The CEO of a mid-sized non-profit engaged us to work with her leadership team for a year on becoming a stronger, more effective leadership team.
We began with raising their self- awareness by using the Leadership Circle® 360 assessment. With the help of our coaches, individual leaders created personal development plans to maximize their effectiveness. As part of this process, we encouraged each leader to build an accountability circle of co-workers who would give them honest feedback. This helped leaders learn to become more vulnerable as they shared their development plans and need for feedback.
We created individual “pulse” surveys to help the leaders collect feedback from their accountability circles so they could watch the impact on their individual leadership effectiveness every quarter. (A pulse survey is a quick three minute exercise that gathers information about areas the leader is looking to develop and gives them immediate feedback, for example, are they improving, getting worse or staying the same with “skill or competency”.) Our clients find this extremely helpful for developing leaders to stay on track.
At the same time we looked at the leadership team collectively and determined programs that would be impactful across the organization, based on the gaps in the collective survey. This allowed the organization to pinpoint where to spend development funds in a way that would increase their collective leadership effectiveness.
In year two we took this program to the management levels and instead of individual coaching, we created facilitated peer learning groups. The success was proven when the groups continued on after our facilitation was complete, as they found the time together so valuable.
In focusing on their development in this deliberate way, the organization was able to use leadership as one of their competitive advantages in the marketplace and outperform their competitors.
