Designing & Leading Change
Engaging Your Team and Organizational Stakeholders for Real Impact
IN-PERSONÂ |Â San Francisco, CA |Â Three Days
July 15–17, 2026
9:00am–5:00pm PT
$2,700 (nonprofit discount available below)
Register by May 15, 2026, for the early bird price of $2,430.
Deepen Your Learning Through Coaching
Add an exclusive, six-session coaching package with Gisela Wendling or Sarah DeWitt to integrate your learning, grow your change competencies and make significant progress on your change challenge.Â
$2,900 (coaching add-on)
$2,610 (if purchased prior to start of workshop)
Overview
Grove CEO Gisela Wendling, Ph.D., and Grove Senior Associate Sarah DeWitt are offering the latest evolution of our in-person Designing & Leading Change workshop. Together, they support participants in stepping into what it takes to lead change with vision, engage critical turning points and work with the momentum of change to generate transformational outcomes.
Drawing on Sarah’s experience leading change within organizations and Gisela’s decades of consulting, the workshop offers a grounded, integrated approach to supporting leaders and stakeholders in aligning around shared direction and moving through key moments that shape the success of change efforts.
Using the Seven Challenges of Change™ and the Wendling Liminal Pathways Change Framework™, and applying dialogic and visual facilitation approaches, you will explore change not as a linear sequence of stages, but as an interplay between the structures that guide the process and the human dynamics that determine its outcomes.
You are invited to bring an organizational change challenge you are currently navigating—as a leader, team member or consultant. Through The Grove’s proven methods, you will gain practical ways to design and guide change processes that respond effectively to the needs and opportunities present at each phase of the journey.
A Hands-On Learning Experience
You will experience a hands-on, lab-style learning environment where you work directly on your own change challenge, and learn not only from the facilitators but also through the rich exchange with fellow participants and their real-time efforts to move change forward.
Learn About Your Change Competencies
You’ll also discover the change capabilities you already possess and those you wish to develop using our new online Transformational Competency Assessment based on The Change Maker’s Competency Wheel™, The Grove’s new competency model.Â
This Course Is for You If:
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You are an organizational leader seeking frameworks and approaches to strengthen your ability to anticipate, guide and lead across the full arc of change while sustaining momentum within your organization.
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You are a process consultant seeking to strengthen your ability to design phase-appropriate change processes using The Grove’s integrated frameworks and templates—working skillfully with the distinct challenges and opportunities that arise as clients move through change.
- You are a visual practitioner or facilitator seeking to deepen your ability to design and visually facilitate key turning points in change processes, thereby helping groups navigate critical moments with shared understanding and forward movement.
Learning Objectives:
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Develop your capacity for visionary change leadership
Learn what it means to guide high-engagement change processes, and explore the evolving role and responsibilities of leaders of change. -
Gain fluency in The Grove’s core change frameworks
Work with the Seven Challenges of Change, the Wendling Liminal Pathways Change Framework, and the Change Maker’s Competency Wheel to understand the structure, dynamics and competencies associated with transformational change. -
Design and guide effective change processes
Learn how to organize and facilitate a process design team, design key meetings and project roadmaps, and engage in ongoing contracting around goals, roles and results.
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Strengthen your transformational leadership competencies
Identify the competencies you want to develop and practice essential skills such as opportunity framing, deep listening, powerful questioning, self-awareness, and working with creativity and uncertainty. - Apply visual and systemic approaches to change
Explore The Grove’s Graphic Guides® (large-scale templates), and learn how to support dialogue and shared thinking at a whole-system level.
What This Course Is Like:
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Grounded in proven frameworks and thought leadership
Draws from Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change (co-authored by David Sibbet and Gisela Wendling) and Gisela’s The Liminal Pathways Study. Selected chapters will be provided for pre-reading, with hard copies available at the in-person workshop. -
A reflective and confidential learning environment
Offers a safe, supportive space for deep dialogue, shared learning and meaningful connection within a small cohort. -
Applied to your real-world challenges
Provides dedicated time to work on a current change initiative from your organization or client context.
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Informed by real cases and diverse contexts
Incorporates case examples from successful projects across private and public sectors. -
Hands-on and visually engaging
Includes practice with innovative visual tools and Grove Graphic Guides to support systemic thinking, alignment and engagement. - This workshop takes place at Tides Converge in the historic Presidio of San Francisco.
Coaching to Deepen and Accelerate Your Work
This six-session coaching bundle is designed to help you make significant progress on your change challenge while building the competencies required to lead change.
Coaching will begin following the workshop. You can select your preferred coach, or Gisela and Sarah will help determine the best fit based on your goals and context. This coaching offer will be available for purchase at full price after the workshop.
As seasoned leadership coaches, Gisela Wendling and Sarah DeWitt are well-versed in all of The Grove’s Coaching Areas of Focus.
The Grove’s Coaching Areas of Focus
Leading Transformational Change
We coach leaders seeking inner confidence, systemic perspective and relational awareness to foster alignment, trust and forward movement across complex systems.
Reclaiming Vision & Direction
You may sense something shifting, but the path isn’t clear. We’ll help you reconnect with your inner compass and vision, and use our expertise in visual approaches, guided processes and meaning-making to chart your next horizon.
Deepening Your Inner Capacity
Coaching grounded in the Change Maker’s Competency Wheel supports you to cultivate change literacy, emotional-somatic awareness and inner and outer guidance—tailored to your context, vision and appetite for insight.
Activating Creative Leadership
Whether you’re launching a new business, writing a book, developing a podcast or leading a culture shift, we help break through creative blocks and tap into your generative potential. Visualization, active imagination and change-framing techniques bring your vision into action.
Our Three Foundational Frameworks
This workshop brings together three of The Grove’s core frameworks—the Seven Challenges of Change, the Wendling Liminal Pathways Change Framework (LPF) and the Change Maker’s Competency Wheel—to offer a comprehensive approach to leading transformation.
Seven Challenges of Change Framework
This framework integrates key components of the LPF and The Grove's underlying Theory of Process and shows the basic pattern of change through predictable stages. These challenges come into play for any project that requires new ways of thinking, real behavior change and new organizational or social change processes.
“You packed a lot of theory and practical application in the three-day workshop…the combination of Liminal Pathways Change Framework, Seven Challenges of Change and all the supporting tools. I also appreciated experiencing two subject matter experts share their real-world examples. It was a transformative experience! I’ve already put the learning into action!”
Lori Van Holmes, MS
Principal Consultant, Infinite Expansion
Nonprofit/Government/Solo Practitioner Discount
*If you work at a nonprofit or government entity or are a solo practitioner, then we would like to offer you a discount. Please submit your information, and we will send you a discount code