Learning Science

This book provides a powerful framework for balancing organisational health with performance, arguing that long-term success is built on both. We’ve used many of  its insights to design programs that balance business results with resilient, high-performing leadership cultures for long-term business impact. The book emphasises that sustainable change requires leaders to focus on the people side of transformation, making it an essential read for those driving organisational development.

This theory explores how adults develop meaning-making capacities over time, moving through different stages of cognitive complexity. This theory has helped provide the basis of our thinking about clarity and the need for leaders to separate information and communication from sense making and helping others understand, emphasising the latter. This helps to ensure development programs enable leaders to transition from reactive, self-focused thinking to more complex, systemic perspectives. It supports the development of adaptive, strategic leaders who can navigate ambiguity and most importantly lead others by creating agency and autonomy.

This broad area of research explores how physical, social, and cultural environments shape human behavior and decision-making. Leadership development professionals can use these insights to design interventions that create psychologically safe workplaces, foster inclusivity, and optimize team dynamics. It reinforces the idea that leadership effectiveness is not just about individual capability but also about creating the right conditions for success.

This classic framework helps leadership development professionals assess the effectiveness of their programs by evaluating reaction, learning, behaviour change, and business impact. It ensures that leadership development initiatives are not just engaging but actually drive measurable results. The model is critical for professionals looking to demonstrate the ROI of leadership training and secure executive buy-in.

An extension of Kirkpatrick’s framework, the ROI Model adds a financial dimension, helping organizations calculate the monetary return on leadership development programs. This model is invaluable for leadership effectiveness experts who need to justify investment in leadership initiatives, linking learning outcomes directly to business performance.

This book challenges traditional leadership approaches and provides practical habits to help leaders navigate complex and unpredictable environments. It is particularly useful for leadership development professionals working with executives facing rapid change and ambiguity. By integrating growth mindsets, systems thinking, and adaptive leadership strategies, it equips leaders with the tools to make better decisions and lead effectively in complexity.

This theory challenges traditional, linear views of organisational change, emphasizing that leadership is an emergent, relational process shaped by interactions and narratives. Leadership development professionals can use this perspective to move beyond rigid competency models and focus on how leaders adapt dynamically in real-world situations. It supports the idea that leadership is a social, context-driven practice rather than a set of predefined skills.

The following articles and book explore this theory.

Intentional Change: Richard Boyatzis - Journal of Organizational Excellence, 2006

Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change: In this book, Patricia Shaw explores how organisational change can be viewed through the lens of complexity theory, focusing on the role of everyday conversations in shaping organisational dynamics.

The theory of intentional change outlines how sustained personal and leadership development occurs through cycles of self-reflection, experimentation, and reinforcement. It provides a structured approach to coaching and development, helping leaders create a vision for change, identify gaps, and take purposeful steps toward improvement. Leadership effectiveness experts can use this model to ensure their programs drive deep, lasting transformation.

We hold a belief that an understanding of the context in which a leader operates, has a marked impact on their ability to develop, grow as an individual and lead effectively. This cognitive psychology theory explains how context influences perception, decision-making, and learning. Leadership development professionals can apply it to design programs that embed learning in real-world scenarios, ensuring that leaders can transfer their skills effectively. It also underscores the importance of aligning leadership development with business challenges to make learning relevant and impactful. This theory forms the basis upon which we designed our Leadership Impact Chain Framework.

While there isn't a single publication titled "Context Effect Theory" authored collectively by Jerome Bruner, Eleanor Rosch, and Ulric Neisser, each of these cognitive psychologists has individually contributed significantly to our understanding of how context influences perception and cognition. Here are some key works by these scholars:​

Jerome Bruner:

• Acts of Meaning (1990): In this book, Bruner explores how we construct meaning through cultural and contextual lenses.​

Eleanor Rosch:

• Principles of Categorization (1978): This seminal work delves into how context influences our categorization processes and the formation of prototypes.​

Ulric Neisser:

• Cognition and Reality (1976): Neisser examines how perception and cognition are deeply rooted in real-world contexts.​

These publications provide valuable insights into the role of context in shaping human cognition and perception.​

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Behavioral change is at the heart of leadership development, and Atomic Habits provides a science-backed approach to building small, meaningful habits that drive long-term success. Leadership effectiveness experts can use this book to help leaders embed new behaviors, reinforce learning from leadership programs, and create high-impact leadership habits that stick. Its practical, actionable strategies make it a valuable tool for anyone looking to sustain leadership growth over time.

One of the most influential books in leadership psychology, Mindset: The New Psychology for Success explores how leaders' beliefs about intelligence and ability impact their own success and that of their teams. Leadership development professionals can use Dweck’s research to help leaders cultivate resilience, embrace challenges, and create a learning-oriented organisational culture. It’s a must-read for those fostering environments where continuous development is at the core.

Agility is no longer just for software development—it’s a critical leadership competency. This book introduces the SCRUM methodology, explaining how leaders can adopt an agile mindset to improve team collaboration, responsiveness, and efficiency. For leadership effectiveness experts, SCRUM provides a framework for embedding adaptive leadership behaviors and fostering high-performance teamwork in dynamic environments.

As one of the foundational texts on coaching, this book introduces the widely used GROW model and demonstrates how coaching drives performance, self-awareness, and accountability. Leadership development experts and leaders alike, can leverage its techniques to embed coaching as a core leadership skill, fostering a culture of continuous learning and empowerment. As the work we do is based on a foundation of coaching, this book has proved critical as a guiding light in designing our programs.

This book by Otto Scharmer explores a leadership and change management framework that helps individuals and organisations navigate complex challenges by shifting their mindset. The central idea is that true innovation and transformation require moving through a "U-shaped" process: co-sensing (observing the current reality without bias), presencing (connecting to one's deeper intuition and purpose), and co-creating (acting from an emerging future rather than past patterns). Scharmer emphasises deep listening, letting go of old habits, and embracing openness to new possibilities. The book is widely used in leadership, organisational change, and social innovation and has helped shape our approach to developing leadership curiosity.

Leadership is about thriving in complexity, and this book helps leaders navigate uncertainty and change. It introduces the concept of "getting on the balcony"—stepping back to gain perspective—which is the essence of our thinking on holding multiple perspectives, including the system view and the bases for our 3 perspectives framework. This thinking is invaluable at senior and executive level. It highlights the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges, providing a foundation for leaders to shift mindsets, engage teams, and drive transformational leadership.

We also draw The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow. This book provides in-depth insights into the subject.  

Innovation is a critical leadership capability in today’s fast-moving business world. This book provides a structured approach to driving innovation within organizations by integrating lean startup principles, design thinking, and agile methodologies. Leadership development professionals can apply its frameworks to help leaders become more comfortable with uncertainty, experiment rapidly, and make data-driven decisions—key traits for future-ready leadership.

This foundational theory in motivation research explores how autonomy, competence, and relatedness drive human behaviour and was central to the creation of some of our core leadership tools. For leadership development experts, it highlights the importance of creating environments where people feel empowered, capable, and connected. Programs built around this theory can foster intrinsic motivation, helping leaders sustain high performance without relying on external rewards or pressure.

This evaluation approach challenges traditional goal-based assessments by focusing on what is actually achieved, rather than only comparing results to intended outcomes. This thinking has led us to consider different program evaluation approaches for richer understanding of learning impact, as well as helping leaders raise a broader awareness of the impact of their behaviour, beyond their intention, creating an enhanced responsiveness to others and the organisational system.