Possessing those skills are necessary, but absolutely not sufficient for developing great leaders.  Great leadership requires that leaders challenge their own thinking and mental models – the assumptions, beliefs, values and perceptions that drive decision-making and action in the first place.

Simply, we can teach effective listen skills all day long, but if the leader doesn’t give a damn about the person they are listening to, then the leader won’t hear a word…and the other person will know it.  On the other hand, if the leader truly cares about the other person and their point-of-view, then s/he will get the message almost in spite of how flawed his/her listening skills might be.

Real leaders are able to examine their decisions and actions to truly understand why they act the way they do, and understand how their own mental models have more influence over the outcomes than the specific actions they took or decisions they made.  Only then, can they fully engage people in the organization and achieve the highest level of results.

Combining those 5 elements with effective management practices – like goal-setting, coaching, etc. – result in real leadership that engages the organization and gets the herd moving roughly West.  The Duke would be proud!

Leaders must perform those tasks well.  However, performing them well is insufficient to effectively leading the organization.   Great leadership requires going far beyond performing those tasks well.  It requires that leaders play three roles – Learner-Teacher-Steward™  — in their effort to engage everyone in the organization and to get everyone “moving roughly West:”

Learner

Leaders must be on a continuous journey of improving their own capacities and potential.  They seek out new information and ideas about what will work best in the future.  They must be willing to question and challenge their own mental models (beliefs, assumptions and perceptions) of how the world operates.

Real learning requires that leaders not hide from failure or behave defensively when it occurs.  Failure must be viewed as an opportunity to learn.

Teacher

Leaders must also be able to teach others what they have learned.  Leaders teach the values of the company, how the

company competes, what success looks like and what drives it, what behaviors are in-bounds and which are out-of-bounds, about the business and its performance, and about the skills and abilities it takes to be successful in the organization.

Leaders teach in many ways, through the examples they set, through the decisions they make, and through the actions they take, or don’t take.  Most importantly, leaders teach by encouraging others to examine their own mental models, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions.

Steward

Leaders must act as stewards to protect and to nurture the organization.  They must take a personal responsibility for preserving and enhancing the assets of the organization, its values, and its relationship with its shareholders, customers and employees.  They must be stewards of the vision, mission, and core values of the organization, the organization’s relationships with its customers, business partners, and the communities in which it does business; the passion and commitment of the people they influence within the organization; the assets of the organization (including human, intellectual, and physical); and the continuous improvement and long-term sustainability of the organization.

WWCG provides a wide-range of training and development services to ensure our clients attract, develop and retain the talent necessary to be successful. We provide turnkey training management services; conduct training needs assessments; design, develop and deliver the necessary curriculum; and measure the effectiveness our clients’ training efforts to ensure they optimize the return on their training investment.

No one would take a whitewater kayak through Lava Falls in the Grand Canyon without the proper skills and training necessary to navigate through the rapids. The skills can take years of hard work and effort to develop. Hence, we firmly believe that successfully executing the rapids and turbulence in business today is a direct result of an organization’s ability to recruit, select, engage, develop and retain the talented people necessary to execute effectively, in real time, at the speed of light.

The ability to develop people is key. Few people who walk through the doors of their employers have all the skills necessary to be effective. They need the right developmental opportunities, at the right time, in the right place, delivered the right way.

Many people in organizations believe that training is a waste of time, energy and money. And, frankly, it often is…when the audience is wrong or the timing, content, place or delivery of the developmental activity is off-the-mark. This wastes resources that should be targeted toward productive tasks.

Fortunately, education and development in most organizations can be much more effective. Our process for doing so includes:

1. Fully understanding the organization’s business goals and strategies.
2. Understanding how these business goals and strategies tie directly to the skills and competencies to be developed by individuals and groups of people.
3. Building, buying, acquiring etc. appropriate courseware or making other developmental efforts that best build the needed skills and competencies while cutting out wasted material.
4. Helping clients effectively implement their People Development strategy.
5. Rigorously evaluating the outcomes of your learning efforts to ensure they contribute to business objectives set out in the first step.

WWCG works with our clients to develop the strategies, systems and processes to help our clients ensure they get the right people with the right capabilities and values into the right job role at the right time both now and in the future. We help ensure our clients have a well-thought out strategy for identifying, attracting, developing and retaining the talent necessary for long-term success.

Leadership is the most precious commodity in business today. To succeed organizations must understand the talent requirements for success both today and in the future and have a well-thought out strategy for identifying, attracting, developing and retaining that talent.

Unfortunately, the succession planning process for many companies consists of waiting until a vacancy exists and then placing someone into the job because he or she “is a good person.” Such an approach is haphazard at best and destructive to the organization at worst. With over 20 years experience at developing and executing effective Succession Planning/Talent Management processes, WWCG is well positioned to help our clients ensure they:

Get the right people with the right capabilities and values into the right job role at the right time both now and in the future.

