Values-Based Leadership in a BANI World

We are living through a period of profound uncertainty.

The world is increasingly described as BANI: brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible. Technologies and institutions are changing faster than our ability to fully understand what those changes mean. In such a context, more rules, plans and control are not enough.

We need leaders with a stronger inner compass.

When the environment is stable, rules and established practices can guide us. When conditions change quickly, those same rules can become constraints. Values, when they are genuinely lived rather than simply written on a wall, can provide another kind of orientation: helping people make decisions, navigate uncertainty and act with greater coherence.

But values-based leadership asks more of us than knowing what we personally care about. It requires the developmental capacity to encounter perspectives different from our own, act without complete information, question our assumptions and create conditions in which others can think and contribute well.

This workshop explores what that looks and feels like in practice.

It is also a try-out for a new two-day facilitator training programme, planned for Ekskäret Island in May 2027, for people who want to help leaders, teams and organisations work more deeply with values, inner development and more mature forms of leadership.

The approach brings together research-informed frameworks with practices that have been developed and tested in organisations around the world.

Before the workshop, you will complete a 15-minute Values Tree mapping, developed by Self Leaders and used by more than 120,000 people.

Rather than beginning with an abstract discussion about values, we will begin with your own.

What actually matters to you?
What shapes your decisions?
And what happens when your values meet those of other people?

We will combine a small amount of theory with experiential practice, dialogue and reflection.

You will be introduced to:

• Human motivation, drawing on Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory and the conditions that support intrinsic motivation, autonomy and development.
• Adult development, drawing on Robert Kegan’s work on how our capacity to make meaning, hold complexity and take perspective can develop throughout adulthood.
• The Inner Development Guide, exploring some of the inner capacities that can help us navigate complexity and contribute to meaningful change.
• Values-based leadership in practice, using experiential methods that help make otherwise abstract questions of values, assumptions and behaviour visible.

The purpose is not simply to understand another set of frameworks. It is to use them to examine how we actually show up, decide and relate.

Our values rarely operate in isolation. They become visible when they encounter other people and other contexts.

Based on the Values Tree mapping, you will connect with others in the session.

What becomes easier when another person sees the world in a similar way? What assumptions can remain invisible precisely because you agree?

What happens when someone prioritises something very different from you? Where does curiosity end and judgement begin? And what might become possible if difference is treated as information rather than as a problem to solve?

Through these encounters and the collective intelligence of the group, we will explore three developmental shifts:

• Inner compass: from waiting for certainty or external direction to acting with greater confidence and coherence amid uncertainty.
• Perspective-taking: from projecting our own values and assumptions onto others to becoming genuinely curious about what they can see that we cannot.
• Facilitative leadership: from providing the answers to creating conditions in which better thinking, dialogue and decisions can emerge.

The workshop is therefore not primarily about learning about values.

It is an opportunity to experience how values, motivation and adult development show up in relationship, and to explore how experiential facilitation can help leaders and organisations develop greater maturity in the face of complexity.

In the spirit of Emerge, the emphasis is on practice rather than information alone, and on development that happens through reflection, relationship and genuine encounter. Emerge describes its work as bringing together inner development, systems change and cultural renewal, and as creating programmes concerned with becoming rather than simply knowing.

Some participants may want to continue into the two-day Facilitator Training at Ekskäret Island in May 2027, where we will go deeper into how to facilitate these processes with leaders, teams and organisations.