Entangled Leadership – Tools, Sense-Making, and Simple Rules by Dr Richard Claydon.

Leadership isn’t about having the answers. It’s about navigating the fog — where information is partial, perspectives are fragmented, and every move is entangled with self, role, and system.

Overview

In this interactive workshop, we explore what it really means to lead in complexity. You’ll learn how to work with tools that are always partial, shift from solving to sense-making, and accept entanglement as the lived condition of leadership. Instead of chasing mastery, you’ll craft simple rules — personal guardrails that help you act with clarity when the path ahead is uncertain.

Through a mix of short presentations, breakout dialogues, and reflection practices, you’ll surface your own experiences of navigating the fog, connect with peers’ insights, and leave with practical rules of thumb that belong to you, not a textbook.

Breakout Dialogues

• Facing the Fog: When tools are partial — what do you reach for, and what do you miss?
• The Work of Sense-Making: How do you step back from solving to create shared orientation?
• Entanglement and Simple Rules: Where are you most entangled — and what simple rules keep you moving?

Pre-Workshop Reflection

Take a few minutes before the session to jot down:

• A recent situation where the fog was thick — what did you try, and what happened?
• One moment when you felt the weight of your role shaping you, more than the other way around. Any informal “rule of thumb” you already use when you don’t know what to do.

Bring these with you. They’ll be the raw material we work with together.

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Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.