Challenge

A global professional services firm continues to grow at a rate that outpaces the capacity and capability of its senior leadership to lead the organisation through increasing complexity. The organisation has already delivered a series of more traditional leadership development programs focused on skill building with disappointing results—those training failed to engage others to work systematically and adaptively through the organisation’s continuous change. 

The Holos Group were engaged to design and deliver a “disruptive leadership program” that challenged the organisation’s people to develop more mature ways of thinking and lead beyond their role in more adaptive and agile ways.  A further challenge in the design and delivery of a personalised and disruptive experience was that program participants were geographically dispersed and located throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Approach

Working collaboratively with the leadership program’s owner, we began with a desktop review of the organisation’s current leadership development curriculum to identify its strengths, gaps and opportunities for leverage and improvement. In addition, we mapped the content of each program within the curriculum to a vertical leadership development model to assess the current level of ‘developmental complexity’ of all development undertaken by the organisation.

Next, drawing upon adult vertical development theory and adaptive leadership praxis, we designed a six-month leadership program able to be delivered in a hybrid online and face-to-face format that was also calibrated to cater to each individual leader’s level of vertical development. The goal of the program was to inspire each leader to disrupt the status quo and support the organisation towards even greater change.

Outcomes

• The design and delivery of an experiential, group-learning-oriented, leadership program completed by more than 200 members of the organisation in less than 2 years.

• More than 80% of program participants indicated that they felt more empowered to support and guide work colleagues through complex change. 

• 2 of 3 participants recognised how their current level of thinking was holding them back from having a positive impact on those they lead.