Leadership Assessment & Selection
Our process starts with a discovery process to understand “what great looks like” in the role, as well as the best team fit required for success. During this process, we don’t just consider current requirements. We ensure the brief reflects longer-term aspirations and talent needs, including diverse candidates who will complement the team and bring new thinking and expertise to your organization.
Based on the candidate brief, we partner with clients to build a powerful interview and assessment process to measure candidates’ talents, performance risks, potential and fit.
APEXLeader™ assessment involves a comprehensive multi-method assessment process to help identify exceptional leaders and future leaders. This involves:
- An in-depth interview that goes well beyond standard interviews to uncover a leader’s Achievements, Personality (strengths and risk area), Energy and motivation and standout talents, their X-factor.
- A range of carefully selected psychometric tests and job – relevant problem-solving tasks. These provide additional insights into the leader’s underlying personality, motives, performance risks and problem – solving abilities.
Our assessment approach enables you to:
- build alignment among key stakeholders,
- compare candidates using robust data, and
- understand their risks and choose the best leader for your organization.
Other solutions include:
- Designing and implementing leadership competency and behaviour frameworks
- Leadership team profiling to support development or team fit decisions
- Identifying emerging and future leaders
As co-designer of Strengthscope®, James Brook, our MD, and our team of highly skilled consultants and psychologists are ideally placed to help you implement Strengthscope® for assessment and development of your leaders.
Leadership Development
Leaders and emerging leaders require learning experiences that enable them to develop their mindset, capabilities, and agility to create thriving workplaces, breakthrough performance and sustainable growth.
We partner with clients to design, deliver and evolve immersive and practical Positive Leadership Labs™, short online Learning FuelUp™ sessions and various other engaging learning solutions. All our programmes enable leaders to develop new capabilities and collaborate to build greater self-awareness, effectiveness, and agility so they can deliver breakthrough performance and become fit for the future.
Through a powerful blend of skills development, mindset shift and practical action-learning, our Positive Leadership Labs™ help leaders tackle their biggest business challenges, uncover new opportunities, and shape the future. Learning is sustained and positive change reinforced using peer coaching and ongoing boosters, maximizing the value of the programme.
We offer a variety of blended, online, and face-to-face programmes. Popular programmes include:
- Building a purpose-based organization
- Leading thriving teams
- Creative problem-solving
- Building personal and team resilience
- Conscious conversations
- Positive influence without authority
- Mastering the coaching habit
- Leading change that sticks
All our leadership development solutions are customized to our client’s unique requirements and use the latest science-based approaches combined with our own proprietary techniques, and tools.
Positive change is sustained in various ways depending on what is most appropriate for the client. Approaches we offer include 1-1 coaching, peer coaching and co-development, social learning, and action learning.
Other solutions include:
- Leadership learning needs analysis
- Developing emerging and future leaders
- New leader onboarding and team integration
Leadership Team Effectiveness
Building cohesive, effective leadership teams is essential to deliver exceptional results and navigate a fast-changing, complex business environment.
Thriving leadership teams need a clear purpose and diverse mix of talented people with the right mindset, expertise, and capabilities to succeed. However, this is not sufficient. For team members to be at their best, they also need high levels of trust, commitment, and mutual support so they can learn together, achieve their goals and adapt to unpredictable change.
We have significant experience working with executive and other leadership teams to strengthen team dynamics, learning, agility and outcomes.
Our proprietary Thriving Teams™ process is designed to develop the performance, agility, commitment, and energy of leadership teams, accelerating performance and lasting success. It typically involves:
- Conducting a Thriving Teams™ diagnostic to take stock of how team members (and other stakeholders) view the team’s performance, cohesion, and improvement areas.
- Helping the team improve six vital building blocks of Thriving Teams™, including an inspiring purpose, guiding standards, delivery focus, mutual support, conscious communication, and applied learning.
- Aligning and clarifying roles and critical team processes.
- Improving the team’s ability to adapt, learn and build resilience.
- Ensuring the team has a focused development roadmap to guide ongoing improvement.
Other solutions include:
- Team coaching
- Conflict and dispute resolution within teams
- Consulting on setting up new teams or re-organizing existing ones
Organizational Change & Culture
Applying positive and people-centric transformation, we help clients cultivate a thriving culture, navigate change and get fit for the future by building a more sustainable, innovative and resilient business.
Whether you are undertaking a major re-organization, implementing digital transformation, making a strategic acquisition or trying to speed up product innovation, your leaders and teams need the mindset, capabilities and support to steer the organization effectively through the change process.
Studies consistently show that the way organizations deal with the human side of change ultimately determines whether the change will succeed. Our positive, people-centric approach builds broad support for change by providing clarity of purpose, encouraging employee and stakeholder participation, building change capabilities and cultivating a collaborative learning culture.
We believe organizations should be a force for good to remain relevant and sustain healthy growth in future. We therefore help clients to embrace, develop and implement purpose-driven sustainability strategies that build brand loyalty, improve competitive advantage and generate high levels of commitment among employees, customers and other stakeholders.
