The need for leadership development is at an all-time high. Organizations realize that in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need leadership skill and organizational capabilities different from those that helped them succeed in the past. There is also growing recognition that leadership development should not be restricted to the C-Suite. With the proliferation of collaborative problem-solving, leaders across the board are expected to make decisions that align with your organization’s strategy and culture.
Effective communication is the exchange of ideas among various people and can contribute to organizational success in many ways. It builds employee morale, satisfaction, and engagement. In this development session, leaders will learn how to leverage the principles of effective communication, including: clarity in ideas, appropriate language, attention, consistency, proper timing, and feedback which can help them become a person of greater influence in your organization
Executive presence enables leaders to engage, align, and inspire others to act to accomplish organizations goals. Executive presence is the ability to exude a sense of gravitas – confidence, decisiveness, dignity, and poise. In this development session your leaders will learn how to:
Start from the inside out. Executive presence isn’t just about how others perceive you. It starts with how you perceive yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself and your abilities, the self-doubt will be apparent – not matter what your look like or what clothes you’re wearing.
Self-awareness. One of, if not the most important core competencies for leadership. Part of the process of creating executive presence involves understanding how others perceive you. It is just as important to recognize and appreciate your assets as it is to identify your vulnerabilities. With self-awareness, your leaders can put their strengths forward and lean into them.
Communication. Communicating effectively, authentically, and dynamically to all types of audiences. As a leader, great communication skills are essential to being an influential leader.
Emotions precede thoughts. When your leaders become angry, it can change the way their brain functions which diminishes their cognitive abilities, decision-making powers, and interpersonal skills. Leaders who can understand and manage their emotions (and the emotions of others) can help your leaders to become more successful in both their personal and professional lives. Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. In this development session we’ll cover the five key pillars of emotional intelligence (below) and how it impacts every aspect of an organization.
Self-Awareness. When your leaders are self-aware, they understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as how to react to situations and people.
Self-Regulation. Because your leaders are self-aware, emotionally intelligent people can regulate their emotions and keep them in check as necessary.
Motivation. Leaders with high emotional intelligence tend to be highly motivated, which makes them more resilient and optimistic.
Empathy. Leaders with empathy and compassion are simply better at connecting with others.
Social Skills. Social skills of emotionally intelligent leaders show they genuinely care for and respect others and how they get along with them.
Teams that can executive quickly, make better decisions, solve more complex problems, enhance creativity, and build skills are able to increase productivity, morale, and outperform their competition. A high-performing team refers to a group of goal-focused individuals with specialized expertise and complementary skills who collaborate, innovate, and produce superior results. The group relentlessly pursues performance excellence through shared goals, shared leadership, collaboration, open communication, clear role expectations and group operating rules, early conflict resolution, and a strong sense of accountability and trust among its members. In this development session we’ll focus on the eight characteristics of high-performing teams (below) and how it can impact your organization.
Have clear goals for the team and organizational priorities
Understand how the teams work fits into the organizational mission
Defined roles and responsibilities
Communicate clearly and respectfully
Manage work and deadlines based on priorities
How to trust and respect each other
Celebrate success together and recognize contributions
Practice continuous learning
Research shows that leaders who are seen as fair and respectful, encourage collaboration, and value opinions are 2.5 times more likely to have effective employees on their teams. In other words, the ability to unlock individual potential benefits everyone that is led by an inclusive leader. Inclusive leaders are those who are aware of their own biases and preferences, actively seek out and consider different views and perspectives to inform better decision-making. In this development session we’ll focus on the six inclusive leadership traits for leaders:
COMMITMENT TO IMPROVE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Allocating resources and holding leadership accountable for improving diversity and inclusion
Treating all team members with fairness and respect
Understanding what makes individuals unique, and ensuring they feel connected to the team
Working through obstacles, and adapting to meet the needs of others
COURAGE FOR YOUR LEADERS TO ADMIT THEY DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS ON WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE OR HOW TO CHANGE IT.
Seeking feedback and acknowledging personal weaknesses
Showing humility and admitting when mistakes are made
Challenging the status quo and calling out bias when it’s witnessed
AWARENESS OF BIAS AS A LEADER AND AN ORGANIZATION.
Developing an understanding of different kinds of personal biases, such as implicit stereotypes, groupthink, and confirmation bias
Learning to self-regulate and take corrective steps to ensure fair play
Establishing transparent policies for making merit-based decisions about promotions, rewards, and task allocations
CURIOSITY AND OPENNESS TO DIFFERENCT IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES.
