Leadership Programs with Impact
- What makes leadership particularly valuable for your organisation?
- What unites leaders in behavior and interaction?
- How well do your leaders deliver on the promises of your employer brand?
An effective leadership program encourages leaders to have a positive encounter with themselves: It is all about curiosity and honest interest in personal strengths, potential and areas for development, and last but not least, in their own blind spots. To discover these one step at a time and to find a conscious attitude towards their own leadership role is the bedrock for effective self-management and credible, sustainable leadership even when faced with challenging leadership situations.
Based on their own leadership purpose “Why am I in this role, what is the purpose of my work as a leader?” the participants shed light on their Circle of Influence: through reflective analysis of responsibilities, requirements of their role, leadership tools and methods that are appropriate for the organisation and their personality.
Successful Implementation
Any given program is only as good as its effect on the everyday life of its participants and their environment. This is why we work with specific cases and assignments from the participants' day-to-day work, with a strong focus on implementation, and on planning the transfer. Leadership programs deliver their maximum impact when the participants, their managers and HR focus on and reinforce the implementation of the program in their daily leadership practice - before, between and after the training sessions.
Abb.: Focus on Implementation
Procedure & essential elements
1. Goals, leadership brand and leadership competencies as the foundation
The goals of your organisation, your leadership brand, your leadership principles, competencies, and tools form the basis and the starting point for the conception of your leadership program - or we can continue to develop these together to meet changing requirements. Building on this, we work together to design a coherent leadership development strategy with long-term development goals.
2. Determining the status quo
By determining the current status quo - based on (future) success-relevant competencies and situations - we enable participants to engage with their current perception of their role, making it “visible”, “understandable”, and consequently actionable. The overall outcome offers an inventory of strengths and areas for development both individually for all participants and in an overview for the respective target group or, across several sessions, an overview of the “leadership landscape” in the organisation. Leadership standards that are currently lived (and experienced by the employees) become visible. The individual profile identifies clear strengths, potential and areas for development, which can then be addressed by the individual participants with a recommended course of development in the context of the leadership program.
3. Concept
The currently applicable leadership program is designed based on the results of assessing the status quo, ideally in co-creation with HR and with feedback from the participants and equipped with results that can be evaluated. The content and format are tailor-made. We build on existing, successful formats that have already proved themselves in your organisation, adapt them or work with you to develop new formats in order to provide the best possible support for achieving the program's goals.
4. Plan for personal development
Every participant now has their own personal path of competence development in line with the leadership brand, which takes their individual aptitudes into account. Using their personal compass for developing their individual competencies, participants can make conscious and autonomous use of various program offerings in the form of training courses, projects, learning journeys, supporting coaching/sparring, and consulting. Deciding whether the sessions take place face-to-face with/without outdoor elements or whether they are virtual or hybrid, whether there is shadowing/mentoring near the job in addition to individual coaching are questions which are a relevant part of the conceptual work. Besides practicable solutions, there is also a focus on the specific development goals of the participants.
5. Training & Coaching
Leadership is achieved through communication – during training we make use of the group: Expressing oneself, receiving feedback, expanding knowledge, trying out new ideas, and mutually using and integrating feedback. In every session, everyone equally gives and receives feedback, while learning together is achieved in a safe and moderated setting.
Examples of training and coaching topics from leadership programs, which can be individually adapted and combined:
6. Evaluation
A key driver to firmly anchor any leadership program in an organisation is evaluation and the use of the insights that are gained from it for participants - individually but also for management and HR. In this respect, evaluation workshops with elements of a development center, 360° interviews, and the use of an employee survey with complementary focus groups have proven to be effective, ideally in combination with an evaluation team that also includes “hard facts” in the evaluation such as levels of target achievement, fluctuation numbers, and talent nominations.