Our powerful ChangeMax™ process maximizes positive outcomes, innovation and organizational learning by enabling leaders and transition teams to:
- Clarify the change purpose and goals
- Take stock of transition capabilities, strengths and ‘gaps’
- Identify risks and potential blockers
- Create a roadmap to guide and implement the change
- Mobilize people to unlock energy, talent and commitment for the change
- Deliver the structures, processes, culture, capabilities and technologies to ensure the change is successful
- Track progress and refine the roadmap with robust evaluation and insights
Other solutions include:
- Company culture assessments and transformation
- Support to develop and implement purpose-based and sustainable strategies
- Leadership, talent and workforce due diligence reviews for mergers and acquisitions
Executive & Leadership Coaching
We enhance leaders’ effectiveness, relationships, and results with high-impact coaching for individuals and teams. By helping leaders mobilize the full potential of their people and teams, tackle challenges and adapt to fast-changing environments, we optimize their growth and performance.
Our unique, systemic coaching approach delivers excellent outcomes by improving the mindset, capabilities and commitment of leaders and their teams. Our positive and forward-looking approach also helps leaders adapt and innovate faster in response to uncertainty and rapid change.
We support a wide range of leadership coaching solutions including:
- Improving leadership effectiveness
- Confidence and resilience
- Leading transitions and transformation
- Building future leader readiness
- Stakeholder influencing
- Cross-cultural leadership
- Developing leadership teams
- Accelerating innovation and sustainable growth.
Our approach
Our coaching provides a confidential and safe space for leaders to build awareness, improve the quality of their thinking, strengthen relationship, and adapt to be ready for the future. We always customize our coaching to the client’s unique context and requirements. The process typically involves:
- An upfront discovery process to clarify coaching goals, expectations, and the business context.
- Undertaking assessments and 360-degree surveys to build excellent self-awareness and momentum for change.
- Helping the leader compile a personal learning plan based on their aspirations, strengths and opportunities for improvement.
- Delivering face to face or online coaching sessions (typically 6 – 12), with pre-work and follow up activities.
- Reinforcing learning through practice activities and learning exercises between sessions.
- Reviewing progress and evaluating impact to ensure positive change and ongoing improvement.
Our typical coaching process
Discovery
- Coach matching, selection and contracting
- Clarifying goals and expectations with client and company
- Assesment/profiling
- Optional 360-degree feedback process
Coaching Sessions
- Series of 6-9 coaching sessions (face to face or virtual)
- Follow-up actions to embed learning
- Access to tools and resources
Review of Progress and Close Out
- Review of progress with client and company
- Optional 360-degree progress report
All our coaches have advanced coaching qualifications and excellent business experience, having worked with some of the world’s most innovative and successful businesses. We are also able to support projects across multiple geographies and cultures.
Other solutions include:
- C-suite and leadership team coaching and advisory services
- Peer coaching (facilitated peer coaching groups)
- Emerging and future leader coaching
Talent Management Mentoring
If it is done right Talent Management will give your business a lasting competitive advantage, enabling it to adapt and thrive. Effective talent management is not only about finding and keeping the best talent. It involves understanding and ensuring exceptional employee experiences and outcomes across the full talent life cycle, including hiring, retention, performance management, development, succession, organizational change, wellbeing and even exit. You’re here because you understand this but need support and help to understand what’s possible, identify the right priorities, take your talent strategy and practices to the next level and tackle the complex challenges of the new world of work.
James, your mentor, has over 25 years’ experience working with some of the world’s most successful businesses (large and small) to help them plan, deliver and transform their talent strategy. He has led talent management for global companies and has also founded and successfully sold an international talent assessment and development company. James is an accomplished author and speaker on leadership, coaching, innovative talent management, positive organizations and the future of work.
The target audience
The programme is designed for Talent, L&D and HR professionals and leaders from any organization who have responsibility for designing, implementing and adapting their organization’s talent strategy.
What we’ll cover
Your mentoring programme is customized to your unique needs and challenges, identified during the initial session with James. However, it typically covers the following:
Talent strategy: What strategy, core capabilities and talent are required by your business to deliver its purpose and goals? How can you futureproof your strategy in this fast-changing and volatile age we have entered?
Executive and stakeholder buy in: Who needs to support the strategy, what roles will they play and how can you gain their commitment?
Talent processes and solutions: What processes, solutions and tools are needed to deliver your strategy?
Technology: How can digital technology be used to accelerate and streamline your talent processes and outcomes? How can you select the most appropriate tech?
Measuring talent outcomes: How can you track and measure talent progress and outcomes using accurate and insightful talent analytics?
Capabilities of a great talent leader: What capabilities and skills do you need to effectively lead the talent function/centre of excellence? What will you need to learn and adapt to ensure you are ready for the new digital age?
The programme will provide you with the expertise, skills, tools and confidence to improve your talent leadership, agility and outcomes. It will also ensure you have a focused plan for how to move forward in a way that will deliver strong and sustainable results for your business.
How do I sign up?
James only works with a handful of talent leaders at any given time.
During an initial complimentary meeting he will explore and clarify your needs, the organization’s context and business challenges, and talent priorities, gaps and aspirations. He will also provide more details about the programme and answer any questions you may have.
If you decide to go ahead, James will arrange a series of 3 or 6 online mentoring sessions with you, each lasting 90-minutes. Sessions are typically once a month, with time for practice and guided self-managed learning in-between. In order to get the most out of each session, you will also be asked to do some pre-work.
Additional sessions can be arranged after completing the initial programme.
Investment
3-month Talent Mentoring Programme £1,750 excl. VAT
6-month Talent Mentoring Programme: £3,000 excl. VAT
To arrange a 30-minute complimentary meeting with James to learn more about the programme and to discuss your needs, select a time using the link below.