Showing a desire for continuous learning and improvement
Accepting your own limitations and seeking diverse perspectives
Coping with ambiguity and accepting that some uncertainty is inevitable
CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AND CONFIDENCE TO LEAD CROSS-CULTURAL TEAMS.
Valuing cultural differences and seeking opportunities to learn about other cultures
Developing an awareness of how cultural stereotypes can influence expectations
Accepting that people might need to change their behavior to navigate cross-cultural interactions
COLLABORATION THAT EMPOWERS PEOPLE TO CHALLENGE AND BUILD ON EACH OTHER’S IDEAS.
Putting together diverse teams and avoiding the appearance of favoritism among members
Building trust so everyone feels comfortable speaking up
Empowering teams to handle difficult situations and being ready to help address conflict if needed
Unconscious bias from leaders can affect your entire organization. It can introduce unintentional discrimination and result in poor decision-making. Research has proved that unconscious bias can have an impact or recruitment, mentoring and promotions. Unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias, is what happens when we act on subconscious, deeply ingrained biases, stereotypes, and attitudes formed from our inherent human cognition, experiences, upbringing, and environment. In this development your leaders will focus on how to control and diminish unconscious bias.
YOUR LEADERS HOLD THE POWER
Self-Awareness
Overcome denial
Focus on the potential for growth
Examples of behavior change
Break stereotypes
CREATE EMPATHY
Research shows that people have less empathy for people who seem different from them and are likely to treat them worse as a result. That’s why connecting with other through empathy can improve your leaders’ interactions across racial, gender, and other differences.
Offer opportunities to take perspective of others
Hold small group discussions
ENCOURAGE INTERACTIONS AMONG PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT GROUPS
Forming relationships with members of other groups can widen our social networks, decrease our stress around people who are different from us, and reduce our prejudices.
Expand inner circles
Nurture curiosity
Urge employees to track their interactions
ENCOURAGE GOOD PRACTICES AND CONTINUED LEARNING
Commit to improvement
Find a mentor and solicit feedback
Track improvement
SET A BROADER STRATEGY FOR BROADER IMPACT
Build the foundations
Measure the effectiveness
Nudge leaders to make better decisions
Review and rethink policies
Establishing a culture of accountability can increase your organizations performance in many metrics including increased market share, adaptability to change, organizational growth, and higher rates of organizational achievement. Accountability defined as the quality or state of being accountable; an obligation to willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions. The first step toward fostering a culture of accountability in the workplace is to understand and redefine what it means to your organization. In this development session we’ll focus on the four steps to promote accountability.
Start with yourself
Set clear expectations
Create and trust psychological safety
The Accountability Puzzle
The ability to influence is an essential leadership skill. To influence to have an impact on the behaviors, attitudes, opinion, and choices of others. Influence is not to be confused with power of control. It’s not about manipulating others; it’s about noticing what motivates employee commitment and using that knowledge to leverage performance and positive results. In this development session your leaders will focus on the seven steps to gaining influence.
What the experts say
Build connections
Listen before you try to persuade
Mind your body language (and your tone)
Develop expertise
Map a strategy
Give people what they want
GROW coaching skills unlock performance and increase performance by increasing self-confidence and motivation. When your leaders learn how to ask effective questions in a carefully structured way, it promotes a deeper awareness and greater responsibility which leads to practical steps to accomplish your organizational goals. The GROW coaching model is a simple yet highly effective coaching framework your leaders can leverage in a coaching setting with one of their direct reports. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to facilitate the GROW coaching model to help guide their direct reports achieve their goals.
Establish the Goal
Examine the Current Reality
Explore the Options
Establish the Will
Leaders who can provide constructive feedback can keep everyone on track, helps the team avoid major mistakes, form better relationships, motivate people, promotes professional growth, create a friendly work environment which can help the organization achieve its goals. Feedback is a reaction or information that occurs because of actions of behavior undertaken by an individual or group. In a learning and development context, both positive and negative feedback is crucial. In this development session, your leaders will focus on the SBI Feedback Model.
The SBI Feedback Model is a simple structure that your leaders can leverage to deliver effective on-the-spot feedback.