A truly effective succession planning and talent management process must go far beyond identifying which leader is most ready to fit into what box on the organization chart.  Organizations must hit a moving target.  They must develop a steady flow of qualified people into critical job roles even as the requirements for those roles evolve over time.  Through our Succession Planning and Talent Management services, we help our clients:

• Understand the key issues facing the organization
• Assess the implications of those issues on the strategy and design of the organization
• Identify the critical job roles which drive success
• Identify the competencies and capabilities that are, and will be required, as the organization evolves
• Execute fact-based talent management reviews
• Develop Depth Charts for critical leadership roles which reflect the readiness of the talent pool to fill current and future positions
• Identify critical gaps in the talent pool
• Improve the retention of key leaders and “High Potentials”
• Improve the “time to productivity” after promotions or lateral job moves
• Design and implement the leadership development to grow the necessary talent
• Measure the effectiveness of their succession planning and talent management processes so they can continuously improve their efforts

WWCG works with our clients to design and deliver core and custom leadership development programs that help leaders – from frontline supervisors to C-level officers — engage the organization and lead more effectively.

Leader Development
Effective leadership is THE key above all others to navigating the whitewater. In today’s rapidly changing environment, leaders at all levels must be able to:

• Define the gap between current reality and what is necessary for success
• Engage everyone in the organization to move forward
  Find, recruit and select the talented people necessary to generate success
• Create an environment which inspires and unleashes everyone’s capabilities
• Connect strategic and operating goals to the goals and performance metrics of individuals and work teams
• Provide straight talk – deal with difficult confrontations and situations
• Make the tough decisions regarding the organization’s values and who is contributing and who is not
• Constantly Learn, Teach and be Stewards for the organization.

At WWCG, we’ve been helping leaders improve their effectiveness for over 20 years.  We’ve helped leaders at all levels of the organization from frontline leaders in their first formal leadership role to CEO’s.  We’ve helped develop leaders in organizations of all shape and sizes from start-ups to Fortune 100.

Our goal is to help our clients achieve long-term, sustainable growth and profitability through continuous improvement and large-scale organizational change.

To that end, we provide a broad range of management consulting and training and development services designed to help our clients cope with and take advantage of the turbulence they face in the global marketplace

Change is the only constant in today’s operating environment. Being able to adapt and take advantage of rapidly changing circumstances – i.e., thrive in the midst of constant turbulence – is an absolute requirement for long-term success and sustainability.

• A failure to act quickly leads to acceptance/tolerance of the status quo.
• A failure to act smartly weakens credibility and leads to frustration and a desire to “return to the old days.”

We help our clients answer and then execute against these (and many more questions):

• WHO will be an effective champion of the effort?
• WHAT must change about the organization’s are systems, structures, processes, people practices, peoples’ skills and capabilities to achieve the results?
• HOW will we build a coalition to support the change effort?
• HOW do we create a series of quick wins that demonstrate progress and help engage others in the effort?
• HOW will we assess progress?
• HOW do we sustain and grow energy for change?
• HOW do we deal with the inevitable roadblocks to sustaining the effort?

Our Role in Your Change Strategy
WWCG’s role is to act as “lead guide” for devising and implementing the overall change strategy. Our goal is to help our clients identify the priorities, assess alternative action plans and provide expertise and guidance when needed. Ultimately, however, we want to enable our clients to lead the change strategy themselves and not be permanently dependent upon us!

Our Strategic Thinking and Learning services are designed to help our clients:

• Define the current reality facing their businesses
• Understand the possible future scenarios they may face
• Develop a vision of their future organization and
• Devise and execute appropriate strategies for closing the gap between where they are and they want to be

Someone once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  In today’s business climate, not knowing where you’re going is a recipe for disaster.

The future is messy and impossible to predict.  Many traditional strategic planning processes fail because they depend upon a stable and predictable future state.

We believe that you cannot predict the future nor can you plan for it in the traditional sense of a linear 3-year projection of what your business is going to look like.  You can, however, prepare for the future whatever it brings.

Results:
Organizational Learning – Our strategic thinking practice creates a learning process in which individual and organization assumptions are held up for examination.  This ultimately prepares the organization to adapt to whatever scenario develops.

Adaptability – because they understand the assumptions that lay behind the planning effort, and because plans revolve around different future scenarios our clients are better enabled to adapt to whatever scenario develops.

Commitment to the plan – because our clients are fully engaged in the Strategic Thinking and Learning process, they tend to be more committed to the plans they develop than to those merely handed to them by other consulting firms.

Execution – again, because our clients are fully involved in the Strategic Thinking process, they have a great understanding of what it takes to execute the strategy and feel personally accountable for doing so.

• Is there a set of consistently applied values that guide peoples’ actions?
• Are results achieved with, or at the expense, of others?
• Does the organization succeed in the short-run only to put its long-term viability at risk?
• Are people engaged and committed or are they run over or de-valued?
• Is everyone shown respect?

Does everyone behave with honesty and integrity?

• Do differing opinions count or are they disregarded?
• Do people feel valued and do they have the opportunity to contribute their best?