…"coaching enables a leader to go farther, faster."
from The Next Generation Leader, by Andy Stanley, 2003
Click here for testimonials of satisfied clients.
Typical Services Offered
1. Provide professional coaching
2. Conduct a single, personal leadership skills assessment
3. Generate a single, personal "Leadership Development Plan"
4. Conduct an “Organizational Health Assessment”
5. Generate an organizational set of values, a “vision” description,
and a “mission” statement
6. Install a “Leadership Development Process”
7. Facilitate an off-site leadership team "Bonding Session"
1. Provide personal coaching. Requires initial dialogue about your preferences regarding desired outcomes, frequency of conversations, methodology, accountability, etc. Coaching sessions usually occur a minimum of once-per-month and a maximum of weekly. Written notes summarizing the actions taken and the agreements reached are provided, usually within two days. These include the followup actions each party agrees to take.
Work with leadership teams (full or partial days) can be arranged based on the needs of your organization—also, individual ninety-minute group training sessions in topics that support your organization’s improvement efforts. We will select topic areas based on the perceived needs of the leadership team and/or larger organization.
2. Conduct a single, personal “leadership skills” evaluation. Using a commercially available assessment tool, you evaluate your strengths and limitations in 67 different attributes of a leader. You also evaluate 19 significant “stallers and stoppers” that could severely limit a leader’s career. This is usually done as a self-assessment, but can easily be adapted to having a customer, supplier, peer, direct report, or supervisor provide your assessment.
3. Generate a single, personal “leadership development plan.” Using the information generated from the leadership skills assessment (item #2 above), you select two to four attributes for your leadership development plan. These are skill areas where you would like to be significantly stronger a year from now. Selection may be made intuitively or through a rigorous analytic process, comparing existing skills with those needed to be successful in your current or a desired future role.
Because this is a year-long plan, the action steps are generated with the expectation they will be taken as the year progresses. The plan typically requires the involvement (support and accountability) of your direct boss. The boss typically provides front-end contribution in generating the plan.
Inputs to the plan include the creativity of the individual and his or her boss, reference material in the form of commercially available books, and my experience. My involvement usually ends at the creation of the plan, but some individuals prefer that I provide coaching assistance throughout the execution of the year-long plan.
4. Conduct an "organizational health assessment." Leaders have difficulty evaluating just how healthy (or dysfunctional) their organizations are. It is hard to conduct any kind of objective evaluation using internal resources.
We interview the leaders and a cross-sectional representation of members of the organization. We use a simple yet comprehensive dual set of questions (you may participate in adapting the questions to your organization, if you desire). The first set of questions is very generic and is provided in written form.
The answers are collected in written form. The distribution and collection is usually conducted by electronic mail.
The second set of questions is conducted in person. Time required with each participant is usually 45-60 minutes.
We prepare a detailed report of aggregated responses (protecting the confidentiality of each participant). We deliver this report to the leader as soon as possible after the interviews (usually within two weeks). Within a few days, we and the leader then deliver the report to all the participants in the interviews. In some situations, this is the end of our involvement with the organization. In most situations, however, some form of improvement steps are desired after the assessment. Options are usually generated by the leadership team of the organization. If our continued involvement is desired, we mutually design the followup steps, which often include the following items.
5. Generate an organizational set of values, a “vision” description, and a “mission” statement. Using the leaders and a cross-sectional representation of your organization, we spend up to two days in an off-site process generating these three independent but inter-related documents.
We provide coordination support prior to and following the session. Bringing the effort to closure will likely require one or more sub-teams (selected from among volunteers in the session) to do final wordsmithing, to communicate the off-site work to the rest of the organization, and to execute the followup work required to implement the new values, vision, and mission as an ongoing part of the culture. We provide counsel and guidance to the leader and to the key volunteers who assume responsibility for completing the process.
6. Install a “leadership development process.” Many organizations have never considered an overt methodology for building future leaders. They likely have been focused on meeting their customers’ needs, providing excellent services and products, and growing the business. After years of success, they have never consciously focused on building leaders for the future of the company. Or if they’ve considered it, they’ve not known how to successfully accomplish it.
Installing a system for ongoing leadership development involves:
--conducting a leadership skills assessment for each member of the leadership team (see item #2 described earlier).
--helping each individual select two to four “focus areas” for improvement.
--using available resources, assisting each individual in identifying and choosing specific action steps to include in his or her leadership development plan (see item #3 described earlier).
--coordinating the above steps with the individual’s immediate direct supervisor. We teach “the boss” how to provide both support and accountability throughout both the generation and the execution of the plan.
--teaching a leader in the organization (usually in the Human Resource area) to become the infrastructure “system owner” in an ongoing way for this process. He or she will learn how to conduct leadership skills assessments, to assist colleagues in selecting two to four focus areas for improvement, and to identify action steps to include in the plans. He or she will customize a description of the leadership development process for your organization and will generate a customized “example” leadership development plan for participants to follow as they build their plans.
--building the supportive relationship between the individual, his or her boss, and the “system owner”, such that the “leadership development process” is indeed inserted into the culture of the organization, and future leadership development (and improvements) can be accomplished internally without further involvement of outside consultants.
--analyzing the characteristics and culture of the organization by looking at a matrix of the strengths and limitations of all of the leaders of the organization.
Our past experience with installing this kind of leadership development process is that almost instantaneously morale increases, work processes function smoother, and the products and services flow to the customer more easily. Hard number results improve within months of insertion of this process. The two or three years that follow show significant improvement in measurable outcomes, including employee satisfaction, customer retention, profitability, and productivity.
7. Facilitate an off-site leadership team “Bonding Session.” This can occur as a stand-alone event. A preferred approach is that it be part of a more extended organizational improvement process.
Conducting the process properly requires a day. For groups of six or fewer people, a shortened version of this process can be conducted in half a day.
The objectives of such an activity might include:
--clarification and communication of each team member’s talents and strengths
--enhanced relationships among these leaders, resulting in improved communications and more collaborative interactions
--greater awareness of how to capitalize on strengths and manage around weaknesses
Sometimes, leaders feel a need to “just do some teambuilding.” This event is a superb general team-building activity. However, the process is even more effective when conducted as part of an intentional, organized initiative to improve the results, operation, and culture of an organization. (The organization has to be somewhat healthy; this is not a “problem-solving” activity!)
The activity requires prework. Each individual identifies his or her top five “talent themes” by taking the web-based “StrengthsFinder Profile” assessment. During the event, a description of all the participants’ dominant talent themes is provided. Each participant is provided an opportunity to comment on some examples of how his or her talents have been manifested in the workplace. Then each of the other participants are encouraged to provide complimentary comments regarding how they have seen and appreciated those talents applied. Finally, each participant is invited to look to the future and identify how he or she would like to utilize the talents in support of the leadership team and entire organization in the coming year.
Technical substantiation for this process is provided using video generated by Marcus Buckingham, co-developer of the “StrengthsFinder Profile” and author of Now, Discover Your Strengths and Go Put Your Strengths to Work. Buckingham’s comments are used to stimulate dialogue about what has been happening within the organization. More importantly, the dialogue is directed toward what could be done differently to move the organization in the direction of its desired vision while providing a more rewarding environment for those individuals involved on a daily basis.