The
Leadership
Experience
Powered by
bluepoint
Leadership
Development
The Leadership Experience
Overview
On the day of his assassination, John F. Kennedy’s speech notes contained the passage,
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to one another.” His words clearly underscore the
research of the late 1990’s and early part of the 21st century. More than ever we understand that
leadership is a lifelong learning process that requires the following mixture of elements for
successful implementation in the complex, modern organizations that most of us find ourselves in
today.
“The Leadership Experience” is a research-based, experiential workshop that represents the next
generation of management training initiatives. The workshop is uniquely designed to equip
managers with the capabilities required to create alignment, energy, and effectiveness in today’s
organiza t i o n s . Rakesh Khurana, assistant professor at the Harvard Business School said in a
2003 Chief Executive magazine study, “What really matters are systems that develop and
perpetuate talent. We’re focusing on the systems that build people.”
Leadership is a relationship requiring an act of faith in other people. We know from experience
and research that people respond to honest, credible, and passionate leaders. “The Leadership
Experience” is a result of nearly 20 years of field experience and interaction with leaders at all
organizational levels.
A flame burns hottest at its blue point and Bluepoint Leadership Development’s singular interest
is to add energy to your organization and to your people so they can become blue hot.
Key Concepts and Program Goals
Key Concepts:
•
•
•
•
•
Modern organizations are complex, unpredictable
and very challenging to lead
Effective leadership starts with rigorous self study
and the identification of unique values, motivations,
talents and aspirations.
The most effective leadership development follows
an appreciative line of exploration; that is, it focuses
on exploiting each individual’s inherent strengths
and abilities.
Extensive research over the past few decades has
taken much of the mystique out of leadership. The
competencies required of modern organization
leaders are now well known; however, individual
managers gain significant benefit from continuing
education on the application of these competencies.
Leadership skills, competencies and practices can be
best understood and applied through the three universal labors of leadership – Navigation,
Architecture and Community.
Program Goals:
Participants who attend “The Leadership Experience” will be better able to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Evaluate and consider the consequences of their personal leadership motivations
Inspire their constituents to believe in and take action against the organization mission
Apply innovation skills to organizational issues
Develop higher levels of engagement with their constituents
Focus on what is right about the organization and use this perception to renew
purpose
6. Understand their personal leadership strengths and weaknesses from multiple
viewpoints
7. Gain a deeper appreciation of how well their leadership strengths fit in different
environments
8. Re-examine their leadership in the light of their personality, motivation, and current
performance
9. Develop operational plans that are guided by over-arching purposes
10. Gain a broad perspective on the key elements of organizational leadership; navigating,
designing and building community
The Authentic Leader
We know from experience that leadership can and should be developed at all levels. The
purpose of any leadership development program is to fan the flames of leadership greatness. We
also believe that some will develop their leadership to greater levels. Our twenty years of
experience and recent research into leadership development best practices has lead us to
conclude that the best path to achieve leadership greatness is for individual leaders to become
the best version of themselves.
“The Authentic Leader” module is a deep dive for individuals into their own values, motivations
to lead, lessons of experience, leadership competencies, and core personality factors that apply
to leadership abilities as well as to organizational performance. We provide participants with a rich
and varied set of assessments and evaluations that help them identify important leadership issues
related to their personality, values, motivations, and proficiency concerning leadership.
“If we don’t earn Trust and Respect, little else matters”
Pre-work assignments include the “Hogan Leadership Forecast™ Values Assessment”
(mandatory) and the “Bluepoint Leadership Experience 360” (optional).
The Hogan s e l f - a s s e s s m e n t helps individuals assess and understand their leadership
abilities and preferences as well as leadership values via a personality assessment. The
assessment measures 10 key aspects of personality that have been shown to be directly related
to job performance, leadership ability, and leadership values, as well as core values. The report
is used in three ways. It can be used to identify:
1. The fit between identity and current occupation
2. The fit between core values and the corporate culture
3. How values enhance or impede leadership performance
The Bluepoint 360 measures 10 behavioral factors, using a multi-rater 360, web access process.
