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Our Training Courses

Find Clarity in Complexity, Together

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Our Courses

Introduction to Collaborative Innovation

Facilitating Collaborative Innovation

Working with Complexity: Beyond Analytical Knowing

Working with Difference: Leveraging Creative Tensions

Cultural and Emotional Wealth & Well-Being for Leaders and Teams

CoCreative offers courses to develop the skills you need to facilitate and lead transformational change.
Training with CoCreative

Find Clarity in Complexity

For over a decade, we have honed our methods to effectively facilitate collaborative problem-solving, driving significant systemic changes with tangible impacts toward a more equitable and prosperous future. Our immersive training programs are designed to equip you with the necessary skills to confidently transform complexity and conflict into powerful innovations and sustainable solutions. Importantly, our programs are not just conceptual but are genuinely practical so you can navigate even the most challenging situations.

CoCreative offers courses to develop the skills you need to facilitate and lead transformational change.

What’s Unique About
Our Training

Each of our courses is designed to help leaders develop different aspects of their systems change capacity, like facilitating effectively, leading with purpose, leveraging diversity, and understanding and using process models and frameworks effectively.

Each course centers on a core model or framework, includes network stories and examples, experiential exercises, reflection, application based on cases from participants, and demonstrations of tools and methods.

We provide a complete manual, templates, recordings and tools for each workshop, so you have what you need to lead collaborations immediately. And we take the time to answer every participant’s question in writing because we believe in learning from and with the people who join our sessions.

Introduction to Collaborative Innovation

What it is: An introduction to the key elements of Collaborative Innovation—a process model and set of tools that enable leaders to effectively lead impactful change within a group of diverse stakeholders across different sectors. This is a fast-paced, immersive—and at times, challenging—dive into the “Four Agendas” of Collaborative Innovation: connecting, aligning, learning, and making.

Changemakers, leaders, facilitators, collective impact backbone staff, and consultants. If the problem you’re facing seems hugely complicated, with a lot of moving parts across a lot of different groups, this course is the perfect jumping-off point.

Duration: 1-day in-person workshop OR three virtual sessions, 3.5 hours each

Introduction to Collaborative Innovation

Facilitating Collaborative Innovation

Step into the process of collaborative innovation with our immersive and highly experiential facilitation-focused workshop. Designed for leaders eager to implement and facilitate powerful collaborative processes within their own networks, this course goes beyond theory, providing you with practical tools and hands-on experience. 


You will learn essential meeting planning, facilitation, and leadership practices that help diverse groups move from goal setting to achieving tangible outcomes together. Whether you're working virtually or in-person, our methods are adaptable to any environment and emphasize navigating conflicts, confusion, and uncertainties that arise during collaboration.

This course is ideal for leaders ready to drive progress and foster a culture of innovation within their collaborations. If you’re determined to overcome challenges like analysis paralysis and unproductive group dynamics, and want to build momentum towards impactful solutions, this course is for you.

Duration: 2-day in-person workshop OR four virtual sessions, 3.5 hours each

Facilitating Collaborative Innovation

Working with Complexity: Beyond Analytical Knowing

What it is: In a world of increasing complexity, our usual cognitive approaches to understanding and shifting systems often fall short. While diagrams, frameworks, and methodical analysis can provide helpful insight, they can create an illusion of certainty where none exists. Many change initiatives stall not because of a lack of understanding, but because of our tendency to over-rely on cognitive approaches while undervaluing other ways of knowing. 


This workshop explores how we can integrate cognitive and non-rational ways of knowing—somatic, intuitive, and feeling—to engage more effectively with complex systems. Through experiential learning, stories, and guided practice, you will develop your capacity to navigate complexity using multiple ways of knowing, leading to more nuanced, effective, and human change work.

Leaders and facilitators who understand the basics of Collaborative Innovation and want to take concrete next steps. This is likely around process design and facilitation, or engaging members of the collaboration, but also addressing messy questions like: How the heck am I going to get these people to agree to do something meaningful together, and actually do it? And how do I deal with people in these groups when they are being just plain difficult?

