brings artistry to the work — metaphor used with intent, an invitation to consider change somatically rather than only cognitively, and humour as a cornerstone of navigating change.
Ananth is Lead Facilitator for Creative Australia’s Future Leaders and Creative Leadership programs, leads an organisation culture engagement with Creative Victoria, and is core faculty on the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation’s ARLP and Drought Resilience Leaders programs. Across more than 25 local government clients, Victorian state government departments, ARC research centres of excellence, law firms and international NGOs, the work is the same: enabling the culture to shift. He holds a PhD in Human Geography, teaches climate change governance at the University of Melbourne, and has been affiliated with AALI as a learner, committee member and contributor since its inception in 2018. He lives in Carlton, ferrying his children around on an oversized cargo bike.
Di van Meegen
Di has extensive experience partnering with public, private and not-for-profit organisations to strengthen organisational capability and performance. She specialises in executive, leadership and talent development; the facilitation of forums, workshops and complex decision-making conversations; and executive coaching.
A key focus of Di’s current work is partnering with CEOs and senior leadership teams to build cohesion, shared purpose and effective ways of working in complex, fast-paced and contested environments. She has a particular interest in women in leadership and in strengthening the confidence and capability of individuals and organisations to have meaningful conversations that build trust and self-awareness. She also helps leaders approach complex challenges with curiosity, courage and a willingness to experiment and learn.
Di brings an enduring commitment to helping organisations and individuals achieve, thrive and be the best they can. She works from the premise that, even with the best intentions, optimal performance can be difficult to achieve and sustain. It requires ongoing attention, reflection, challenge and renewal.
Outside work, Di is devoted to family, community and friends and enjoys travel, reading, theatre, choir, the great outdoors and living life to the full.
Shaymaa Elkadi
Dr Shaymaa Elkadi is a leadership specialist, strategist and board director whose work centres on complex systems and system reform. She describes herself as a positive agitator, fixer, builder and grower. Over more than 20 years across Australia’s justice, mental health, family violence and multicultural service systems, her focus has been on strengthening leadership and professional practice in complex, trauma-exposed environments, and on the governance that sustains them. She is drawn to the place where systems accountability, cultural context and human rights meet.
She has held senior executive and advisory roles across government, statutory authorities and not-for-profit organisations, Each has given her a different view of the same question: how is a system experienced by the people who rely on it? She is a certified professional coach, and as a facilitator she is known for creating psychologically safe, disciplined and reflective spaces that balance rigour with care. Those spaces help professionals sustain ethical judgement, strengthen boundaries and stay aligned with purpose in demanding, emotionally complex work. A good deal of her energy goes into building capability in others.
Shaymaa is also a Board Director across various Health, Mental Health, Education and Community Reintegration organisations. She leads Ruqi Consulting, which helps organisations across justice, health and multicultural services turn complex reform into practical strategy and stronger leadership.
Program Details
When
Thursday 3rd to Saturday 5th December 2026
Location
Melbourne, Victoria
Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers St, Abbotsford 3067
Investment
A discounted Early Bird fee is available until 9 October 2026.
- Early Bird: $1,710 exc. GST ($1,881 inc. GST)
- Standard: $1,800 exc. GST ($1,980 inc. GST)
Note: There is a special price for current AALI volunteers, and a 10% discount available for three or more participants from the same organisation. If this applies to you, please email aali@aali.org.au for further information before you register.
Please note that discounts are not cumulative and cannot be combined.
Scholarships
As part of our commitment to supporting greater diversity in the leadership development profession and a diverse and accessible community of practice within AALI, a limited number of scholarship places are available for those who may otherwise be unable to attend.