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Leadership at the Edge
Leadership at the Edge brings that conviction out of the classroom and into the world - for people who are already in the work.
The world you’re leading in is not the world the old playbooks were written for. Institutions are fragmenting. Trust is eroding. The challenges on your desk – in your organization, your sector, your community – don’t have technical solutions. They require something else entirely: the capacity to lead when the path isn’t clear, when the losses are real, and when the stakes are too high to pretend otherwise.
Leadership at the Edge is a three-day onsite retreat in the Danish heartland for people the edge has already found. Rooted in the Adaptive Leadership framework developed at the Harvard Kennedy School, woven through the Kaospilot practice, it gives you a rigorous, visceral, and relational experience of leading at the edge – one that lives in the body, not just the mind.
You bring the real thing – the challenge you’re living, the one that has no clean answer, the one that keeps you up at night and where your existing moves aren’t enough. That’s the material. Worked through a case-in-point methodology, with a cohort of people who understand what it means to lead when the ground is shifting, in a landscape that makes that depth possible and can hold all of it: the rigor, the rest, the fire, the meal you make together.
You leave with more clarity, and the capacity to lead differently. A framework rooted in your actual challenge, moves you’ve already tested, and people you’ll want to call when you’re back in the heat.
Who is this for?
This retreat is not for people beginning their leadership journey. It is for people already in it – carrying real responsibility, facing real complexity, in organizations and systems that are under pressure.
You might be:
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An executive inside an institution that needs to change, but doesn’t know how
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A practitioner working on challenges that sit at the intersection of social, ecological, or civic systems
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Someone navigating a transition – in your role, your field, or your sense of what the work is actually for
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Someone doing the work of leadership without the title, the authority, or the roadmap
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Someone who’s never heard of Kaospilot but recognizes the edge when they feel it
What you share with everyone in the room isn’t a job title. It is a posture – standing at an edge, choosing to lead rather than wait for it to pass.
The Learning Journey
June 1: Arrival
You leave your normal context behind. The first afternoon and evening is about arrival in the fullest sense – settling into the place, meeting the cohort, sharing a meal. The work begins here, in the quality of the room you build together.
You leave your normal context behind. The first afternoon and evening is about arrival in the fullest sense – settling into the place, meeting the cohort, sharing a meal. The work begins here, in the quality of the room you build together.
June 2: The Work The longest day. It begins with a morning reflection practice – a structured space to arrive in your body and name what you’re carrying. From there, the day moves through the core of the retreat: the Adaptive Leadership framework, case-in-point methodology applied to your real challenge, embodied practice, and 1:1 coaching sessions. The evening is time together – fire, conversation, the meal you make as a group.
June 3 — Return The final morning is about integration and re-entry. Not closing down the experience but carrying it forward – translating what emerged into clear next steps and a renewed sense of what leading at the edge actually asks of you. You leave in the afternoon, differently than you arrived.
Investment
We understand that the people who most need this work don’t always have the easiest access to it. Choose what allows you to participate fully and be present:
DKK 10.000 (€1,238) – covers the bare costs of the retreat
DKK 15,000 (€1,873) – gives back to the place and the facilitators
DKK 20,000 (€2,408) – contributes extra and support others in their journey
DKK 15,000 (€1,873) – gives back to the place and the facilitators
DKK 20,000 (€2,408) – contributes extra and support others in their journey
All tiers include accommodation, all meals, and the full program. Travel to and from the location is your own.
A small number of scholarships may be available. If that’s what makes this possible for you, let us know when you apply.
Your Trainers
John Michael Schert
John Michael began his career as a professional ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre – a world of extreme precision, embodied practice, and high-stakes performance under pressure. That formation never left him. He went on to co-found and lead Trey McIntyre Project for nine years, discovering along the way that the creative process was a lens for understanding how systems change. He holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, is a 2019 USA Eisenhower Fellow, and has spent the last decade working as a systems change leadership consultant across business, government, philanthropy, and academia. He has been working with Kaospilot since 2023.
