News
9 November 2017
What a great couple of weeks it has been. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing positive practical outcomes from leadership programs. Results that reinforce the words of Ralph Nader who said “the real function of leadership is to grow more leaders, not more followers”.
A pipeline in action: At BHP I've been working on an annual high potential program for the last 7 years. Every year we take 12-16 high potential leaders from around the world and accelerate their development through intensive workshops, business simulations, coaching, mentoring and high-stakes work projects. Last week, whilst stewarding the latest group through a week-long program, I heard the news that one of the original participants had been appointed to the global leadership team. What’s more, there are several other participants from the first couple of workshop very close to taking up similar level roles. In my mind, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing leaders I have had the privilege of working with mature into such capable and responsible roles.
Development drives results: For the last 18 months I’ve been lucky to work with emerging leaders at Little Real Estate. This is a group of people that have put their hand up to develop and grow into formal leaders in the business. Of course, the real measure of success in commercial companies is that development drives sustainable business results. So imagine my delight when I was told that the top performing offices in the Victorian network were being led by recently appointed emerging leaders!
Congratulations to them all, and the senior leadership team at Little for investing in your people.
28 June 2016
Our 5th Global Program Graduates
I was delighted earlier this month to successfully conclude the fifth global high potential program for BHP Billiton.
Outstanding high potential leaders from as far afield as London, Santiago, Houston, Saskatoon, Singapore, Perth and Brisbane joined together at the companies head office in Melbourne.
A wide variety of development experiences were had including sophisticated business simulations, real-life presentations to senior executives, deep personal enquiry and transformation as well as opportunity to network and build relationships.
I was especially pleased that the program received very high ratings from the participants on its relevance to their role as leaders and its impact on the development. This was particularly true of the new and innovative sessions focused on executive well-being, some of which received the highest workshop ratings of any program I've been involved in.
This new element of the programme included pre-workshop diagnostics using the managerial and executive well-being survey or MEWS. Targeted development sessions were designed to address group needs showing up in the survey. These included instruction and practice in areas such as:
• Leading through VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity
• Attention, awareness and focus training
• Managing performance arousal
Participants even arose early one morning to complete a yoga session, a different but practical way of providing an embodied experience of many of the ideas discussed.
When asked to rate the impact of these well-being sessions, participants used a 1 to 5 Scale to respond with 1 signifying strong disagreement and 5 signifying strong agreement.
The mean average rating for the well-being sessions was 4.8. A wonderful outcome.
I wish every single one of these extraordinary leaders all the best for their lives and their careers as they look for opportunities to exercise their full potential in their organisation and their communities.
