Implementing a development strategy based on proven science is central to driving high performance.
Leaders are a critical component to company success. In fact, 70% to 80% of organizations share concerns over the lack of effective leadership, while the same number of organizations say hiring, developing, and promoting talent is a critical focus for future success. Successful organizations know this and are investing in identifying the leaders with potential and growing the behaviors that inspire and drive high performance.
With a market saturated with a multitude of training and development offerings, knowing how to develop leaders can be confusing and costly, with over $550 billion lost annually by ineffective leadership training. WSA approaches development from a scientific perspective by focusing on proven aspects of leadership behavior that will not only optimize leadership growth but directly impact business outcomes.
The science of leadership development hinges on three critical components: Engage, Equip, and Lead. Engage refers to motivating talent, Equip refers to removing barriers to success, and Lead refers to driving operational excellence through leadership direction and influence. It’s when these three areas come together with precision and are supported by solid scientific research that we see consequential increases in leadership development and excellence that impacts the organization at much higher levels.
When leaders can directly influence, engage, and equip employees to excel, the outcomes range from a more positive employee experience, greater retention, and a direct impact on key business outcomes. Measuring the critical behaviors associated with Leading, Engaging, and Equipping provides awareness around strengths and gaps with a focus on how where they should prioritize their goals and action planning in order to accelerate development and optimize impact to their teams and the business.
Leadership advancement happens in three steps: measuring the current state, understanding the gaps and strengths at every level of impact, and creating an action plan that delivers velocity to the overall difference each individual leader is making across the organization.
Measure the current state of critical skills and talents necessary for success.
Understand the strengths and gaps at the employee, department, and organizational levels.
Accelerate impact by identifying ways to develop leaders with laser focus to close skill gaps and build bench strength.
To achieve measurement, understanding, and acceleration, we begin with creating a success profile and framework that defines excellence within your organization and is closely tied to your engagement strategy. Strong leaders drive higher engagement scores and vice versa.
Once leaders are assessed, we roll up aggregate insights to gain organizational talent insights to identify skill gaps or consistent blind spots and development needs that exist across portions of the organization. Utilizing the connection between core leadership competencies and priority engagement drivers identifies where the most impact can be made in relation to performance — this is where we start.
As a leader, it is important to understand where alignment and misalignment occur in how you think of your own actions, communications, and behaviors; and how they are perceived and received by others. This accomplishes not only a strong self-awareness but an understanding of where actions, communications, or behaviors need to evolve through self-action or development and coaching efforts.
The primary goal of the leadership self-assessment is for the individual leader to gain self-awareness and insight into specific areas of existing strengths and those of opportunity to enhance skills, talents, behaviors, and to truly impact employee engagement and performance.
The 360 leadership assessment is used to gain an organizational understanding of where there are leadership strengths and gaps, individually and collectively, that are impacting engagement and performance across the organization. The assessment utilizes full-circle feedback to pinpoint discrepancies in how a leader views him or herself versus how he or she is viewed by others in the organization — and where those discrepancies are either aligned or misaligned to organizational KPIs.
After the assessment concludes, leaders are provided a roll-up of the aggregate results based on feedback from their raters. This report provides thematic insights and highlights strengths, opportunities, and disconnects. Coaching workshops are also available where leaders will learn how to understand and interpret the report and best practices for moving the needle on development and engagement.
One-to-one coaching services with a WSA Consultant are also available. These 90-minute sessions provide a deep dive dialogue into results where the leader and the consultant work hand-in-hand to create an action plan for improvement. It is a high-touch model that provides high-touch attention.
Additionally, some organizations choose to undertake a structured enablement workshop that trains a team of employees or leaders to be internal organizational coaches and mentors. This training is based on the WSA leadership model and coaching techniques.