Duration: 2.5 hours, virtual

Working with Complexity: Beyond Analytical Knowing

Working with Difference: Leveraging Creative Tensions

What it is: In today’s world, fostering genuine collaboration is more than just bringing people together; it’s about building authentic alignment and trust among diverse people. Creating innovative solutions requires more than just getting everyone to agree on the surface. Real ownership and meaningful alignment from all parties are crucial, especially when emotions are high and the stakes are even higher. In "Leveraging Creative Tensions," you'll gain hands-on experience and learn proven methods for recognizing, mapping, and harnessing the diverse values and perspectives within your team. This course turns conflict and polarization into genuine alignment and productive collaboration.

This course is perfect for leaders who anticipate needing to manage deeply ingrained differences and concerns among various stakeholder groups. If you have people who don’t see eye to eye or even outright dislike each other, this toolkit will help you to honor these differences and move a group towards genuine collaboration.

Duration: 1 virtual session, 3.5 hours

Working with Difference: Leveraging Creative Tensions

Cultural and Emotional Wealth & Well-Being for Leaders and Teams

What it is: Effective leadership goes beyond traditional management skills. It requires a deep understanding of both emotional and cultural intelligence to navigate complex challenges and cultivate meaningful change. "Cultural and Emotional Wealth & Well-Being for Leaders and Teams" is an interactive workshop designed to expand your awareness-based leadership skills. Through this course, you will learn to measure, grow, and leverage emotional and cultural intelligence to enhance both individual and organizationa agility. This workshop equips you with the capabilities and tools needed to foster equity, inclusion, and collaborative solutions.

This workshop is ideal for leaders and teams committed to deepening their collaboration and creating impactful change. If you are looking to enhance your leadership effectiveness and build a more inclusive and resilient organization, this course is for you.

Duration: 4 virtual session, 3 hours

Cultural and Emotional Wealth & Well-Being for Leaders and Teams

Public Courses

CoCreative offers custom training courses to develop the skills you need to facilitate and lead transformational change.
CUSTOM TRAINING COURSES

Not seeing a course that is an exact fit for your particular needs?

We've designed and delivered custom courses for all types of leaders working from health systems, foundations, communities, supply chains, and more. What they have in common is an interest in leading transformation change in complex systems. If this sounds like what your group might need, let's talk about how we might help.

Example Custom Courses

01

Ashoka: Leading Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations for an Everyone a Changemaker World

Co-created and co-deliver an 8-module, 40-video online course each year with Ashoka Europe and Ashoka Africa to help Ashoka’s global community of changemakers develop more systemic and collaborative approaches to social change.

02

School of Systems Change (Forum for the Future)

​Members of our team teach in the School’s Basecamp on collaboration for systems change and leveraging conflict for deeper engagement and Innovation.

03

The Funders Network: Systems Transformation Learning Series

We co-designed and delivered a

6-month learning journey for philanthropic leaders to foster more collaborative and systemic approaches to social change through their grantmaking.

04

Tamarack Institute.

We provided trainings and webinars on forming and leading effective systems change collaborations for the Tamarack community of change leaders.

05

The Nature Conservancy

We train senior leaders across the organization on transforming conflict into deeper empathy and collaboration and identifying and decentering white and western ways of

knowing, being, and doing in their work

06

Good Growth Conference and Co-Inquiry on Systems Change in Food & Agriculture

(UNDP Food and Agricultural Commodity Systems): We provided training sessions for members of the international Green Commodities Community, contributed learning about systems change work in food systems, and contributed to UNDP’s Guide to Collaborative Action: Deep Collaboration for Systemic Change in Food and Agricultural Commodity Systems.

07

Mastercard Foundation: Systems Change Collaboration & Learning Support

We’re supporting the foundation to align culture, practices, and policies around supporting system change collaborations in Africa and Canada. This includes learning with peers from other foundations who have undergone a similar journey, providing training and coaching on systemic collaboration for foundation staff, delivering tailor-made workshops and webinars for staff and grantee partners, and developing a series of foundation-wide learning resources.

08

Northcoast Incubator

We developed and delivered a one-year capacity building program to support effective multi-stakehodler collaborations and offer a community of practice to support ongoing learning and development of change leaders and facilitators across three rural counties in northern California and southern Oregon. The program  advanced deep learning in a series of five highly experiential and application-driven courses over one year.

"CoCreative took the time to deeply understand the complex tensions at play in our organization – from the participants themselves – and then crafted an excellent, engaging, and just plain useful program for us. I could not be happier with this engagement."

Dawn Denvir

The Nature Conservancy

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