Become a Cool Leader

Beyond Ego

We all need a strong ego to operate effectively in the world but we don’t want to become ego-centric as it blocks access to our ‘true’ self which is full of untapped potential and power. We work with you to access the leader within and support you in expressing your identity as a leader.

This is a journey of self-awareness and personal development.

There are three stages:

1. Liberation: changing your mind-set by becoming free from long-held fears and limiting beliefs.
2. Discovery: developing your self-reliance and self-confidence, building your emotional intelligence and strengthening your leadership resources of courage, resilience, decisiveness and adaptability.
3. Balance: introducing you to the archetypal energies and daily practices that will sustain you as a leader.

Build Trusting Relationships

Strong relationships are the foundation of leadership and all relationship are built on trust. We explore with you how to make an immediate connection with others and put your emotional intelligence to work in practical interactions such as selecting key colleagues, having difficult conversations and working across cultural divides. We also tap into your personal values and how these contribute to your integrity and consider the impact of your levels of optimism, gratitude and forgiveness. Communication is fundamental to leadership and the building of trust with colleagues and clients – this is where we put your one-to-one communication skills to the test and polish them up!

Work Collaboratively and Build Teams

In fostering a culture of collaboration, you will pull together diverse talents to address bigger challenges and achieve greater outcomes and ROI than you think possible, especially when facing risk and uncertainty. Collaborative leadership is the most skilful form of leadership. It requires vision, commitment, trust, vulnerability, belief in others, authentic communication and a desire to find genuine win-win outcomes for all involved. We share with you the secrets of doing this well, especially when you are facing resistance or open hostility between team members, internal silos or external agencies.

We can also work with your team, profiling the gifts they bring, their preferred ways of working and surfacing the issues that would take them to their next level of performance. Cool teams feel empowered, committed and responsible. They grow professionally and personally, generate a great team spirit and hold themselves accountable for high quality results. They can’t do this without your leadership. We are there for them – and for you.

Influence and Get Things Done

How influential are you, especially when influencing upwards or across boundaries? It requires personal and organisational power – what’s your relationship with that? What’s your attitude to politics and influencing behind the scenes? Who are the key stakeholders who could support or thwart your ambitions and intentions? How well do you know them? So many questions – and there are many more. The bottom line is ‘How at ease are you with pushing your own agenda and doing what it takes to influence people in power’?

Would you like to take the next step in being more influential? If so, we can help you.
Would you just like to get your head around the whole topic? We can do that too.
Are you ready to acknowledge ‘the dark side of leadership’ ? You need to know about it – you don’t need to go there! We share Edmund Burke’s belief that ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing’. To do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, takes intelligence, courage and strong influencing skills. We can give you the skills – the rest’s up to you.

Inspire, Motivate and Develop Your Colleagues

 

Big data analytics has identified that leaders who excel in ‘inspiring and motivating’ outperform all others. Leadership is not a competition, everyone can develop these skills and raise their own profile and the success of their organisation by developing and supporting leaders at every level.

Being a high performance leader is in itself inspiring for others, you are a role model just by being at your best but it also helps to know how to project your presence and speak inspirationally. We have extraordinary colleagues who coach world-class actors to help you shift from awkward self-consciousness to your own quintessential genius for being brilliant. And, if that isn’t enough, we will also teach you everything you need to know to be able to create an environment within which people will become fired up and self-motivated. Neuroscience has taught us how to best develop people and millennials have told us that is one of the key reasons they choose and stay with an employer.

Think Strategically

This is where you will stretch your strategic muscles to ensure that the organisation and your part in it have a sustainable future.  Thinking strategically is not restricted to senior executives, every cool leader looks at the big picture: the relationship they have with the market, the nature of the competition, the opportunities emerging from new technology and the changing requirements of customers and consumers. Strategy is complex and strategic thinking applies to your personal journey as well as to the life of the organisation. You have responsibility for both and with us will refresh and rethink the way you create meaning, plan progress and align activity.

This involves the skills of exploring trends for change; articulating a compelling vision; interpreting options; challenging the status quo through tough questioning; winning support; empowering action; balancing resources, availability and timing; ensuring sound governance and staying sane.

Engage with the Future

Keeping your mind open to ‘hearing what the future is asking’ may strike you as unlikely but if you let go of the past, focus on the present and notice the weak signals – the patterns they form, and link those to emergent trends and breakthrough thinking, you will begin to intuit what is needed. Accessing your intuition is a practice that can be developed through keen observation, mindful refection and letting rip with your curiosity and daring. Entrepreneurs are better than most of us at having the courage of their convictions when they make connections and, unlike most of us, they are not afraid to fail. Like babies learning to walk, they just get back on their feet and have another go. No fear, no regrets, they continue to pursue their instinct to succeed.

We believe that this is the age of the entrepreneur and that we can all learn a lot from their agility, flexibility, energy, commitment and resilience. Much of this comes from their vision and sense of purpose, often they are entrepreneurs because organisations cannot contain them. They fight for their freedom and have a level of commitment that leaves the organisational world gob-smacked.  In these times of technological disruption, globalisation and demographic change, cool leaders need one foot in the future. This is the programme that will take you there.