Retaining The Hearts and Minds of Your Key People - Refreshing Your Leadership

An Innovative Track For Senior Managers

Today’s business environment demands long hours of its leaders and exerts ever increasing pressures from both within the business and from social and domestic commitments.

One analogy is that the Bank Account of personal vision, energy and resourcefulness is full at the start of ones career, topped up with education and aspiration, but is progressively spent over the demanding years of career progression which follow. Key leaders are often carrying their most critical areas of responsibility while running on ‘empty’ in personal, emotional and relational resource.

To ensure their continued and developing enthusiasm and effectiveness it is essential that leaders pause occasionally to take refreshment for their minds and hearts as well as their bodies. Just as a Jet Aircraft cannot simply take "time out" in mid-flight, most senior leaders in business cannot afford the luxury of time away on "courses", some kind of in-flight refuelling is the answer.

This programme aims to provide business leaders with the opportunity, the guidance, the space and resources to reconnect with the key questions:

• Where am I going personally?

• Where am I going in the business?

• Am I running on empty & how can I plan for my continual personal growth within a growing business?

In Flight Refuelling – The Options

Flexibility is the key, but the options would look as follows;

1. Half a day a month for 9 months as a facilitated 1:1 or group workshop
2. Two days residential off-site, plus 6 half days over 6 –8 months facilitated workshop for individuals or groups
3. Half a day every 6 weeks for 12 months as a facilitated 1:1 workshop, alternated with 3 hours of 1;1 coaching in the weeks between each workshop session. The 1:1 sessions can be held at your offices or our offices.

The 9 Key Investments of this Programme:

Reviewing your personal ‘Stock’. Reviewing your intended career aims, values, goals, qualities against the current reality. Checking physical, intellectual, relational and ‘spiritual’ health.

Recovering a personal sense of purpose, vision, meaning and values.

Creating a stakeholder map of all key relationships internal and external to work. Clarifying your roles within each of them; yours and their needs; your style of influencing and building & maintaining high-trust relationships.

Understanding and working with the grain of your own personality, temperament, strengths and vulnerabilities.

I’ve never met a CEO who, on their deathbed said "I wish I’d spent more time at the office". Identifying key goals across the whole of ones life and maintaining the balance with business goals.

Timothy Galwey in "The Inner Game of Tennis" defines performance in these terms: Performance = Potential – Interference. Learning to deal with the interference that minimises the effectiveness of leadership and becoming your own coach.

Many un-addressed issues can cost organisations money. One issue that falls into this category but gets little attention is the behaviour of some of the organisations’ top people. Often the hidden, un-addressed aspects of a leader’s personality get played out in how leaders run their organisations. We focus on these issues and understanding of how people change.

One director commented, "If you haven’t got your top job by 40 you won’t make it". The mid-life years of senior management carry a double challenge. Firstly, there is pressure to perform at maximum if we are to succeed. Secondly, there are the personal changes of the mid-life transition. Ignoring the internal transition can create a personal relational, emotional or physical crisis. Ignoring the challenges of work can create a career crisis. We look at how key personal resource can be freed up for the leader by looking at the issues being raised during this stage of life.

Creating your own development needs analysis and planning.