Week 0 facilitator guide: kickoff
The problem this session solves: teaching sessions die when they carry administrative weight. This 90-minute kickoff holds everything that is about the course rather than the content: norms, the evidence culture, the two tracks, the self-assessment debrief, the capstone, and the teach-back pairing. It also locks social commitment early. Pairs, laws, and dates are announced tonight, so nobody can quietly opt out later. After tonight, the four teaching sessions carry zero admin.
Pre-work to send (7 days before, about 45 minutes total): the 24-item self-assessment (6 items per arc, scored 0 to 3, 10 minutes), the story submission ("describe one moment in your career where you saw one of these laws work, or saw it violated, and the outcome"), and confirmation of the 6 dates and the teach-back obligation. Tell everyone to bring their 24 raw scores to the kickoff. Averaging happens live.
Materials: week-0-kickoff.md (slides), activity-board.html (the shared kickoff board), worksheets.md (worksheets 1 to 4), the teach-back brief and rubric posted in the workspace, and your prepared pair-law-date assignment list. Canva whiteboard with the kickoff board, one small radar frame per person, and a separate parking-lot frame next to the kickoff board, all prepared in advance. Zoom Pro for breakout rooms.
Breakout mechanics for this course (state them tonight, they start in week 1): breakouts run in pairs, pre-assigned in Zoom. Every breakout has a hard-stop timer and a broadcast time warning. You are solo, so you cannot visit every room. The exercise instructions are always written on each pair's board frame, never only spoken. A parking-lot frame catches tangents; tonight it is the prepared frame next to the kickoff board on the Canva whiteboard (see materials). Tonight has no pair breakouts; everyone works on the one shared board and in their own radar frame, and the same rule applies: every zone on the board carries its own written instruction.
Run of show (90 min)
- 0:00 to 0:12, welcome and introductions (slides 1 to 2, "Week 0" and "Activity 1: introductions"). 30 seconds each: name, track (IC, management, or undecided), one leadership pain. As each person speaks, they post their intro sticky on the board's intro wall, under their track column. Close with the slide question: whose pain sounds closest to yours? Take 2 or 3 answers, no discussion yet.
- 0:12 to 0:22, how the course runs (slides 3 to 5, "How this course runs", "No artifact means not done", "The pre-read contract"). The evidence culture, the pre-read contract, Arabic discussion with English artifacts, cameras on, take-home capped at 1 hour. Say the evidence round script out loud (talking points below) so weeks 2 to 4 hold no surprises.
- 0:22 to 0:30, the four arcs (slide 6, "The four arcs"). The 8 deep laws under 4 arcs. The other 13 laws are optional bonus reading, never assigned and never tested.
- 0:30 to 0:40, the two tracks (slides 7 to 8, "The two tracks, one course" and "Every law, both tracks"). Larson's four Staff archetypes beside Fournier's path to Tech Lead and EM. Undecided is a valid answer. Make the bridge promise: every session says how each law applies on both tracks, and if a session skips it, they should say so. Everyone fills worksheet 2: circle your track today and write one line on why.
- 0:40 to 0:55, self-assessment debrief (slides 9 to 10, "From the course to you" and "Activity 2: find your lowest arc"). Each person averages their 6 scores per arc into worksheet 1, plots the 4 arc scores as a radar in their own frame on the whiteboard, and circles their lowest arc. Then each person places one initialed dot on their lowest arc in the board's "Your lowest arc" zones. Say the line from the slide: "Find your lowest arc. That is your capstone territory." Debrief questions below.
- 0:55 to 1:05, the capstone explained (slides 11 to 12, "The capstone: a 30-day experiment" and "The honest promise"). Walk the one-page template, six fixed items: the diagnosis (lowest arc plus its score and the behavior gap), the real problem (one current, named situation where the gap costs something), the experiment (one behavior, its frequency, and a start date), the evidence to collect, the success measure, and the risk (what makes them likely to quit, plus their counter). Note: the slide groups these six into five bullets, so say the count as six when you walk it. Drafted after week 4, pressure-tested in the 60-minute 1:1, committed in one line at the case clinic, never presented. Then make the honest promise, word for word from the slide.
- 1:05 to 1:15, teach-back pairing (slide 13, "Teach-back pairing"). Announce pairs, laws, and session dates. Post one sticky per pair on the board's teach-back pairing zone. Everyone copies their own into worksheet 3. Point to the brief and the rubric in the workspace. Explain the slots and the discussion roles (talking points below).
- 1:15 to 1:30, certificate, week 1 pre-read, and close (slides 14 to 15, "What earns the certificate" and "Before week 1"). See Close.
- 1:30, end.
Teaching talking points
- No artifact means not done. Every weekly task produces evidence from real work: a tagged calendar, an influence map, a list. Reflection without the artifact counts as not done. Lack of evidence is a bad sign, in this course as in engineering.
- The evidence round script. Tell them exactly how weeks 2 to 4 will open, so they hear it before it ever applies to them: "Evidence round. Four to five of you share last week's artifact, 60 seconds each. Show the artifact itself, not a story about it. No artifact means not done." The round is public on purpose: nobody wants to show up empty twice.
- The pre-read contract. 30 to 40 minutes of reading before each session, so live time goes to the hard parts and the discussion, not to coverage. Pre-reads are never submitted. Each session opens with one question: what question did the pre-read leave you with?
- The four arcs. Lead yourself (the Lid, Priorities), earn the follow (Influence, Connection), build the team (Empowerment, Buy-In), multiply and exit well (Explosive Growth, Legacy). The other 13 laws sit under their arcs in the workspace as bonus reading only.
- The two tracks, one course. IC track: at Staff, scope grows through influence, not headcount. Management track: a title makes people comply, it does not make them follow. Undecided is valid, and the capstone works either way.
- The honest promise. No course makes you a better leader in 30 days, and this one does not claim to. They will leave with their biggest gap identified with data, a designed experiment running on their real team, and before-and-after evidence of movement on that one gap.
- The teach-back system. Pairs, assigned tonight with a law and a date. 8 minutes, both speak. They apply the law to a real case from their own track and argue where it held or broke. Slots: one in session 2, two each in sessions 3 and 4, and one opening the week 5 case clinic. Your law is always taught the session before you present, so you apply what you just lived with. A pair may swap in a bonus law if they want, but that is their choice, never an assignment. If there are 7 or more pairs, one group runs as a trio. Each teach-back gets 7 minutes of structured discussion with three rotating audience roles: one challenger (must push back on something), one connector (must link it to a previously covered law), one summarizer (closes with a 30-second synthesis). The brief and the rubric are in the workspace now.
Debrief questions
- After activity 2: look at the dots. Which arc collected the most? What does that say about this cohort?
- Is anyone's lowest arc a surprise? Which arc did you expect it to be?
- Your lowest arc is your capstone territory. Hold on to worksheet 1, the capstone template opens with it.
Close
Show "What earns the certificate": attend at least 5 of 6 sessions with the case clinic mandatory, submit all 4 evidence artifacts, deliver the teach-back, submit the capstone plan and state the commitment at the clinic. Then assign the take-home from "Before week 1": the week 1 pre-read. Read the one-pagers for the Law of the Lid and the Law of Priorities, plus the Peter Principle summary. Due before the week 1 session. State the counts-as-done rule out loud: you arrive at week 1 with one question the pre-read left you with. Give them the first question for the week: what is capping your team, the work, or the way you lead it? Point to worksheet 4, which holds the pre-read and the question line. The board stays up; the dots and the pairing strip carry into week 1.