Leaders come in all shapes and sizes. Much has been written over the years about what Leadership is and isn’t.  The view has also changed of what the best Leadership style is. As we try to keep things simple we’ll offer our humble point of view to add to the discussion.

What is Leadership?  We like the idea that Leadership is still about what it has always been about; this is reflected in the original derivation from the old English word “leit” which means “showing the path”.  

Sometimes this implies that leadership is all about being out in front, pulling people along with you. While sometimes that’s appropriate, there are many other ways you can help people by “showing the path” such showing a light and the route to take and providing encouragement. Equally there are many different ways you can offer leadership.

Working in organisations, we have questions of our leaders and depending on how those questions are answered will determine how well we feel we are being led. The best teams get to the stage where they are working out the answers collaboratively having been guided to that state.

Leadership Challenges

As discussed above, we see the essence of leadership is the ability of leaders to answer their team members’ questions so team members can channel their energy productively into fulfilling their role in the team.

The challenge is to know what the questions are as leaders develop into different leadership roles.  The key ability is to be able to adapt – to be what we call an adaptive leader.

We believe Leaders need to be able to adapt in three ways

• Developing new abilities as you transition from one type of leadership to another
• Ensuring that your leadership approach is appropriate as your team develops its capabilities 
• Ensuring that your leadership stays relevant in response to changing social, technological and global trends

Our purpose is to help leaders guide their teams to deliver better results.

We do this by helping leaders learn more about the following:

• Motivation: Often talked about, yet often in a vague way. We can all imagine what a fully motivated team looks like, yet can you describe it or even measure it. We work with Motivational Maps™ to help leaders understand their own motivations so they can understand how to channel their energy most effectively. This stool also helps leaders to understand the indivual motivations of their teams so they can help them to perform better.

• Team Dynamics: The most effective way for many organisations to develop better results is to help leaders develop their ability to engage their teams on the pathway to high performance. We help leaders to truly understand the dynamics of how effective teams develop to full potential so they can consciously focus on developing their teams.

• Staying Relevant: As the world changes around us, leaders often don’t have enough time to pay attention to the distant and gradual impact of trends.  As a result team performance can be impacted by trying to address today’s questions with yesterday’s answers. We help by advising leaders of social and technology trends that impact on the way people work together; we work with leaders to help them understand what aspects of their leadership capabilities they need to adapt so their teams can continue to perform.