Wicked LeadershipExtraordinary as standard

L e a d e r s h i p

Leadership is a strategic advantage, it is in essence the differentiator, it is the deciding factor on whether or not your business will have ultimate success.

What is success? • We believe success is about humanity, society and commerciality• We believe success is being valued• We believe success is the expectation of being more tomorrow than you are today• We believe success is when people are driven to find the value in their contribution and

discretionary effort is forthcoming from a genuine connection• We believe success is a commercially fluid and savvy business, driven from the bottom up

We believe that when leadership makes a tangible difference to the lives of those in the business, they in turn will make a tangible difference to the business and that this then drives a sustainable, legacy driven future.

We believeLeadership is a strategic advantage, it is in essence the differentiator, it is the deciding factor on whether or not your business will have ultimate success.

What is success? • We believe success is about humanity, society and commerciality• We believe success is being valued• We believe success is the expectation of being more tomorrow than you are today• We believe success is when people are driven to find the value in their contribution and

discretionary effort is forthcoming from a genuine connection• We believe success is a commercially fluid and savvy business, driven from the bottom up

We believe that when leadership makes a tangible difference to the lives of those in the business, they in turn will make a tangible difference to the business and that this then drives a sustainable, legacy driven future.

We believe

Everyone is a genius. The question then is…what is your genius?

“If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that it is Stupid”

Einstein

Everyone is a genius. The question then is…what is your genius?

“If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that it is Stupid”

Einstein

Leadership is not hierarchical, it is right there in all of us (we all lead in life in different places, contexts and guises). We believe that we are leaders of ourselves and that the biggest step for the individual is to find the confidence to fully acknowledge and fulfill their potential; however, we also recognise that positional leaders within a business have to:

• Create the space for people to step into• Role-model the behaviour• Share the compelling story• Challenge courageously those who won’t engage• Clear the path of obstacles• Stubbornly stand their ground for the change to happen

The long-term strength of a business is its capacity to nurture and develop its people at the speed equal to or greater than the change that is happening in the environment. This can only be achieved by people focusing on their own autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Conscious leadership

Talent doesn’t just happen, it needs to be orchestrated if it is to become extraordinary.

• We believe that talent isn’t just in the talented

• We believe fundamentally that everyone has a driver to achieve their own level of mastery and that mastery is a driver of pride and contribution to improvement

• We believe people need to feel that they are the conductors of their own life, that they have the autonomy to make decisions from a place of being trusted and from their own competence and insight

• We believe that everyone is a leader, that wherever you are on the chart, you are a leader by your role or your influence and that a clear purpose galvanises the leader in everyone, as they take accountability for delivering a purpose that is bigger than the task

Extraordinary talent

Our Leader - Manager wheel is our way of framing what good looks like; in the centre is the choice of being a conscious leader and understanding the need to be learning agile and the impact this has, on the right we have the activities that a manager does and on the left is the impact of their leadership.

This wheel challenges and reinforces commitment from the business to create a culture that nurtures this approach and a commitment from individuals to making it succeed through their own engagement.

The truth of the matter is that people are complex and that most leadership development really doesn’t take account of this, our observation is that no one really disagrees with the need to lead and to be led.

The issue for us is simple, it is either a knowledge issue or it’s a motivation issue - it really is that simple and it is solved simply. Show people what to do and then if they aren’t doing it... it’s a motivation issue.

Our brilliance is in our ability to balance the need for clear knowledge and direction, in tandem with the curiosity, reinforcement and challenge to help people create a clear sense of their own direction.

Be human

Let’s get something straight...everyone, regardless of their position is a leader and a manager. The first thing that has to be understood is that rank means nothing in the context of leadership - higher positions just mean a greater span of control.

Everyone is managing their own activity and everyone is having an impact in the way they behave. Once we agree that, we can understand that the inhabitant of the most junior or senior position is quite capable of demonstrating equal levels of leadership and in fact a business should be looking to how to lead, not just from the top, but from all levels.

Start to see leadership behaviour as non-positional, but human. Also consider this…the only thing that comes from the top is ‘command or permission’; the decision to lead or be led, to give discretionary effort, to engage and to innovate comes from the belief the individual has as to ‘why they should care’?

Development can seem puzzling, as if only those in the know really understand it, which is why many organisations and service providers over-engineer a process and technology to solve the problem.

We don’t believe development should be complex, we think it should be easy. Our experience has shown that organisations fear their people ‘not being engaged with the development’ or the ‘change not happening’ and the reason this is happening is simply the interventions that went before were too complex, with models that didn’t translate into daily life, often delivered by poor quality trainers dressed up as change agents; sometimes coupled with an internal team that hasn’t connected to the outcome; thus money is spent and little to no change occurs.

No one thing makes development or transformation work, it is a combination of factors that get awards won and engagement to shift. Blue Sky come to the table with award-winning programmes and facilitators, thought-leadership, research and design teams and leadership with over a decade of experience in performance change.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”

Einstein

“A solved puzzle

We think our methodology is brilliant and its output award-winning. We approach all learning through the lens of our Embedded Learning Methodology (ELM). This approach frames the way we familiarise ourselves with a business to design, deliver and create sustainable outcomes.

The ELM is our compass - it’s a clear path to creating and maintaining change. We contract with those on our learning programmes to commit to this process of:

• Seeking awareness of their own impact and contextualising it to the needs of the business and society as a whole

• Making the conscious choice to not just understand the change and the learning, but to actively and overtly engage, contribute and advocate it

• Engaging in active learning that reinforces the learning and demonstrates the commitment to change and gather feedback

• Calibrating, reinforcing the good, changing the not so good and stepping into the cycle again and repeating

Proven methodologyTM

“In the three years that we’ve been judging the TJ leadership awards, we’ve studied 73 different leadership development programmes. In terms of great design, demonstrable results and innovation, none have come close to this year’s winner, VINCI’s Empower programme.”

Larry Reynolds and David Robertson – Judges, leadership category of the TJ Awards

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L e a d e r s h i p

The Old Malt House33 The StreetShalfordGuildfordSurreyGU4 8BU

t. +44 (0) 1483 739400e. info@blue-sky.co.uk

www.blue-sky.co.uk