Courageous Leadership Lab

Building the capacity to lead through complexity

The UMD Courageous Leadership Lab, lead in collaboration with The Office of Undergraduate Studies, the Intergroup Dialogue Training Hub in the College of Education, and the School of Public Health, is a cohort-based leadership development experience focused on ethically and effectively navigating conflict, collaboration, and values-driven change.

The Lab uses a cohort model to deepen leaders’ relational capabilities and stimulate creativity and problem-solving with the goal of multiplying the number of leaders equipped to use dialogical skills across campus and within units.

Building Capacity Through Dialogue

With an emphasis on awareness, knowledge, skills, and relationships, the Lab seeks to enhance capacity among faculty and staff to address grand challenges faced by the University community. Intergroup dialogue praxis seeks to foster increased listening, perspective-taking, curious questioning, ideating, communication, creative problem-solving, and collaboration among individuals and social groups with historical and contemporary tensions.

What the Lab Develops

Through dialogue, reflection, relationship-building, and applied practice, the Lab strengthens leaders’ capacity across four interconnected areas: awareness, knowledge, relationships, and skills; supporting leaders in navigating critical conversations across differences, managing interpersonal relationships, building community trust, and advancing values-driven, ethical, transformative leadership.

The Courageous Leadership Lab was a transformative experience that challenged me to think more intentionally about leadership, relationships, and institutional change. Individually, I gained greater confidence and new tools for navigating conflict more authentically and constructively; as a team member, I experienced deeper collaboration, trust, and shared accountability. I now feel better equipped to stay grounded in values while navigating change. Being part of the inaugural campus collective also felt incredibly significant — like contributing to the foundation of a more courageous and compassionate leadership culture on campus. I am hopeful about continuing to grow a community committed to leading change with integrity and purpose.
~ Erin McClure, Assistant Dean & Chief of Staff, School of Public Health

From Values to Action

At a time when university leaders are navigating increasingly complex challenges, the Lab will support the development of skills essential for transformational leadership. The Lab will move university leaders fearlessly forward to confront the grand challenges of our time. The Lab allows the campus to maintain momentum towards belonging, inclusion, and dignity, and close the gap between values and action.

We want the teams to expand dialogical leadership skills in order to move:


FROM responses that could be experienced as BEING	Fearful	TO responses that promote a sense of BEING	Open to possibility
	Reactive		Proactive
	Only individually-oriented		Individually, collectively, and systemically-oriented
	Conflict avoidant		Open to generative conflict and courageous collaboration

Intergroup Dialogue Training Hub (InDi Training Hub)