Leadership resilience and well-being programme for 100x Accelerator LSE

About the client

Cohorts of the world's largest social impact accelerator discover new ways to engage their resilience while driving positive change around the world at scale.

: 100x is the world’s largest social impact accelerator, based at the Marshall Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The accelerator aims to create cohorts of “social unicorns” – organisations driving positive change around the world - at scale. The programme provides a powerful platform for world-class founders and leaders to access capital, resources and connections to unlock their potential and change together.

The challenge: confronting the leadership demands and uncertainty that come with accelerated company growth and finding new ways to develop sustainable practices of resilience and well-being in all the complexity.
The work: design, initiate and support peer learning groups of world-class founders to engage in wider collective support while leading and implementing much-needed global social change.
Outcomes: leaders discovered the value of taking time and space to tap into diverse insights from themselves, and the perspectives of others, which shook up their thinking and approaches. The collective support of others facing similar complex challenges was found to lessen their sense of loneliness and discover new ways to tackle demanding issues. Finding time to attend to their well-being led the group to better resource themselves in their roles, and to feel better enabled in their leadership as their companies experienced accelerated growth.

Where it began

The challenge

RISE were invited to partner with the 100x programme team to design a Leadership and Wellbeing experience for the inaugural cohort of the 100x Accelerator programme. With participants taking part in a demanding accelerator programme on top of already intense schedules, our challenge was to create a learning journey for leaders that felt different to other development or learning experiences. It needed to be a space to slow down, connect to self and others, explore real challenges and dilemmas and develop capacities for leading in uncertainty and complexity.

“RISE was instrumental in shaping the foundational program of the 100x Impact Accelerator. They took the lead in the Wellbeing workstream and nurtured meaningful dialogues among social entrepreneurs on intricate leadership and wellbeing topics.

Their partnership was characterised by an exceptional collaborative ethos and adaptability, tailoring their support to the unique needs of the founders and consistently adopting a human-centred, caring approach in their work."

Nell Lemaistre, Head of Programme

What we did together

The work

Session Flow

The sessions started with an in-person launch, followed by three virtual calls before a final in-person closing session.

In person launch

With participants flying in from the US, India, Pakistan and Jordan for launch week, we started with an afternoon getting connected. The whole group shared their leadership journeys so far and then, when formed into smaller peer learning groups, they spent time thinking about and sharing their origin stories. This included key influences that impacted them and how they approached their leadership roles.

Virtual peer learning groups

We ran three peer groups, each group then met monthly for three facilitated virtual peer learning sessions: the masks we wear, presence and leading in uncertainty.

Before each session, participants received a warm-up reflective exercise linked to an aspect of well-being. We used the first half of our virtual calls to share reflections, making sense of them together and digging deeper into underlying themes and questions. The second half of the session was focused on exploring a specific issue or challenge which one (or sometimes more) people were experiencing.

Summit week closing

We came back together in person for a final afternoon closing session during Summit week, reflecting on what they had learned individually and collectively through the peer learning sessions. They reflected on the leadership and well-being tensions they were finding themselves in, and each person’s emerging intentions for staying resourced and supported in their well-being beyond the 100x programme.

Outcomes and Ongoing work

Impact

Despite working in very different geographies and contexts, this group of founders described taking away the following (often unexpected) benefits from the 100x leadership and well-being experience:

✔️ The value of a supportive space to be honest

✔️ The opportunity to reveal what's ‘beneath the mask’. This came both from themselves, and their peers. Receiving insights and reflections from others with similar experiences brought real challenges to contemplate, and required significant energy to hold

✔️ The real value of ‘forced’ slow thinking and reflection time with others, which hadn’t been seen as ‘necessary’ before

✔️ An escape from the relentless time-pressured, fast-paced leadership contexts founders hold and often feel isolated in

✔️ A sense of not being alone in their complex leadership experiences and challenges

✔️ The opportunity to tap into diverse insights and rich perspectives which had shaken up and shifted their own thinking and approaches

✔️ Renewed intentions around how to attend to their well-being, be better resourced in their demanding roles, and better enabled in their leadership to their organisations

Interested to find out more? Our Resilient Leader programme offers a similar experience, run in-house for your executive team or as an open programme for senior leaders.

Developing leadership resilience and well-being for ongoing sustainable impact.

Cohorts of the world's largest social impact accelerator discover new ways to engage their resilience while driving positive change around the world at scale.

The challenge

“RISE was instrumental in shaping the foundational program of the 100x Impact Accelerator. They took the lead in the Wellbeing workstream and nurtured meaningful dialogues among social entrepreneurs on intricate leadership and wellbeing topics.

Their partnership was characterised by an exceptional collaborative ethos and adaptability, tailoring their support to the unique needs of the founders and consistently adopting a human-centred, caring approach in their work."

The work

Impact

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