Situation
Behavior
Impact
Leading through change requires your leaders to show empathy and the ability to make complex concepts simple to communicate. Being an empathetic leader means acknowledging that change is difficult. Your leaders must be able to identify precisely how the change is going to affect people across your entire organization. Leaders must be able to communicate the ‘why’ of the change with a clear vision and sense of purpose. It is the responsibility of your leaders to communicate the change narrative clearly. For employees to feel connected to the purpose and aligned with the goal, they all need to hear the same story, repeated consistently. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to lead during times of change through the ten principles of change management.
Lead with the culture
Start at the top
Involve every layer
Make the rational and emotional case together
Act your way into new thinking
Engage, engage, engage
Leverage formal solutions
Leverage informal solutions
Access and adapt
Decision-making is a vital role of leadership. Decision-making plays the most important role in the planning process. When leaders plan, the decide on matter as which goals their organization will pursue, what resources they will use, and who will perform each required task. Decision-making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assuming alternative resolutions. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to use a step-by-by step decision-making process that will allow them to make a more deliberate, thoughtful decision by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives. This approach increases the chances that your leaders will choose the most satisfying alternative possible.
IDENTIFY THE DECISION
GATHER INFORMATION
IDETIFY ALTERNATIVES
WEIGH THE EVIDENCE
CHOOSE AMONG ALTERNATIVES
TAKE ACTION
REVIEW THE DECISION
Understanding conflict allows leaders to manage it more effectively and can provide a path to accomplish positive outcomes. Conflict management can be an active for that will allow your leaders to grow healthy relationship within their organization which can ultimately result in effective productivity. Conflict management is the practice of being able to identify and handle conflicts sensibly, fairly, and effectively. Since conflict in an organization are a natural part of the workplace, it is important that there are people who understand conflicts and know how to resolve them. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to resolve conflict management.
BEWARE OF THE CONFLICT
TAKE A CONSIDERED AND RATIONAL APPROACH TO CONFLICT
INVESTIGATE THE SITUATION
DECIDE HOW TO TACKLE THE CONFLICT
LET EVERYONE HAVE THEIR SAY
IDENTIFY OPTIONS AND AGREE ON A WAY FORWARD
IMPLEMENT WHAT HAS BEEN AGREED
EVALUTATE HOW THINGS ARE GOING
CONSIDER PREVENTATIVE STRATEGIES FOR THE FUTURE
DiSC is a powerful coaching tool. It can help your leaders understand themselves, learn strategies to improve interaction with other and achieve higher workplace satisfaction and results. The profile offers insight into the most productive behaviors and behaviors that may create problems. DiSC is a personal assessment tool used to improve work productivity, teamwork, leadership, sales, and communication. DiSC measures your personality and behavior style. In this development session, your leaders will take the DiSC assessment and learn how to recognize and acknowledge their strengths and developmental opportunities, as well as the strengths and developmental opportunities of their team.
Meetings are vitally important – if done well. Meeting help people feel included, trusted, and that they are important team members, as well as giving them the opportunity to contribute to the success of the organization. Unfortunately, a lot of meetings, well, most are ineffective. Effective meetings occur when team members leave a meeting feeling energized, positive about the use of their time and with a sense that progress has been made. Effective meetings can assist your leaders generate ideas, plan work, and keep their team informed of upcoming objectives. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to build and run effective meetings.
Successful meetings have a clear purpose
Determine whether you really need a meeting
Choose meeting participants who can make a unique contribution
Craft and share an agenda
Schedule for maximum engagement
Encourage participation – and make it hard to zone out
Make it remote-friendly, even if you’re in the office
Build trust in the room
Be inclusive
Focus relentlessly on results
Strategic thinking helps your leaders create a strategy that is unifying, rational and involves integrative framework for decisions related to resource utilization and direction of your organization. Successful strategic thinking adds value to the organization, can help maximize resources and initiates positive changes. Strategic thinking is simply an intentional and rational thought process that focuses on the analysis of critical factors and variables that will influence the long-term success of your organization, a team, or a leader. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to cascade their strategic thinking.
Communicate Powerfully. How to listen, gather, and share information. The leaders will learn how to bring strategic perspectives into conversations to connect what they are doing to what your organization need to do to succeed.
Foster Innovation. The world is changing. Disruption is everywhere. Ideally, leaders will disrupt their own organization before a competitor disrupts it for them.
