Leadership System
The Leadership System™ is a systemic approach to leadership development. Designed to increase individual and collective leadership effectiveness dramatically. The Leadership System delivers long-term, deep, and effective growth.
Built on Adult Learning Theory, the Leadership System is a system of interlocking and reinforcing components that, taken together, accomplish more than any single-component solution could. This is its power.
The Leadership System consists of five major components, each reinforcing and adding to the others.
Pre-work for Leadership Systems is essential as it allows participants to reflect on their current skills and identify specific areas for improvement. We’ve crafted this work to be insightful, engaging and best of all, fast. As a result, this pre-work will maximize the benefits of Leadership Systems by aligning learning objectives with the goals of the individual.
A half-day or full-day workshop that frames a collective view of leadership functioning as the kick-off for our Leadership System™. It embeds our Core Leadership Framework™ to guide all development work delivering Leadership Circle Profile feedback in a group context. It begins the feedback assimilation process and organizes the next steps.
A cohort-based series of half-day or full-day leadership effectiveness sessions that can span years of work. Built on the the Universal Model of Leadership™ framework, 22 available sessions encompass a full curriculum of hard-hitting leadership topics providing regular opportunities for peer coaching and accountability. Each session can be delivered face to face or virtually.
Every engagement is enhanced by peer cohort and one-on-one coaching. The payback for leaders is worth the investment. The combination of peer cohort coaching with one-on-one leadership coaching has a compounding effect.
In their book, The Whole Systems Approach, Bill and Cindy Adams detail six interlocking systems that must be tended to during major organizational change. Ensuring that these six systems are aligned and functioning is the responsibility of the organization’s leadership.
The Leadership System™ is a leadership development system, designed to increase individual and collective leadership effectiveness. While doing so, help them to increase the effectiveness of the other systems.
Underlying the design of the Leadership System™ is adult learning theory. David Kolb in his landmark work, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, positioned that four linked styles of learning are necessary for adults to learn and change.
Adults utilize experiences as anchors for learning. We like to learn from work and life. Therefore, our Leadership System™ connects directly with the real challenges and objectives of leaders at every turn and every conversation.
We learn as we reflect on our experiences to derive meaning from them. As an experience is filtered through our structure of mind, a narrative is created giving the experience unique meaning. In the best learning experiences, we reflect on the experience from a variety of angles, giving us a broader perspective. The Leader to Leader™ cohorts help to provide valuable perspective for each member as they make meaning out of their experiences.
As an experience is reflected on from a variety of angles, a generalizable theory, principle, or concept emerges. A “rule of thumb” about what to do in certain types of leadership situations begins to solidify.
In this step, the leader takes the new lesson and puts it into practice through a series of behavioral experiments. For example, if the lesson concerns authentic conversations, the leader will commit to having an authentic conversation during key circumstances, thereby opening the door to more authentic conversations. A generative cycle begins.