Harnessing the power of inner sustainability, systems awareness and adaptable leadership to achieve effective outcomes through complex challenges, with high performance and high wellbeing.
Harnessing the power of inner sustainability, systems awareness and adaptable leadership to achieve effective outcomes through complex challenges, with high performance and high wellbeing.
"Leadership emerges from relationships and the interactions you have with others and the environment around you.
Great leadership doesn't just happen by itself. It starts with how you lead yourself. It requires knowledge, awareness of self, others, and the context, and active choices about how you think, feel and respond at any given moment."
Dr Sue Mitchell
Our approach to leadership helps you understand some of the simple steps that support you to be a great leader despite the complexity of context dependent leadership. Just as a compass guides you through a physical landscape, our mindset approach guides you through the leadership landscape.
The mental model we work with is Trust, Compassion and Systems Thinking are the currencies of engaging, inspiring and empowering leadership. Leaders that do the 'inner work' to recognise their own mental models, think about their thinking and develop their systems perspectives are able to raise their own inner sustainability. Only then do they have the inner strength and capacity to lead the transformational change that is so often required in these times, within organisations and also globally to create a sustainable future for the planet.
Most people recognise good leadership and bad leadership but struggle to define it in simple terms, largely because leadership is no one thing. It is an emergent property: Leadership emerges from our relationships with other people. Leadership is not just about what you do. It is about the way you are, the way you think, feel and act and interact with other people and affect how they feel, think and act as a result. Great leaders do this in a way that nurtures a positive, psychologically and emotionally safe environment with high levels of trust, engagement, wellbeing and creativity, where everyone can excel.
Context is everything when it comes to leadership! Systems thinking helps you recognise that the challenges we face are complex and paradoxical with no single solution. The most persistent challenges tend to involve multiple dynamically interacting systems where you need to understand the perspective from all parts of the system to understand the impact of changes in one part. Very often the solution to your problem lies in another part of the system.
Systems thinking also helps you engage and communicate with other people. When you can stand in another's shoes , see things from their perspective and from where they are in the system, and then respond so they feel heard and understood, you are better able to understand them, support them and bring them with you. You also gain a more complete picture of the situation, and can adjust your leadership style and behaviours accordingly.
The program was designed around encouraging senior leaders to (i) assess and lead through the challenges the organisation is facing and (ii) enhance leadership in alignment with the organisation's strategic plan. This included the overall purpose, vision & mission, values, and strategic priorities as well as their leadership competencies.
Topics included: What is Leadership?; The Power of Positive Mindset, Resilience and Adaptablity; Leading and Managing Remotely; Leading with a systems thinking approach: Embracing strategic challenges & providing direction ; Team Development; Leadership Styles; Emotional Intelligence; Communication; Coaching; Supportive and Empowering Leadership: Developing initiative, delegation, and changing the paradigm.
This program was commissioned after a full day in-person event recieved uniformly positive feedback with high engagement including even those people who are normally not engaged.
“People were not on their devices, were engaged and attentive. It brought a lot out. All took something away they can DO now – in life and in work.” From an event organiser.
“It brought together thoughts, challenges, knowledge sharing, and corporate planning. It helped me be a confident and proactive leader and manager.” From a participant.
“The Team session was particularly helpful for me, resonated and was a bit of a stand out session. I have used the '5 (dys)functions of a team' to identify where these existed in my teams and apply the 'cures' to these dysfunctions to encourage better outcomes. I've used it with my management team look at our leadership approach and provide a basis in which to agree our way forward.” From a participant.
“One difference it has made in my role: I don't just react, but think about how I am going to react to situations, take time to think about my responses and how they will land - use coaching more instead of just providing the solution as that is quicker at the time, but not in the long term.” From a participant.
“I found it useful and valuable in my role. The insight I gained from working with other Senior Leaders in the sessions certainly informed my approach to tasks and actions required by the teams I managed.” From a participant.
“It has made me more conscious of the fact that 'leadership' and 'being a leader' are an essential part of my role, and that I require to prioritise this and to consciously make time for the more people-oriented aspects of my job, as well as the more business-oriented aspects.” From a participant.
Your role as a leader, particularly during difficult times, is to provide direction with confidence and inspire other people to want to go there too, feel resolved and determined to get there, and believe that they can no matter what curve-balls life throws in the way.
In just about any situation at work and in other areas of your life, understanding how to lead with integrity and flexible leadership styles will make you more effective and bring people with you. This interactive event explores leadership frameworks ( including Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership and ILM72) that help you recognise your own preferred style and the strengths and weaknesses of each style depending on the situation and people involved. Great leadership is highly context dependent and no one style suits all situations. The best leaders are able to match their style to the situation.
A quick note to thank you for the leadership sessions. I am delighted that they have been they very well received and highly evaluated. Great to see engagement from Research staff also which has been a bit of a challenge this year! These and the wellbeing sessions are the most popular thing we are delivering, with lots of requests to continue running them and great praise for you for both the content and the way you deliver. It is very impressive and satisfying that the work that has gone into developing them has been so worthwhile. I really appreciate your careful consideration of the needs we discussed and work that has gone into curating the content." From the organiser.
Events are delivered in the room and virtually.
For virtual events, I recommend a maximum duration of 2.5 hours including a break for people to get the most out of an online event. If you require a virtual event that would normally be a full day masterclasses, I recommend we do it over two or three sessions that can be a week or longer apart.
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