Individuals will receive quantitative feedback (in the form of behavioral frequency) and
qualitative feedback (in the form of appreciative comments from the raters). The Bluepoint 360
measures important behaviors concerning Authenticity, Navigation, Architecture, and
Community. The 360 is an optional assessment and companies can choose to substitute their own
internal assessment if available.
Authenticity
As indicated in this “Levels of Awareness” graphic,
observers can provide some feedback concerning
competency values and motives but only the individual
can probe all three levels thoroughly.
A series of provocative and stimulating excercises are
used with these self-explorations, including having
individuals consider their motives values and
competencies measured against the corporate mission and
principles.
We use the following model as a construct
to provide insightful and stimulating selfexploration experiences.
The Dynamics of Authenticity model
borrows from the field of aviation. Just like
airplanes, we believe individual leaders
have four primary forces acting upon their
ability to lead. Lift and thrust are forces that
are required to overcome the weight and drag
of individual abilities. Lift and thrust forces
are:
• Gaining and maintaining credibility
• Leadership aspirations
• Basic genuineness
Dynamics of Authenticity
Weight and drag forces are those that reduce or resist our leadership. Sources of these forces are:
• Fears and needs
• Self delusions
• Creating illusions for others
Exploring these forces requires individuals to examine not just their competencies as a leader,
but the deeper issues of their personality, abilities, motives, and values.
“No one is born a leader; we have to consciously develop into the leader we want to become. It
takes many years of hard work and the ability to learn from extreme difficulties and
disappointments.”
--- Bill George
HBR, January 2003
“Healthy leaders don’t easily lose control or resort to impulsive acts. They can work through
their own anxiety and ambivalence. They are very talented in self-observation and self-analysis;
the best leaders are highly motivated to spend time in self-reflection.”
--- Manfred Kets de Vries
Director Insead’s Global Leadership Center
HBR, January 2004
Navigation
Navigation concerns purpose and pathfinding. It is not enough to just have a great mission
statement or key objectives, but leaders must be able to connect the symbolic past, the chaotic
present, and the uncertain future in a meaningful stream of history. As the graphic model
indicates purpose and pathfinding are brought together by a process we call Foresight.
Vision is the search for meaning. Strategy is the search for advantage. Foresight is the search
for both.
This module focuses on increasing leaders ability to navigate through examining the
Foresight Process™.
Purpose:
Helps individuals gain greater understanding and articulation of their organization’s purpose,
vision, and strategic intent.
Pathfinding:
Participants will engage in the Foresight Process™ to help them better able to evaluate, strengthen,
and ratify the strategies, goals, and objectives they are using to support the organization’s purpose,
vision, and strategic intent.
Leadership Coaching:
This module also includes an introduction to a proven leadership coaching process that provides
participants with the tools to assist others with their personal change initiatives. This process is
used throughout the workshop and provides participants the opportunity to improve their personal
coaching effectiveness.
Architecture
In this session, we focus on the critical, but highly i m p o r t a n t labor of creating good
systems and structure for the organization. The key ideas we explor are;
•
•
Personal Genius
Organizational Innovation
By tapping into individual’s personal level of ability to adapt, innovate, make improvements, and
solve problems, we will help them translate those personal skills into an organizational construct.
Personal Genius:
In this module we aspire to activate participants’ imagination and creative capabilities, helping
them reconnect with their personal genius.
Organization Innovation:
Here participants apply their personal genius, concepts of continual improvement, and ideas
concerning re-imagination to organizational structure and systems.
“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told
her I worked at the college and that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at
me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forget?”
--- Howard Ikemoto (artist and retired art professor) as quoted by Richard Kehl
Breathing on Your Own
Community
Leaders need to be community builders. Community concerns many aspects regarding talent,
relationships, coaching, and other important interpersonal competencies. We explore the key
ideas of “Engagement” and “Coaching”
During this session individuals will consider how to use the Engagement Process in ways that
will enhance their leadership development. The graphic below shows the components of this
process.
The coaching model we use is a tried and tested methodology that will significantly enhance any
manager’s ability to coach direct reports and even peers and perhaps managers.