Leadership Development
Leadership is a critically important issue for all businesses. Leaders impact on every aspect of organisational life - on performance, culture, innovation, differentiation, change, and the ability to attract, motivate and retain the best employees. It is key that your leaders act as role models of the desired organisational culture and that they actively and visibly contribute to the development and achievement of the business strategy and performance targets.
We believe that excellent leadership requires self awareness, so that individual leaders recognise and play to their particular strengths and attributes in order to be experienced as authentic and inspiring role models who ‘walk their talk’. This does not mean a quest for ‘perfection’, but rather a focus on being human as well as on delivering business success. Leaders need to understand how others’ perceive them so they can ensure that their intention and impact are aligned and know how to maximise their impact to positive effect. We believe that the best leaders are inspiring, motivating and demanding in terms of the standards and results expected.
We use latest thinking and models of leadership based on research into best practice, as opportunities to stimulate and provoke and as guides for improvement. We encourage leaders to develop their own models of effective leadership, that meet their personal and business aspirations and requirements, and to test and refine these through active experimentation.
Our focus is to enable leaders to develop:
- Personal purpose, direction and identity that provides a solid foundation in an environment of constant change and uncertainty
- Flexibility of approach between authority, collaboration and influence, all of which are key elements in working effectively with colleagues, customers and business partners
- Confidence to make timely and positive decisions on the basis of limited or an overload of information and in challenging circumstances
- A strategic approach to how they use their time and to their interactions with others
- Good levels of self awareness and emotional intelligence so they become inspiring role models
- A positive orientation towards change, providing vision and resilience in the face of uncertainty and challenge
To achieve this, we offer a mix of short intensive workshops, longer-term development programmes, one-to-one coaching, action learning sets and project-based learning. Key elements of our approach to developing leaders include:
- Integrating learning with working wherever possible, so that participants progress business issues and use these as vehicles for their development
- Experiential activities designed to enable leaders to explore and reflect on their performance in different situations, so they have opportunities to test, apply and refine relevant skills and behaviours
- Feedback and review sessions, where participants reflect on their own performance and exchange challenge and support with their colleagues
- Facilitator input to reinforce prticipants' learning from practical activities
- Self assessment questionnaires, psychometrics and 360 degree feedback, used to hold a mirror up to individuals and to aid reflection.
