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The CPA Leadership Academy is not a series of workshops. It is a journey along a road six stops, six behaviours, each one building on the last. By the time leaders reach the end, they are not the same as when they started. That is the point.
Six modules. One winding road. Click any stop to explore what happens there: the models, the conversations, and the leadership shadow question that runs through it.
Whether they intend to or not. Whether they are aware of it or not. The shadow a leader casts is the emotional climate their team lives in every day shaped by their mood, their habits, their reactions, the things they say and the things they leave unsaid.
The Leadership Shadow is not a module. It is the lens through which every module is viewed. It sits beneath Module 1's self-awareness questions, runs through Module 2's communication work, shows up in Module 5's courage conversation. It is the invisible through-line: the gap between the leader you think you are and the experience your team actually has of you.
By module six, participants have examined their shadow from six angles. The question the program ultimately asks and the question it leaves with them is: is the shadow you're casting the one you intend to cast?
Where physical presence is a leadership practice in itself.
In a room, there is nowhere to hide and that is the point. The in-person cohort is designed around the energy that builds over three hours with your peers: the offhand comment that lands, the person across the table who names the thing you've been circling, the facilitator who reads the room and goes somewhere unexpected.
Participants arrive prepared. Their pre-session reflection questions are already answered in their workbook. They walk into the session having already done the thinking and the session deepens what they've started. Models are drawn by hand. Conversations move between pairs, small tables, and the full group. By the time the action plan page opens, participants are not thinking about compliance. They are thinking about Monday morning.
Designed for connection on its own terms not a room with cameras.
The online cohort does not try to replicate the in-person experience. It is designed for what virtual environments do well and the best virtual programs know that distance, handled deliberately, can create a different kind of intimacy. When people join from their own environments, something shifts: their real world becomes visible, and so does their humanity.
The workbook is identical. The pre-session questions are the same. The models, the shadow work, the action planning all unchanged. What differs is the texture: breakout rooms replace round tables, digital whiteboards replace drawing exercises, the facilitator reads the room through cameras and chat. Pace is tighter. Energy has to be generated deliberately rather than absorbed from proximity.
What online cohorts often discover, to their surprise: reflective work happens more deeply when people are in their own environment. The question "what shadow are you casting?" can be answered with more honesty from behind a screen.
Every module follows the same deliberate arc. This rhythm is not accidental it is designed to close the gap between learning and doing. Participants don't just understand something differently at the end of three hours. They leave with a specific commitment to do something differently by a specific date.
Each module introduces frameworks that participants draw, practise, and take back to their teams. These are not slides. They are tools. Below are the key models developed across the first two modules of the program.
The Lead the CPA Australia Way Academy is designed to be the program a leader thinks back to when they are sitting across from a difficult conversation, or deciding whether to say the hard thing, or asking themselves what shadow they are casting. The six behaviours on the road are not a checklist. They are a picture of who a leader is choosing to become. The best learning development does not stay in the room where it happened. It travels with the person into every room they will ever lead in.