Leadership Development

There are two significant transitions that employees go through as they move up the corporate ladder. The first major transition happens when they become a first line manager. They’ve moved from the “bottom” to the “middle”. The second major transition takes place when they become part of senior leadership. They’ve moved from the “middle” to the “top”.

Often, people who are great individual contributors do not succeed as a manager. And people who are good middle managers can’t make the transition to senior leadership.

Throughout an employee’s career, they should be developing both their management and leadership skills. What are those skills?

To list a few:

Tier 1 Skills:

• Understanding the business they are in – the customers, products, services, supply chain, and competition.
• Understanding the key financial workings and benchmarks of the company.
• Understanding the business environment – the state of the local and global economy and how this affects their business.

Tier 2 Skills:

• Understanding vision, mission, values, strategies, goal setting, and delegation
• Understanding how to make decisions, solve problems, resolve conflict, and coordinate and integrate work efforts
• Understanding human competence and team dynamics
• Understanding how to train, educate, mentor, promote, and evaluate performance
• Understanding human motivation
• Understanding how to influence up, down, and sideways
• Understanding systems and processes and organizational structures
• Understanding diversity – of thought as well as physio-cultural diversity

Leadership Coaching

One of the most critical long-term strategies of any private corporation orgovernment agency is to raise up new leadership that can ‘pick up thereins’ and continue to grow the organization’s ability to achieve its mission andfinancial objectives.

Leadership includes all the critical abilities associated with mid-level management, but goes beyond to include the ability to:

• Envision the future for the corporation or agency as a whole.
• Develop a culture that supports and promotes the attainment of the overall vision.
• Develop the skills to work collaboratively and build key relationships
• Based on trust with other members of the leadership team as well as other key external and internal stakeholders.
• Influence superiors, peers and subordinates to accomplish corporate objectives.

Idea Connection Systems offers coaching programs for four organizational levels.
They are:

• Senior Leadership – Top Level (CEO and President)
• Senior Leadership – Senior Level (Senior Vice-President and Vice-President)
• Management (Manager and Director)
• Key Employees

Each level has its own unique, yet overlapping, need for coaching.

Senior Leadership – CEO and Preidenst:
Top Leadership is responsible for leading complex cultural change as well as fostering and sustaining innovation throughout the organization in order to achieve the long range vision and mission and reach the financial objectives of the corporation. In addition, top leadership is often in need of an independent sounding board for their ideas and plans.

Senior Leadership – Senior Vice-President and Vice-President:
Senior Leadership is responsible for working with their peers and the CEOand President to lead complex cultural change as well as foster and sustain innovation throughout their part of the organization. In addition, this level can often benefit from coaching to prepare for moving into top leadership roles.

Management – Manager and Director:
Senior Leadership will often identify managers and directors who have high potential for moving into the role of Vice-President or higher. This level often needs to broaden their ability to build key relationships of trust with their peers and upper levels of management.
They also need to develop their communication skills in order to lead employees in large-scale cultural change and innovation efforts. Their management skills, which have served them well thus far, will not be enough to move to the next level in the organization.

Key Employees:
Key employees often have special needs when it comes to managing their goals and tasks. Their ability to build social, competency, and trust networks and to influence key decision makers is often critical to their success in the corporation.

For the past 18 years, Idea Connection Systems has coached many senior leaders (CEO, President, Vice- President, etc.), middle managers and directors, and key employees to improve their leadership skills. We have worked at all these levels in fortune 500 companies, in entrepreneurial start-up organizations, and government agencies at the Federal, State, and Metropolitan levels.

To do that we use a variety of tools that might include:

• Psychometric instruments that show leadership styles and preferences.
• Interviews with key stakeholders, corporate leadership, and peers to determine areas of growth in building relationships, communicating more effectively, leading complex cultural change, and fostering innovation.
• Surveys that measure corporate culture.
• Surveys that measure ‘employee perception’ of the leader or manager.
• Observation of people working in their “real work” environment.

Each coaching opportunity is unique. Idea Connection Systems works with each client to design a coaching program that meets the unique needs of the individual and the organization they belong to.

What Idea Connections can do:

We have worked with senior teams, middle management teams, and first line managers to improve their capacity to manage and lead. We show managers how to change the way they manage and lead depending on their level within the organization.
We train, educate, and coach individuals and teams to help them acquire all the skills noted in Tier 2 above – human, organizational, and interpersonal skills required to achieve success. We show people how to integrate Tier 1 and Tier 2 Skills to achieve maximum performance.

On a regular basis, we assist teams to:

• Develop their vision, mission, values, strategies, and goals.
• Learn the essential skills and processes for making decisions, solving problems, resolving conflict, and coordinating and integrating work efforts. 
• Determine the right competencies for any job or situation and then assist with the selection and/or training of individuals and teams.
• Develop skills for mentoring and evaluating people for promotion.
• Learn the basics of understanding and then enabling human motivation to align with the goals of the organization.
• Develop influencing skills and learn an influencing process that will maximize their ability to gain cooperation from others that leads to results.
• Develop systems, processes, and structures that focus on achieving the strategies and goals of the organization. We can also do or assist with process redesign and new process implementation.
• Understand and then utilize the inherent diversity of thought, styles, and cultures that make up any organization.

Want additional information? Want to explore this further?
Give us a call and ask to speak to one of our Senior Consultants. Tell them you read this web page!
Call 585-442-4110 or 800-270-0674