Leadership & Development

Ripples....

Explaining and understanding the nature of good leadership is probably easier than practising it. Good leadership requires deep human qualities, beyond conventional notions of authority.

In the modern age good leaders are an enabling force, helping people and organizations to perform and develop, which implies that a sophisticated alignment be achieved - of people's needs, and the aims of the organization.

The concept of serving is fundamental to the leadership role. Good leadership involves serving the organization or group and the people within it. Ineffective leaders tend to invert this principle and consider merely that the leader must be served by the people. This faulty idea fosters the notion that leadership as an opportunity to take: to acquire personal status, advantage, gain, etc., at the expense of others, which is grossly wrong. Leadership is instead an opportunity to give; to serve the organization, and crucially the people too.

The modern notions of 'servant leader' and 'servant leadership' are attributed to Robert K Greenleaf (in his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader) however the philosophy and concept of leadership being a serving function rather than one that is served, is very old indeed and found in ancient civilisations.

Leadership is centrally concerned with people. Of course leadership involves decisions and actions relating to all sorts of other things, but leadership is special compared to any other role because of its unique responsibilty for people - i.e., the followers of the leader - in whatever context leadership is seen to operate.

The leadership role is an inevitable reflection of people's needs and challenges in modern life. Leadership is therefore a profound concept, with increasingly complex implications, driven by an increasingly complex and fast-changing world.

Leadership and management are commonly seen as the same thing, which they are not. Leadership is also misunderstood to mean directing and instructing people and making important decisions on behalf of an organization. Effective leadership is much more than these.

Leadership Development
We recognise that excellent leadership capability is a key enabler to an organisation’s performance. Leadership behaviour sets the tone and norms for the organisation and in a way that can be disproportionate from the original intention. Small actions can lead to big consequences. Our leadership work has these tenets at the core of it:

Business/work centred – Our focus is on developing people in the context of the organisation’s strategy and change agenda. We do this whist addressing the real and current business issues while understanding and working with the less obvious, patterns of human behaviour at play beneath the surface. Your real work and challenges will always be at the centre of our work with you.

Experience driven – Our leadership consultants all have a rich understanding of business and strategy in addition to their expertise in understanding individual and team dynamics which allows us to play powerfully at this intersection of business and people issues to drive performance

Evidence and data based behaviour change – We underpin our leadership work with robust analytics focused on individual and team behaviours. The data generated, along with existing data and 360-degree feedback, gives us a unique lens to understand behavioural patterns and see how they relate to the chosen values of the organisation and the business strategy. This way we help organisations to powerfully align values, strategy and leadership behaviour which we believe is the secret to driving great performance.

Flexible – Although our experience has lead us to work with many tools, we believe there are a few keys tools that work well. However we are tool and product agnostic. We will tailor our work with you to deliver the business outcomes, regardless of approach.

Sustainable – We are focused on delivering sustainable change through ensuring leaders deeply understand and experience the impact of their behaviours – relating this change both to specific business results and their own success within the organisation. This means helping leaders within the business develop even more healthy habits, habits that stick.

Organisation Science

Developing business performance