Wayfinder - Self and Leadership Development

Wayfinder is a newly developed program by HPI D-School that adds an essential perspective to the other program offerings in the area of Design Thinking: for self-leading and designing your own well-lived life and career.

Working in innovation teams requires flexibility, agility and, above all, empathy. Empathy, and thus empathic leadership, requires skills in self-awareness and self-leadership, and shaping one's own life as well as one's own career. We believe that a structured design process can help people to develop and grow. Such a process allows them to find out what they want and how to design a satisfying and successful life.

By applying and developing the methods of Design Thinking combined with fundamentals from systemic coaching and self-leadership, this program aims to learn and apply tools and techniques to improve self-awareness, recognize one's own behavioral patterns and values, reflect on and expand one's context of experience to make self-efficacy a reality in the future; building on this, to explore, prototype and test new options for a successful future. The program is based on the "Designing Your Life" Concept and has been extended and further developed by the HPI D-School.

Wayfinder has four major focus areas:

1. Empathy and Self-Awareness: Understanding one's own values and attitudes.

2. Exploring: Shaping career and personal life with purpose and energy.

3. Prototyping: Making good choices and exploring options.

4. Iterate: Learning forward in a strong network.

Within these four topic areas, we apply the following methods and tools together:

1. Awareness and meditation exercises, value code, activity analysis, energy-flow matrix, journaling, embodiment.

2. Coherence analysis, Hero's Journey, vision and strategy modeling with Lego Serious Play

3. Problem framing, brainstorming, decision heuristics, identification of new action patterns, experience and life prototyping

4. Future prototyping, resource and network analysis, strategies for change, networking

Application for Wayfinder

The Wayfinder program is aimed at HPI students as well as participants of the Design Thinking Studios of the HPI School of Design Thinking. The course is limited to 18 participants to allow for intensive exchange and reflection in small groups.

Go directly to application form

Course dates for winter term 2024-2025:

Application Deadline: 31. October 2024
Acceptance E-Mail: 4. November 2024
 
Session 1: 15. November 2024 (D-School, House D)
Session 2: 6. December 2024 (remote)
Session 3: 10. January 2025 (remote)
Session 4: 31. January 2025 (D-School, House D)
 
Deadline Course Paper Topic: 15. February 2025
Deadline Course Paper: 28. February 2025
Deadline Grading: 15. March 2025