John Michael began his career as a professional ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre – a world of extreme precision, embodied practice, and high-stakes performance under pressure. That formation never left him. He went on to co-found and lead Trey McIntyre Project for nine years, discovering along the way that the creative process was a lens for understanding how systems change. He holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, is a 2019 USA Eisenhower Fellow, and has spent the last decade working as a systems change leadership consultant across business, government, philanthropy, and academia. He has been working with Kaospilot since 2023.
Axelle Bagot
Axelle began her career in diplomacy – at the French Embassy in Syria, and later as an advisor to the Mayor of Paris during the Arab Spring. She was working at the intersection of institutional power, civic mobilization, and geopolitical rupture before she had a framework for it. That experience shaped everything: her systemic approach to leadership, her understanding of how authority actually works, and her instinct for what people need when the ground shifts beneath them. She holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, teaches Organizational Leadership at Brown University, and has designed leadership initiatives for UNICEF, the World Bank, the Malala Fund, and several governments.
Axelle began her career in diplomacy – at the French Embassy in Syria, and later as an advisor to the Mayor of Paris during the Arab Spring. She was working at the intersection of institutional power, civic mobilization, and geopolitical rupture before she had a framework for it. That experience shaped everything: her systemic approach to leadership, her understanding of how authority actually works, and her instinct for what people need when the ground shifts beneath them. She holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, teaches Organizational Leadership at Brown University, and has designed leadership initiatives for UNICEF, the World Bank, the Malala Fund, and several governments.
The Teaching Team
Leadership at the Edge is facilitated by a team that includes Kaospilot alumni – practitioners who have been through the edge themselves, inside the same education that gives this retreat its DNA. Their presence in the room isn’t decorative. It’s part of the pedagogy: learning alongside people who are a few steps further down the same path.
Leadership at the Edge is facilitated by a team that includes Kaospilot alumni – practitioners who have been through the edge themselves, inside the same education that gives this retreat its DNA. Their presence in the room isn’t decorative. It’s part of the pedagogy: learning alongside people who are a few steps further down the same path.
About Adaptive Leadership
Most leadership development teaches you to solve problems more efficiently. Adaptive Leadership starts from a different premise: that the most important challenges you face can’t be solved with expertise alone – because they’re not technical problems. They’re adaptive in nature. They involve loss, competing values, and the need for people to change the way they think and work. No amount of better information or smarter planning resolves them.
Developed at the Harvard Kennedy School, Adaptive Leadership gives you a rigorous framework for distinguishing between these two kinds of challenges – and for leading differently when the situation calls for it. It teaches you to observe what’s actually happening in a system, to interpret it without rushing to fix it, and to intervene in ways that move things forward without burning yourself out in the process.
What people say after working with it isn’t “I learned a new model.” It’s “I finally have language for what I’ve been living.
About Kaospilot
Kaospilot is a pioneering school based in Aarhus, Denmark, developing transformation practitioners for a world in profound transition. Founded in 1991, it has spent over three decades at the intersection of leadership, entrepreneurship, and systemic change – building an education that prepares people not for the world as it was, but for the world as it is becoming.
The latest curriculum – Practice at the Edge – is built on the conviction that the challenges ahead require practitioners who can work with both breakdown and breakthrough. Who can hold complexity without collapsing it. Who can lead collectively, not just individually.
PRACTICAL DETAILS
Three days. Twenty people. One place.
When: June 1–3, 2026
Where: Himmelbjerggaarden, Ry, Denmark – reachable by public transport from Aarhus, Billund
Where: Himmelbjerggaarden, Ry, Denmark – reachable by public transport from Aarhus, Billund
Places are limited to 20. We keep it small deliberately – the work requires it.
To apply, tell us a little about where you are and what you’re carrying. It takes five minutes.
Click the “Apply here” button
Sign up here!
€ 2.408,00
