Special Promotional Feature

By Kim Caughlin and Heather Sperdakos

Many organizations invest time and money in developing their leaders’ skills, only to realize limited, if any, measurable gains. This can be frustrating for all involved, including human resources business partners who are often faced with determining where and how to allocate leadership development dollars.  With so much at stake and so many competing priorities for dollars, it’s time to get smart about what we invest in.

Investing in the development of leadership skills in the absence of developing the self-awareness of leaders or focusing solely on skills while ignoring the important underlying leadership characteristics that drive effective behaviour is like investing in the lottery.  Your chances of receiving a favorable return are limited. 

A recent Global Knowledge Canada published Special Report entitled Looking to the Future surveyed over 400 leaders and managers across Canada representing all organizational levels and a wide range of industries and functional areas. Respondents were asked to identify what is required to overcome their top business challenges for today and into the future. The findings suggest that both senior leaders and front-line managers require either new perspectives and new areas of expertise, or a transformation in thinking and behaviour.  In a nutshell, when it comes to leadership, doing things the same old way doesn’t work anymore.  Developing our leaders the same old way doesn’t work anymore either.

Impactful leadership development requires an holistic approach. One that focuses on the leaders’ relationship with self (self-awareness), with others, and with the business.  Collaborating with clients for over 25 years, investing in research and development, leveraging industry best-practices, and winning numerous training awards, has infused Global Knowledge Canada with a unique, practical and integrated approach to fast-tracking leadership development.

Global Knowledge has identified 5 leadership characteristics and 9 leadership competencies that when practiced together help leaders lead with impact. Our approach combines focused self-assessment and/or multi-rater feedback on leadership competencies with practical skills development, augmented with discovery, self reflection and practice in the 5 leadership characteristics.

Our newly launched Leading with Impact series of modular half-day and full-day courses helps participants to discover how their personal energy, demonstrated through the leadership characteristics of positivity, authenticity, accountability, curiosity and trust all play a role in their impact as a leader; and how demonstrating these characteristics influence others success and willingness to follow their lead.  Participants discover new connections to their business; new insights into how their organizations function, achieve their visions and delight their customers; and new approaches for enhancing the contributions they and their teams make.  And they discover synergistic connections to the people they lead, through learning and practicing new coaching conversations, new ways of tapping into what motivates themselves and others, and new ways of delegating work that is important and meaningful both to the business and the people who contribute to its success. 

Leading with Impact’s innovative learning design engages participants in receiving and sharing knowledge and lived experience, exploring diverse ideas, challenging assumptions and mindsets, applying practical tools and processes, receiving and reflecting on feedback, and developing personal action plans.  Prepare, Participate and Perform phases are built into each learning experience along with tools that help participants and their managers monitor the application and impact of their learning .  Throughout their learning experience participants reflect on their demonstrated behaviour on the 5 leadership characteristics and are invited to consider what their behaviour says to them about how they show up as a learner and as a leader.

The learning configuration is flexible.  Participants can mix and match any courses in the series to “build their own” Leading with Impact experience.  And not only that, participants can mix and match how they want to engage in the learning – in a physical classroom or in a virtual classroom.  It’s their choice.

When it comes to leadership development it is time to invest in more of a sure thing!  The Global Knowledge Leading with Impact series is designed to help you get the best possible return on your investment.

Leading with Impact courses:

• You. Now.
• Motivate for Full Engagement
• Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
• Delegate Deliberately
• Provide Feedback to Gain Momentum
• Coach. Coach. Coach.
• From Doing to Leading
• Align for Results
• The Leading with Impact Foundations Program

Find out more about this innovative leadership learning experience by visiting www.globalknowledge.ca/lwi.

 Kim Caughlin, HBA, product manager – consultant

Heather Sperdakos, Ed.D., director research and development
Leadership and Business Solutions – Canada
Global Knowledge