the leadership advantage tool
The Leadership Advantage 30-Day Development Program –
Designed to Help Take a Leader to their Next Stage of Growth
The Leadership Advantage Development Program (LADP) is an Executive assessment and leadership development program. It measure’s an Executive’s leadership effectiveness at their current stage of growth, and perhaps more importantly, prepares them for the next.
The program employs the Emotional Intelligence framework to determine whether an Executive has the appropriate leadership styles and competencies to take their business forward.
This program also supports an Executive through the behavior changes they often have to make to grow the business to the next stage of growth.
We start with an understanding of the 7 Stages of Enterprise Growth model that helps a Executive determine their past, current and future stage of growth. Understanding the impact each stage of growth has on the company as well as on the leader is a critical step in building and maintaining a successful business.
The LADP is an assessment and a development program. Unique among other leadership development programs, the LADP takes its knowledge from a research study that identified specific areas of adaptation an Executive needs to be aware of based on where they are on their growth curve. The 7 Stages of Growth enterprise development model has resonated with Executives all over the country, providing insight and observations that help Executives get focused on the right things at the right time.
According to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, authors of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, “….intelligence alone will not make a leader; leaders execute a vision by motivating, guiding, inspiring, listening, and persuading.”
Successful Executives recognize the value in how emotions solicit buy-in and commitment from their employees and are rewarded again and again through managers and employees who step up and become critical contributors to the company’s success.
The Leadership Advantage 30-Day Development Program uncovers critical areas of leadership focus for an Executive. The value in understanding which leadership styles and competencies are most valuable and how to develop them will almost assure the company’s success as it moves from one stage of growth to another.
At a personal level, the Executive will:
- Uncover the value of Emotional Intelligence in becoming a strong and effective leader
- Understand what issues your current leadership styles and competencies may be unconsciously causing
- Identify the difference between your ideal self and your real self from the perception of your leadership styles by others
- Identify which styles and competencies are most effective in helping you to take your company to the next stage of growth
- Confirm where you are as capable as you expected to be, and identify gaps, where you aren’t as effective as you desire to be
At an organizational level, the program:
- Creates a leadership development climate in which the Executive team provides constructive feedback and mutual support to each other
- Stimulates the virtuous cycle of improved leadership capability, employee commitment and customer satisfaction which leads to increased business value
- When used in conjunction with the Stages of Growth XRay, provides leaders the ability to align their leadership competencies with business issues and challenges
A leader who begins to understand how to adapt their leadership styles and competencies to their next stage of growth will be better prepared to address all the organizational growth challenges their company is sure to face as they move forward.
Critical Components of the LADP
The reality of running a company is that it’s hard. As CEO, you are challenged everyday to walk a thin line between chaos and equilibrium, knowing that too much of either can add to your problems.
The LADP is designed to help a CEO understand what leadership styles and competencies they need to successfully navigate their own growth curve.
Core Data Assessment
The purpose of this quick but informative assessment helps a CEO understand how fast, or slow, they have moved from one stage of growth to the other. By better understanding how a CEO perceives their Three Faces of a Leader, Their Performance Modality and their Three Gates of Focus will provide information to discuss throughout the LADP.
The Leadership Advantage Assessment Tool
Once a CEO has provided a password and user name, they access the on line assessment tool through our website. The first order of business is for the CEO to identify and select 8 – 12 review team members. Made up of direct reports and colleagues who work closely with the CEO, these participants provide valuable insight into how they perceive a CEOs leadership. Selected members of this review team will become development partners when the CEO practices and seeks feedback on the skills they are developing.
Reviewing Results
After all participants have completed the Assessment, two reports are created. A Leadership Styles Report and a Leadership Competencies Report. We’ll take time to review the results in an interactive session and discuss what the results mean.
Competency Planner Part 1 and Part 2
We’ll explore Leadership Styles first. The CEO answers a series of questions and observations about their current Leadership Styles and we’ll uncover which styles are strengths today and what styles are needed to adapt to the next level of growth.
Once we have established a pattern of development for the Leadership Styles, we will focus on Leadership Competencies and again, go through and identify which competencies are needed to help a CEO take their company to the next stage of growth.
Throughout this entire process, the CEO is working with and practicing their development approach with their trusted development partners. The goal is to be proactive in seeing how changes in Styles and Competencies impact an organization.
Staying in Touch throughout Process
After we have established the development programs, we will schedule one hour, weekly phone conferences over the next 4 weeks. I’ll provide one-on-one coaching and feedback on the CEOs progress. The combination of coaching and practicing with the development team is effective in helping a CEO monitor progress and witness improvement.
Toward the end of the 30-day program we find it valuable to arrange an executive team feedback session that I facilitate. In this half day session the CEO and their development team come together to review progress and identify any areas of concern.
Follow Up Work to Provide Support
In addition to the 30-day development program, we find it beneficial to circle back around in 90 days and facilitate a progress meeting with the CEO and their executive team, which could also include the development team who worked with the CEO if they are not one and the same. This half day session is designed to review the Styles and Competencies reports, have the CEO look back on progress and look ahead to how their improved focus on styles and competencies are helping the company move forward.
9 Month Resurvey Option
After 9 months, resurveying the CEO with the same review team if possible provides an incredible window into the successes that CEO has created professionally and organizationally.
The 7 Stages of Growth were developed by James Fischer, Founder of Origin Institute, a research and consulting company out of Boulder, CO. The Stages of Growth are based on a nine year study of entrepreneurial companies in the Front Range and Silicon Valley and interviews with over 700 CEOs to understand and decipher the patterns, the behavior and the characteristics of growth in entrepreneurial enterprises.
