Peter Drucker said “culture eats strategy breakfast”. While this may true, leadership must drive the culture of the organization, and a leader’s values will influence how he or she leads. Further, leaders must ensure the organization has enough people capacity to reach goals, or there will never be time to influence culture OR strategy.
Heightened Development suggests you start with an assessment process that looks at where you are now. What is your organization culture? What is your current capacity? What needs to change to effectively meet you goals.
We would love to help your assessment process, often important before you embark on strategic planning, when you are feeling stuck, or when growth or change are coming.
A good strategic plan helps you assess if you are impacting your mission in a way that moves the needle toward your vision statement. It should be designed so staff and board leaders feel equipped in how to move forward. Long range strategy is why most organizations contact Heightened Development, but often a call or assessment process shows that other operational planning is needed as much, if not more. Heightened Development is able to support a range of planning needs.
For example, if strong governance processes are lacking, programs are not able to provide consistent services because of funding constraints, or the work culture does not reflect the organization’s values, these problems need addressing before truly looking long range.
Heightened Development is able to walk beside you, building the project team with the right skills for your organization needs at this juncture. This may mean traditional strategic planning, partnering deeply with the board of directors to build out effective governance structures, working on moving organizational culture or processes in a particular direction, or supporting staff as they create detailed processes to be more efficient and impactful in the future. Ultimately, all types of planning help you gain clarity on your long range goals and ensure you have the right culture and capacity to reach them!
Please call to discuss your planning needs.
Heightened Development provides a variety of trainings, and can also custom design staff and board retreats to meet your needs.
Sample trainings are:
Communication styles rule the world. What is yours? What are your colleagues’? Take and learn about a tool that will help you and your team adjust your communication so everyone engages and hears the right message.* (Board and/or Staff)
Can succession planning help me keep staff engaged? With the right approach, yes it can! Come learn planning tips with employee growth and retention in mind and walk away with a succession tool you can use immediately. (Board and/or Staff)
C-H-A-N-G-E. Is it a word your team is slow to embrace? Learn tried and true methods for managing the most dreaded word in our sector. (Board and/or Staff)
Operational tools as a communication strategy? Yes! Do your organizational chart and budget presentation tell a powerful story? Do they help someone understand why funding you matters? Are they overwhelming? Do they show what it really takes to achieve your impact? (Board and Staff)
Are you struggling to support several on your team as they hone some important skills? Learn how peer coaching can help. Skill development in your current team is a large part of successful succession planning but senior leaders are short on time to do it, or money to pay for everyone to have an individual coach. Leaders can, however, introduce coaching tools to their team that encourage adoption of a peer coaching culture within their organization. (Staff)
Get the Technical support, knowledge development and coaching your organization needs.
For more than 25 years, Chamlee has experienced the various changes your organization may be encountering. As leaders, we often need technical supports or coaching to grow individually and to maximize impact for our organization. Perhaps your organization is at a juncture where change is needed but you are struggling to move it forward. Maybe there is an area of knowledge or skill that you want to develop as a leader. I’d love to explore working with you wherever you are on your leadership path.
As a leader, it your role to support those around you as they lead others. Good managers are not natural coaches. The skills and approach for managing versus coaching are entirely different. Both are appropriate in different situations. However, a coaching approach helps team members begin to effectively solve more problems on their own and can also support social/emotional growth as well. I’d love to explore teaching you a coaching approach to better empower your team, or to build peer coaching teams where each staff member begins to coach and hold accountable the other. Coaching has the added benefit of increasing staff engagement too!
Finally, one important part of building a team of leaders is succession planning. Succession planning is important in many key roles, not just for the CEO or Executive Director. When done well, succession planning can be a tool for staff engagement and can help you better determine where those in the current role could use support around a particular core competency.
