How We Do It
We work collaboratively with our clients to ensure that we combine the best of our academic research and professional expertise with your vision and organizational goals to realize workplace potential. Working collaboratively with stakeholder groups, we are able to address leadership and learning challenges and come up with innovative, meaningful and relevant solutions. Our work can be as simple as delivering a 1 day workshop or as complex as engaging the whole organization in designing a leadership and learning strategy.
While what we do with each client differs, in general we use an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) framework to guide our work. We believe that meaningful solutions are found not only in exploring what's not working, but also in focusing on what works in the organization and what gives it energy. We have adapted the 5D model to guide our own process:
- Define: Working collaboratively with you, we define the scope of the work we will do with you.
- Discover: Through asking lots of questions, we discover your organization's strengths, challenges, culture, characteristics, aspirations, goals. To do this, we could review organizational documents, conduct interviews, focus groups and/or surveys.
- Dream: Based on this information, we work with you to clarify the best possible outcome of a leadership and/or learning program. This includes clear performance measures.
- Design: Working collaboratively with you, we would design the leadership and/or learning program.
- Deliver: Depending upon your needs, we would deliver the program and/or facilitate the delivery through people in your organization. Part of the deliver phase is devoted to ensuring that we return to the dream phase to ensure what we have designed is working.
- Define - The dream phase identified the best possible outcome for you. We return to our define stage to see how that vision has been realized.
Our Guiding Principles
We assume that:
- People have the capacity to revise and adapt how they think about their learning, leadership and efficacy, thereby increasing their efficacy in an observable way to others;
- Meaningful change occurs through assessment, feedback, support, and challenge;
- People are resilient and desire meaningful and respectful relationships;
- People have the answers within them to address their challenges;
- We assume that by paying attention to these individual principles, we can have a bottom line impact on teams and the organization.