Leadership Development

Strengthening the current leadership team and their potential successors

EXPERTISE

How can we boost your efforts?

Leadership Skills

In order assess and grow the capabilities of your leaders, it’s important to establish what good leadership looks like in your business. We work collaboratively with your senior leadership to develop a leadership skills framework that is tailored to your organization’s unique values, culture, structure and needs. We can then help you socialize those expectations across the business.

Leadership Assessment

Once you know what you are looking for in your leaders, you can apply those criteria to assessing and prioritizing needs. We can help you design and implement talent review, succession planning, and HiPo identification processes. We also develop management assessment centers that leverage simulations and workforce analytics.

Executive Coaching

Our OD Consultants can provide 1:1 executive coaching to your high potentials and senior leaders. We can also teach your leaders how to provide coaching for their subordinates and peers. In either case, we can support the coaching process with 360 surveys and analytical tools that help assess leadership proficiency and provide meaningful feedback.

Leadership Development Ecosystem

We help you develop and implement a strategy for strengthening your leadership team and growing your bench of emerging leaders. This ecosystem supports a wide variety of development activities, from self-awareness to planning, from formal curricula to informal mentoring, from structured cohort programs to individual coaching.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Success Stories

Management Assessment Center

A global financial services company needed to improve its branch management bench strength and was looking to develop a leadership pipeline. Rather than putting all management candidates through a leadership development program, and thereby diluting its investment, the firm wanted to screen the top candidates and only admit the top prospects into the program, then invest intensely in those individuals. The firm asked our team to help them design the screening process. If invited to attend the Management Assessment Center, candidates went through a 1½ day live simulation, involving real-world activities that mapped back to the skills framework, and afterwards were given feedback by visiting managers and psychometricians.

Developing Healthcare Leaders

As the healthcare marketplace and regulatory environment continue to shift dramatically, this regional hospital system also faced a looming leadership vacuum.  Many of its leaders were approaching retirement and there were few internal candidates ready to step into those roles.  Gus Prestera and his team were hired to implement a process for reviewing the existing leadership talent, identifying development opportunities, and putting development plans in place.  As leaders engaged in the process and used the tools, they slowly began to develop a culture of development, where leaders and their employees are continually engaged in conversations around their current skills and those needed to achieve their career goals.

Leadership Assessment

To help a pharmaceutical company improve the capabilities of its sales managers, we conducted a 360-degree assessment, surveying the participants, their managers, colleagues, and sales reps. Each participant received a comprehensive report that highlighted strengths and development opportunities. Their managers received a roll-up report as well as coaching on how to debrief the findings with their sales managers. From those debriefing conversations, the sales managers created individual development plans, which their managers help them implement. Sales manager engagement and performance improved.

Executive Coaching

To help a CEO develop his direct reports and their successors, we implemented a tailored executive coaching program. First we conducted 360-degree interviews, talking confidentially with participants, their manager, and a sampling of colleagues and direct reports. Each participant then received a report summarizing the findings and representative interview quotes. Our coaches worked with each participant to debrief the report, prioritize development opportunities, and construct an individual development plan. Once the plan was in place, our coaches followed up with those executives to support implementation.

Mentoring High Potentials

We helped a global financial services company expand leadership development by establishing a framework, tools, and training for one-on-one mentoring. Mentoring can take many forms, for example: informal vs. formal, individual vs. group, and standard vs. reverse mentoring. We architected a flexible framework that allows for the many variations mentoring can take. We then created tools to support the mentoring process, such as job aids and evaluations. Would-be mentors and mentees attend workshops or webinars that we designed to teach them the skills and best practices that best predict mentoring success.

Leadership Sims with Impact

Leadership decision-making simulations can be costly and time-consuming to build. These examples come from two Flash-based branching sims that were built within a couple of months. The learner is asked questions by his/her District Manager; accesses a management dashboard system (we built a mock system for training purposes); then makes decisions and receives feedback from the boss. It got great reviews from a tough crowd!