Cultivating A Multifaceted Set of Skills In Your Leaders
How do you lead in a disrupted world? The workplace has evolved dramatically in recent years, with the rapid implementation of hybrid working, logistical and technological challenges and shifted dynamics. While many modern challenges in leadership enablement are universal, each business also faces its own set of hurdles that require precise action to overcome.
The issue we see with generic leadership development is that it funnels every leader towards the same outcome – the same set of preconceived standards, guidelines, behaviours or principles. Tackling growth in this way completely disregards the natural abilities of your people. We all know one size doesn’t fit all, so why do we expect this approach to work in learning and development?
Alchemist’s approach is different. We don’t use over-prescriptive means to give you a factory produced team. We work closely alongside your leaders to help them understand their identity and find a management style that feels authentic to them and allows them to navigate the many roles a leader has to adopt in a rapidly evolving landscape. Taking this course of action is seen as more genuine, by both leaders and employees, and helps increase commitment from learners as they feel the journey is more bespoke.
Leveraging 30+ years of experience in learning and development and combining it with Alchemist IP, customer data, occupational psychology and rigorous academic research, we have built a model that encapsulates this nuanced and modern approach to leadership.
We’re proud to introduce you to the Alchemy of Leadership model.
We Listened To The Experts
Analysing over 25 academic peer-reviewed papers, we uncovered three key principles that help to shape our leadership framework:
- The role of leadership has evolved
Unprecedented volatility over the last few years means that leaders are expected to support their teams in unpredictable ways. Acting as sense-makers for their people, they interpret internal and external events and play a pivotal role in enabling diversity. The need for flexibility and empathy is greater than ever.
- Leaders are managing competing forces
Typical models ignore the competing tensions between expected behaviours. There is an expectation that leaders will achieve growth, efficiency, accountability and innovation in one go, when in reality they first need to develop a deep understanding of the many roles they need to adopt in the business.
- High performing leaders bring up everyone else
Leaders are key in the organisation’s overall success. They reinforce purpose, define the people experience and drive performance in their teams. This understanding can help people learn the tools they need to be truly effective. Rather than prescribing an off-the-shelf programme based on theory, learning should enable leaders to perform against real world challenges.
Through researching these principles, we identified the most critical skills and behaviours for supporting the effectiveness of a leader. Combined with a harsh look at current trends in leadership – particularly how it has had to evolve recently to meet the demands of the modern workplace – we formulated six key roles. Through the framework, we explore the tensions of these roles working in tandem with each other and how to develop leaders’ innate skills against clearly observable behaviours to help you reach your ideal state.
Leadership Enablement In A Disrupted World
Part One: Identity
Deep self-awareness driven by leader’s sense of purpose and where they are in their development journey.
Self awareness sits at the heart of everything we do, in business and in life. In order for your people to find a style that feels true to them, they first need to put groundwork in to understand their sense of purpose and understand where they are in their development journey.
This work aims to encourage leaders to identify their core values, purpose and future goals, while also enabling them to build resilience and positive habits to promote their personal wellbeing.
Research shows that behaviours are more predictive of outcomes than skills, therefore self-understanding and emotional regulation have a strong relationship to leadership success.
Explanation Of The Leadership Enablement Model
Performance Guru
Unlocks the potential by enabling productivity and empowering the success of your team.
Performance Gurus are adept at effective task delegation, providing their teams with 360 degree feedback, utilising coach leadership to drive results from their people and setting development goals to help push improvement. They are people-focused and encourage learning and development in their teams to help support the growth of the business.
Connector
Builds a broad and diverse network across the organization by fostering trust and collaboration.
Connectors have the most fine-tuned communication skills. They foster an environment of collaborative working and build networks of cross-functional teams to deliver success. Their approach to conflict resolution leaves relationships feeling stronger, enabling them to maintain diverse networks. They seek to balance all perspectives to find a consensus, building trust as they go.
Includer
Prioritises a positive work experience for themselves and others, promoting well-being and inclusion within their team.
Passionate about diversity and inclusion, the Includer is someone who places great importance on the well-being of their team. Building a positive work environment with robust psychological safety for all is important to them, and their skills in stress management go a long way in supporting their team. They want everyone to feel valued, included and empowered to perform at their full potential.
Transformer
Instigates positive change and leads the organisation through uncertainty to find a stronger, more promising future.
Transformers are crucial to the future of your business. They instigate organisational change and create a compelling vision for the future; igniting their team’s excitement for change enables them to embed and maintain it with ease. They help their team see the value of their work in the bigger picture, deliver clear expectations of how transformation can be achieved and support their people through the change process with adaptive leadership.
Innovator
Creates an environment that connects disparate ideas to create business value and drive efficiency.
Innovators are key drivers for continuous improvement. Their natural problem solving skills, critical thinking and innovative solution finding mean they are pivotal in the evolution of your organisation. Their enthusiasm for experimentation cultivates an environment where new ideas are generated with excitement, helping your business find new and better ways of doing things.
Futurist
Understands the forces at work in their industry and uses data to make informed decision about the future.
Always looking ahead, Futurists embrace their learning agility to keep one step ahead of the curve. Developing a deep understanding of the customer experience enables them to leverage emerging technology to improve it. They will always have one finger on the pulse, watching competitor’s movements and analysing trends in your industry to keep your business competitive.
Applying The Alchemy of Leadership Model:
Alchemist’s leadership enablement framework is designed as a diagnostic tool. We guide learners through the Identity step of the model, asking them to look introspectively and analyse their own strengths and development gaps. Then, we apply the six roles through Alchemist 360, our comprehensive feedback tool. Here we score characteristics against each role, identifying the profile that most strongly resonates with each learner.
Data driven diagnostics allow us to precisely target areas in your team that need development with our highly specialised development programmes. Alchemist 360 is customisable to your organisation and provides easy-to-use data to help with performance management. It can track performance over time, so you never lose sight of your leadership development goals.
With the help of Alchemist’s groundbreaking learning technology, we are able to better support your learners and provide the functionality to help you monitor engagement, performance and ROI. Our digital solution set will seamlessly integrate in to your business, allowing a smooth journey from diagnosis to interactive learning delivery and sustaining outcomes long-term.
What Are The Benefits Of The Alchemy of Leadership Model?
Hopefully you can see that the biggest advantage of our proprietary framework is how unique our learning & development offerings are. Our leadership enablement programmes are precisely engineered to blend with your organisational DNA, delivering the results that you need rather than providing a cure-all treatment that doesn’t stand up to the challenges you face in the real world.
By eliminating complex jargon and breaking the framework down in to six easy-to-observe behavioural roles, we can help you and your people get a clear understanding of development goals. This helps improve consistency across the content of our solution sets, giving your learners a seamless experience with absolute clarity.
Alchemist provides thought-provoking perspectives that demonstrate our experience and authority in the industry. Our academically supported approach demonstrates our credibility, giving you total confidence that we an deliver on our promise to spark transformative and sustainable change in your team.
Contact Us About Leadership Enablement
If our Alchemy of Leadership Model resonates with you, you have any questions or you’d like to find out how Alchemist’s Leadership Enablement could transform your team, get in touch today and one of our friendly experts will happily guide you.