Developing what, exactly?
We always start by working with you to understand the ‘step up’ required of your organisation’s leaders. Then we create or co-create the developmental experiences that will help them make and maintain that transition.
While we never assume this will be the case – and you’ll have your own way of describing it – the step-up has usually required leaders to develop their ability to deliver in one or more of three areas:
- Establishing direction, often in the face of complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity
- Securing commitment from the people they lead and/or key stakeholders
- Building the capacity required to succeed – whether that capacity is their own or others and whether it comes in the form of skills, knowledge, resources, time or the necessary enabling processes and structures
These ‘Three Core Disciplines’ appear in some form in most competency frameworks and books on leadership. Our own work with thousands of leaders in a wide range of organisations across six continents tells us these are key to success for any leader, team or organisation. Hence, clients typically ask us to help their leaders…
Establish a compelling direction
- Develop an inspiring vision at a personal, team and/or organisational level
- Lead through change and in complex operating environments
- Make quality decisions with limited, ambiguous and contradictory data
- Craft a way forward that addresses the conflicting needs of different stakeholder groups
- Align strategy, culture and leadership throughout the organisation
Secure people’s commitment
- Develop greater self-awareness, empathy and relationship skills
- Enhance personal impact, influence and ability to inspire
- Gain a better understanding and appreciation of team dynamics
- Create a culture of trust and genuine accountability
- Build confidence, self-control and resilience
Build capacity in teams and organisations
- Recognise and address factors inhibiting their own performance
- Ensure teams have the skills and resources they need to deliver
- Create a more effective feedback culture
- Improve coaching and mentoring skills
- Upgrade people’s internal ‘operating systems’ so they’re better equipped for a ‘VUCA’ world1
1. ‘VUCA’ refers to conditions that a Volatile, Uncertain (or Unpredictable), Complex and/or Ambiguous. You’ll find a full description in the sample chapters of Upgrade, which you can access for free at the bottom of this page.
Our approach
No two organisations – and no two leaders – are ever quite the same. Thus there is a great deal of variety in the solutions we deliver. We begin by working with key stakeholders, and develop a clear understanding of the organisation, its culture and its aspirations and then design a programme of Leadership Development Interventions.
Our Leadership Development Interventions are rooted in the latest thinking on the future of leadership development2. Hence our approach often brings together:
- Deep personal insight: decoding people’s ways of understanding themselves and the world around them
- Feedback: for instance, using 360° questionnaires, psychometric profiling, face-to-face feedback from peers, or behavioural assessment through interviews and/or complex business simulations
- Real work: participants work together on a real, current and challenging organisational issue
- Practical skills development: topics have included leading change, influencing, delegation, creativity, innovation, emotional intelligence, team dynamics and coaching / mentoring skills for managers
- A blend of expert input, discussion, provocation and learning from peers
- Leader-led learning: this isn’t just about wheeling in the experienced players, it means truly equipping those senior figures to actually develop the people they’re there to help
- Work on the relationships between different ‘levels’ in the organisation: so it’s harder for one set of leaders to blame their behaviours on the people above or below them
- Investment in sustaining the change: by exploring and addressing the unconscious blockers that will make it hard for each individual to truly ‘step up’ in their leadership
2. Richard was lead author of a Henley Business School report on the future of leadership development and you’ll find more on that topic on the Our Thinking page.
Where does ‘ARC Leadership’ fit in?
Richard’s book
ARC Leadership is one of many sources influencing and informing our work. We believe wholeheartedly that leaders are more effective when they’re Authentic, Responsible and Courageous, and when their people are encouraged and enabled to demonstrate those ‘ARC Qualities’. We also seek to live up to those qualities ourselves. That includes only bringing ARC into the picture when it’s clearly relevant to the ‘step up’ required by an organisation’s leaders.
When ARC Leadership does form part of a Leadership Development Intervention, some clients like us to put it front and centre. Some like to include ARC alongside other ideas, including their own competency frameworks, values and so on. Some like us to map ARC and the Three Core Disciplines to their own frameworks. Others prefer to keep ARC beneath the surface – typically because they’re keen that the ethos of authenticity, responsibility and courage prevails but want to avoid diluting any of their existing organisational messages around leadership.
We’re happy with all of those approaches. After all, what we really care about is enhancing the quality of leadership in your organisation. We’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Where does ‘Upgrade’ fit in?
Upgrade focuses on four capacities we believe are central to people’s ability to survive and thrive in environments that are complex, ambiguous and constantly evolving – in other words, the environments in which most leaders operate. If the way each individual leader understands and responds to themselves, other people and the world around them is their ‘internal operating system’, then
Upgrade helps them upgrade that operating system to the next level. We’re not talking levels in a competency framework here. We’re talking paradigm shifts in the way people think. Each of those shifts – each ‘level’ in each of our four capacities – is soundly rooted in the science of adult development.
Those kinds of paradigm shift are at the heart of what we do at LeaderSpace. That doesn’t mean we need the content of this particular book to be front and centre in the work we do with you. In many cases, we don’t even mention the four capacities or the science behind the work we’re doing. Sometimes it’s best to just do the work without overlaying it with models, terms and theories. In many cases, it’s our clients who choose whether or not Upgrade is explicitly referenced. Either way, though, we’ll always be looking to help take your people to their ‘next level’, whatever that means for your organisation.
If you’re familiar with one or more of ARC, our Three Core Disciplines and Upgrade, you’ll find an article explaining how they all fit together on the Upgrade Resources page.
The impact we’ve had
We’ve measured an estimated return on investment of 14:1 and participants frequently describe our programmes as “The best developmental experience of my career”. In recognition of our ability to ‘get the learning to stick’, we’ve been a finalist in the Training Journal Awards.
For more specific insights into the impact we’ve had on organisations and their leaders, we invite you to take a look at our case studies.
To discuss what Leadership Development Interventions
could achieve for your organisation, please call Richard Boston on +44 7949 324001. Alternatively, email hello@leaderspace.com.
