The LeaderSpace approach
In all the years we’ve been doing this, every client’s been different, so they’ve needed a different approach. Still, we’ve noticed some common threads.
First up, we start by understanding you and the challenge you’re facing – we don’t come with a stock ‘solution’ or product in mind.
Secondly, most people ask us to focus our efforts on the people leading in their organisations – either individually, as a team, or collection of teams, or in groups who don’t usually work together day-to-day. The number of participants varies enormously: it could be one individual coaching engagement, or intimate groups of 6-12; sessions for 30-100 people, or recurring programmes reaching thousands of leaders.
Thirdly, whatever the challenge and whatever approach we create with you, we’ll seek to ensure that between us we are:
Helping you Engage the appropriate stakeholders
Assessing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be
Deciding the best approach and Aligning the people involved
Doing whatever it takes to Progress in that direction, taking everyone with us
Reviewing the work, our approach and its impact, as we go
Used wisely, this framework is an organic, evolving, collaborative, tried-and-tested approach, underpinned with a quiet rigour that draws on decades of learning, practice and extensive research.
The LeaderSpace toolkit
We’ve been doing this work since 2000 and we’re passionate learners ourselves. So, we’ve gathered a wide range of methods, tools and techniques over the years and crafted a lot of our own.
Our founder, Richard Boston, leads the way on that front, writing books and articles on leadership, team performance, systems thinking, adult development and related topics.
Some clients import our methodologies in their entirety. Others prefer to use them more in the background, to sharpen their thinking, or choose to stick with their existing frameworks, so we’re speaking a language their people already understand. We’re happy with whatever gets the best outcomes.
You’ll get a taste for our thinking from the Insight section of this website. But, if you’d like a quick snapshot, the Systems Wheel opposite sums a lot of it up. We rarely share the whole tool in one sitting, so we’ll touch on just three of the rings in it, now.
1. The Three Core Disciplines: Direction, Commitment, Capacity
Whenever we ask what leaders and teams need to do, to be successful, the answers fall into one of these three ‘buckets’. That’s little surprise, as they’re our distillation of over 25 years of working with leaders and teams, reviewing clients’ competency frameworks and doing a ton of research.
2. Habits, Needs and Mindsets
The three things that will help or hinder leaders’ and teams’ ability to achieve whatever it is they’re trying to do. Not just their own Habits, Needs and Mindsets, but those of their stakeholders, too.
3. Being Authentic, Responsible and Courageous
Three invaluable qualities that help leaders and teams deliver and thrive in a complex world.
There’s a helpful simplicity to each of the ‘rings’ in the Wheel, but there’s a lot to unpack, as well. Richard wrote ARC Leadership to help leaders be more Authentic, Responsible and Courageous. And his book Upgrade (with Karen Ellis) digs deep into Mindsets and Capacity. It helps you upgrade the ways you see yourself, the world and everyone and everything in it, so you can handle increasing complexity while expending a great deal less effort.
That’s just a taste of our thinking, but the best thing about it? We’ll decide together how best to combine your insights and ours.
Team Coaching
We’ve worked with teams in various sectors, all over the world, each with its own dynamics, objectives and aspirations. Together, we’ve created:
A shift from silo-thinking to a joined-up organisation
Greater trust and commitment to the “shared endeavour”
A climate of healthy challenge where conflict is seen as productive not destructive or divisive
Greater clarity of roles and accountabilities, within and between teams
A more resilient organisation, during a downturn / geopolitical crisis
A clearer identity and more compelling sense of purpose for the team and the people it leads
A more innovative approach to policy-making
Enhanced stakeholder management
Teams who are stronger, tighter, sharper and more emotionally intelligent, which makes them better leaders
The objective is to create high-performing teams that become more than the sum of their individual members: teams capable of ambitious performance, clearer accountability, more productive relationships and greater resilience through change.
“One of our biggest take-aways was the discipline instilled by the team coaching. And one of our biggest mistakes twelve months later was to let some of that discipline slip. Without it, we made some flawed decisions as a leadership team that hit our bottom line and put us back a step in our strategic plans. Thankfully, we’re learning from that mistake. We’ve also learned how valuable it is as a leadership team to have someone external be there with us on an ongoing basis, both as a sounding board and to help us maintain that all-important team discipline.”
Executive Coaching
Because it’s so personalised, coaching can help with pretty much anything. For example, we’ve helped leaders in a range of organisations to:
Thrive in a world that’s increasingly complex, ambiguous and unpredictable
Evolve their approach for new or more senior roles
Upgrade their approach to stakeholder management
Create a vision and strategy
Build confidence and personal impact
Hone their emotional intelligence, creativity or critical thinking skills
Inspire and develop the people they lead
The space we create is founded on mutual trust and respect, where the coachee can be uniquely open and honest without feeling judged. Each of our coaches has a different style rooted in a common ethos. So coachees choose their coach and check they’ve got the right chemistry before we begin.
All of our coaches are highly-experienced and have worked across numerous cultures and sectors. Many are also psychologists. They all bring insight and empathy; support and challenge, and they all attend to the coachee as a whole person, while maintaining clear boundaries and a primary focus on work.
Every coaching engagement is different, tailored to you and your needs. So, we invite you to get in touch if you’d like to know more.
“The aspirations were there, but not the courage to make them reality. If you’re not courageous, you stand still… lost in a mire of greyness. The coaching gave me permission to be courageous.”
Leadership Development
There’s no cookie-cutter here. We start by understanding what you’re seeking to change. Then we build what’s needed to help your people become the leaders you need.
The result is an approach that is:
Created for you and your people and culture
Engaging and practical
Informed by decades of work in leadership development
Based on the psychology of leadership, adult learning and behavioural change
Proven to make a real, sustainable difference
“The air of mystery surrounding the programme and its content is closely guarded by the programme’s alumni. This has created a buzz of excitement, and a sense of the programme being a ‘must have’ at the Senior Manager level – not just a slot on the management curriculum or a box that needs to be ticked.”