Focus on your Clients. Your clients know things that your leaders do not know and can see things that your leaders don not see. This is probably the least intuitive of these correlated behaviors. Getting out of the office and visiting clients has profound outcomes. Your clients can help you be a great success if you listen to them, understand their current needs, and anticipate needs in the future.
Inspire and Motivate. A strategy needs to be more than words and assumptions. Your leaders need to believe in it and implement it. Your leader’s ability to inspire and motivate others is a vital part of making any strategy successful.
Establish Stretch Goals. Stretch goals help make strategies concrete. When your leaders accomplish stretch goals, their engagement increases, and their self-confidence rises. Your organization moves one step closer to success.
Critical thinking allows leader at every level to evaluate their decision-making and how these decisions ultimately impact your organizations results. What made your leader successful in the past is often not what will make them successful in the future. Critical thinking is the intellectual disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observing, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to build their critical thinking skill.
Observation. The ability to notice and predict opportunities, problems, and solutions.
Analysis. The gathering, understanding, and interpreting of data and other information.
Inference. Drawing conclusions based on relevant data, information and personal knowledge and experience.
Communication. Sharing and receiving information with others verbally, nonverbally and in writing.
Problem Solving. The process of gathering, analyzing, and communicating information to identify and troubleshoot solutions.
Transitioning from an individual contributor to supervisor is often the most dramatic and challenging work change for your leader. The challenge is not only in taking on the demands of new elevated role and the skills and knowledge required, but also making the emotional and mental transition to that of a supervisor. In this development session, your leaders will learn how to go from individual contributor to supervisor.
Clarify the Roles. Both for your leader, and their new direct reports.
Get Involved. Create a sounding board and learn how to network with other supervisors in your organization and network.
Draw Boundaries. Where is the line between individual contributor and supervisor? What are the ‘gray areas” managers must navigate?
Set Clear Expectations. Discuss what will change as well as what will not change. Then be consistent.
Explain Your Leadership Style. If the direct reports know what to expect from their new supervisor, the
Lead By Example/Be a Role Model. What your new supervisors do vs. what they say will influence their credibility.
Learn the Difference Between Leading vs. Managing. Your leaders will learn how to generate followers, and they way they do that is by knowing where they’re going.
Give Your Team Members Some Ownership. Your leaders will learn how to allow their direct reports to take calculated risks and push themselves to work beyond their full potential.
Don’t Micromanage.
Be Open Minded. Your leaders will learn create an environment where people are free to share ideas, collaborate, and thrive.
Find a Mentor. Your leaders will learn how and where to find a mentor with whom they can discuss the challenges of new leadership.
Communicate Often. Your leaders will learn how to articulate the goals of their team, department, and organization and how their team fits into the larger picture.
For your leaders to reduce leadership stress, burnout and become more resilient, leaders first have to recognize how much time they spend ruminating about things that produce no useful outcomes. The next step is to channel that negative energy into reflection, rumination’s positive flip side. Free from past regrets and anxiety about the future, reflective leaders are better able to success in the moment and prepare for the future. In this development session, your leaders will learn the keys to manage stress.
RECOGNIZE your stress signals
INCORPORATE health and diet into your schedule
MAINTAIN boundaries between home and work life
ENLIST an executive coach to help you stay on track
CREATE your personal board of directors
PRACTICE the art or recovery
FOCUS your attention on the present
Setting boundaries is a skill that your leaders can learn. Having great boundaries at work is not only great for productivity, but importantly, it is a form of self-care. More specifically, setting effective boundaries in the workplace allows your leaders to have better mental health, which in turn help improve your leader’s performance and build better working relationships. Healthy boundaries at work can make the difference between professional fulfillment or burn out. They are the physical, emotional, and mental limits you create to protect your leaders from over-committing, being used, or behaving in unethical ways. In this development session, your leaders will learn boundaries in the workplace.
Identify Your Priorities
Learn to Say No
Take Time Off
Look For Examples of Professional Boundaries
Communicate Clearly
Establish Boundaries with Coworkers
Silence Notifications
Create Built-In Breaks
Triage Your Tasks
Don’t Skip Breaks
Power Down Technology
Stick to Your Routine
Try Separating Your Workspace
Turn Your Camera Off
Discover the 7 action steps you can check off to find your leaders the best executive coaches in the marketplace today so you can save your precious time, energy, and leadership development budget.
Where should we send your free Checklist?
We promise to keep your email address safe.
