InterLINK Management Consulting Products
LeaderLINK

Building Your Organization's Most Critical Assets

Many managers are promoted because of their technical abilities into positions that require leadership abilities. Unfortunately, few companies recognize the need to develop the leadership and management skills necessary to handle the new positions. Therefore, many organizations have an inherent and invisible limit to their growth: the current capabilities of the existing management team.

This program is designed to identify core leadership skills, assess your team's inventory of these skills, and undertake developmental activities where warranted. Your team will understand "leadership" as a measurable resource that they are responsible for developing and nurturing.

Our training uses Action Learning: the participants are actively engaged during the course with many interactive exercises. This not only reinforces the underlying concepts, but also helps uncover real issues in their jobs that can be discussed and corrected. The course details are described below.

Recommended Attendees:

Your top-level Executive Team (we recommend that you start with this team)
Mid-level managers
Supervisory personnel
High-potential, promotable individuals

The modular programs are fully customized to your industry, organization and work environment. Prices are quoted on request, based upon the size of your group and the scope of your specific objectives.

Module 1: Real-life Leadership Exercise

This module is designed to demonstrate leadership in real time. We deliberately take people out of their work place, where their habits, culture, politics, etc. ordinarily interfere with their ability to see how their actions affect other people. We put them in a new environment, typically outdoors, and set some simple tasks for them, like orienteering with a compass, or moving their team across log bridges. These tasks are safe and do not require special physical skills.

From these exercises, team members can see first-hand which approaches help get results effectively and which approaches actually hinder this. Team members also learn first-hand about their actual behaviors, as opposed the type of behaviors that they think they display.

At the end of the session, we facilitate "lessons learned", which includes:

Identifying effective leadership skills
Identifying ineffective leadership practices
Identifying the collective strengths of the overall team
Identifying areas where the team needs developmental activities.

Learning Objectives:

A consensus on what comprises effective leadership skills
A vivid demonstration of the actual skills and weaknesses of the team
An idea of developmental needs, developed by direct observation by the team members.

Module 2: Team Leadership Inventory

Between module 1 and 2, we administer a paper-based leadership assessment, with input from all management team members. We start the module with the results of this assessment.

This shows a leadership inventory based in normative data. At this point we will identify the overall strengths and weaknesses of the team, using input from the leadership exercise and the analytic evaluation.

Next, we will look for corroboration of these strengths and weaknesses in the everyday happenings of the organization. For example, one organization prided itself on its analytical abilities, but saw that they lacked interpersonal skills. One member said "We ALWAYS complete our financials on time, but we NEVER seem to complete our performance evaluations." This exercise enables team members to see a direct business connection between the noted skills and weaknesses of the management team, and sets the stage for developmental actions.

Finally, the team will review developmental opportunities for the two most significant weaknesses identified and select specific activities for the last module.

Learning Objectives:

Knowledge of leadership skills compared to other organizations
Consensus about the overall leadership skills and developmental needs
Understanding how key strengths and weaknesses translate into business outcomes.
Selection of the two biggest developmental opportunities

Module 3: Leadership Development

In this workshop, managers will directly address the two leadership-development opportunities identified previously. They will engage in a mixture of instructor-led learning, open dialogue, and small group role plays. The role plays are based on real-life problems experienced by the management team (but stripped of names). In each role play, the lead player will be "backed up" by other team players, creating an environment where managers help each other with specific leadership skills.

The combination of training and role playing gives managers a chance to practice new skills in a safe environment.

At the end of this workshop, participants will identify real-life methods to reinforce the newly-introduced skills in the workplace, such as mini-workshops, team huddles, real-time feedback, etc. In addition, they will develop a contract identifying the leadership skills that they have agreed to foster, methods to encourage each others' skill development, and any other reinforcing mechanisms that they have agreed to.

Learning Objectives:

Individual demonstrations of effective leadership skills (as chosen in module two)
Feedback and support from other team members.
A contract among themselves supporting the needed leadership skills.
Reinforcing mechanisms identified to support the new skills.
Real-time leadership-development results in critical areas.

To learn more, or to discuss alternative approaches, please contact us using the form on the contact page and we will have a representative contact you within 24 hours.