Futureproofing leadership

It’s a no secret that good leadership makes for better agility and performance particularly in the face of disruption and uncertainty. Great leadership is probably the number one contributing factor to businesses that have survived and thrived through the turbulence of recent years. Not only do they enhance their organisations ability to pivot and shift, but they also embody the soft skills that create a ‘can do’ values-based culture and lead by example to fully unleash potential. A leader’s soft skills of communication, negotiation, delegation and inspiration can be equally as important as their industry expertise and sometimes more so. Any executive team development programme will recognise this and combine them with better decision-making skills and accountability.

The context for learning to be a better leader is crucial. Too many executive development initiatives rest on the assumption that one size fits all and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of the strategy, culture, or mandate for any given business.

Becoming a more effective leader often requires changing behaviours and adjusting underlying mindsets. This can reveal uncomfortable truths for participants, trainers and bosses but if there isn’t some degree of discomfort, the chances are that the behaviour won’t change. Identifying these innermost feelings, assumptions, and beliefs is usually a precondition of behavioural change and one too often missed in ineffective leadership development programs. Leaders who are stretching themselves should also feel some discomfort as they struggle to reach new levels of performance. It’s true that some personality traits, for example extroversion or introversion, can be difficult to shift, but leaders can change the way they see and react to the world around them.

“An effective executive team is your most important leader tool and a tremendous competitive advantage – for the business as well as for attracting and retaining star employees.”

Organisations can optimise their executive team development and increase their odds of success by matching specific leadership skills and traits to the strategic context at hand; embedding leadership development in real work; fearlessly investigating the mind-sets that underpin behaviour; and monitoring the impact so as to make improvements over time.

Alumni’s Leadership Development

Successful leaders are aware of their strengths and know how to develop and make use of them. At the same time, they make sure they have the self-knowledge to keep their weaknesses in check. This is why Alumni’s leadership training focusses on what a leader does best and how they can do it even better. Alumni offers a comprehensive programme to thoroughly analyse and advise on the group roles, personalities, operational management and strategic capacity of the executive team.

Alumni makes extensive use of 360-degree interviews to enhance the self-awareness of business leaders. Personal interviews with our experienced consultants, as well as the organisation’s managers, colleagues, reports, and other stakeholders are designed to put a leader’s performance and behaviour into words. It delivers valuable insight into the strengths and weaknesses of leadership and is a powerful tool to improve leaders’ professional image and impact within their organisation.

To support leadership retention and secure leadership performance, Alumni also offers an executive onboarding programme for the ‘First 100 days’ which supports leadership development by securing faster integration and alignment with company culture as well as improved time to productivity and results.

If you would like to learn more about our Leadership & Executive Development services please get in touch.