Leadership Development

Improving Performance at All Levels in Your Organization

Are you aware of these disappointing statistics: Only 20% of workers feel that they work in an environment that allows them to be their best. Moreover, research from The Ken Blanchard Companies indicates that only a small percentage of employees reach their full potential after joining an organization. In fact, in organizations without a solid leadership development strategy in place, the majority of employees are only developed to 65-70% of their potential productivity, according to self assessments by company leaders.

How Can You Improve Your Organization's Performance?

To improve your organization's overall performance, begin by enhancing the performance of individual managers and team leaders within the organization. All employees need help in reaching their goals, and it is the manager or team leader's job to provide the direction and support people need to succeed.

Marshalling resources and focusing your organization in a time of uncertainty requires new skills and approaches.  Gareth Wood Associates develops custom designed leadership training and coaching initiatives that are designed to develop the skills needed to work proactively and to focus on achieving results. 

Below are some of our areas of leadership expertise:

BEST YEAR YET^®

Leader Performance and Development System

 How do we build a team out of these 12 strong individuals?Are Your Leaders Not Producing the Results You Want And Need? 

Are you struggling with one of the following - or perhaps similar - questions:

• How do we increase our sales by 13%?
• How do we find $1.3 million in New Business?
• How do we bring our Customer Satisfaction to a higher level?
• How do we bring back motivation after the latest re-organization?
• How do we implement the Cultural Change we need to go through?

Or, to summarize, How do we increase the impact of our leaders and our activities?

Based on principles of transformation, Best Year Yet is a simple, powerful process in which your leaders develop a one-page performance and development plan and receive yearlong coaching to ensure follow-through and success.  Best Year Yet is equally effective as a one-on-one coaching system or as a leadership team development initiative.

Best Year Yet is a proven 12-month system for helping people to create the results they want and need. For 30 years we've been honing it until it's nearly foolproof! Supported by its unique goal planning software, the process leads to leaders who not only set their goals but go on to achieving their goals.

Leaders learn to:

1. Make a Plan

2. Track their Plan

3. Become a master at Producing Results

 We tailor our approach to fit each client. You are unique.  We regularly travel to clients across Canada and the United States.  If you would like to discuss Best Year Yet for your leaders Contact Us! Mindset + Action = Results.

To help leaders produce results time and time again, you need to systematically shift mindset and action, and not focus simply on the symptoms of poor performance.

Best Year Yet® offers a quick, powerful process for identifying old belief structures, creating a mindset focused on success and identifying what needs to be done to have success.  The solid, yearlong follow-up structure ensures the leader is constantly focusing on the right mindset and actions that produce the results they want.  They hit their targets and they miss fewer opportunities.

Help Your Leaders Make the Next 12 Months Their Best Year Yet!

Leadership In Action (LIA)

 Stages of team developmentThis dynamic experiential journey explores the art of managing, coaching and leading individuals and teams. A crucial change necessary for many organizations is the transition from more traditional manager and supervisor roles to that of a leader, responsible for pathfinding, aligning systems and processes, empowering and coaching people, and modeling company culture and values.

Leadership in Action is a highly interactive, experiential and facilitated experience patterned on the successful Teams In Action program described in our Teambuilding Services.  LIA is an intervention process that helps individuals in management or supervisory positions understand the changing role of the leader and coach.  It focuses on appropriate and effective leadership and coaching strategies for individuals and team as they move toward more responsibility and accountability. Some focus areas for guided discussion and review are:

• The coaching process
• Roles of manager, coach and leader
• The Process Leader
• The Situational Leader – Matching Leadership Style with Follower Readiness
• Process and conflict management within team
• Communication and communication systems
• Leading change
• Effective meetings

• Decision making
• Leveraging effectiveness through collaboration

Our Approach

Incorporating a Variety of Adult-Learning Tools Harnessing Individuals' Differences and Strengths
Fundamental to all of the our leadership development and team initiatives is the belief that key to moving the organization forward is harnessing the differences and strengths within individuals, in order to build a foundation of collaboration and cooperation. Believing in the power of people, Gareth helps leaders understand their preferred style and coaches when to use supporting styles, building trust and alignment of purpose.

We place great value in responding to different learning styles by using a wide variety of adult-learning tools. Incorporating current business improvement theory, action learning and facilitated reflection, Gareth ensures the experience will be engaging, practical, memorable and safe; both physically and emotionally.

A leader in experiential learning, Gareth Wood Associates often uses problem-solving team challenges, both indoor and outdoor, that are custom designed to address individual learning needs and company challenges. Each team challenge provides participants the opportunity to take intellectual and behavioral risks while accommodating all levels of physical capability (and possible disabilities), ensuring the highest standards of physical and emotional safety.

Leadership In ActionFacilitating rather than Teaching
Gareth sees himself as a facilitator or coach rather than a teacher. There are many programs that can "give the participant confidence" or "build camaraderie". However, to ensure real learnings that are valid and can be transferred to the work environment requires a high degree of facilitation and coaching.

Successful learning requires thorough debriefing and linking to the workplace. If experiential challenges are designed to reflect every day work situations, generate real feelings, responses and behaviours and are skillfully debriefed by way of guided inquiry, participants smack foreheads with the palm of their hand and utter those magic words for the facilitator - "I see this situation every day!" or "This is exactly what happens at work!". Guided discussion further identifies new actions and behaviors to be included in their personal leadership development plan and modeled on a daily basis.

Finally, to avoid being seen as the "program of the month", Gareth believes each intervention must be seen as part of a client's journey. Follow-up is critical to ensure long-term effectiveness of all learnings.

 Take Your Leadership On a Journey!

All workshops are interactive and experiential; our belief being that effective learning engages both head and hand and requires both knowing and doing.  Participants combine their resourcefulness, intuition and experience with these new skills and knowledge in completing a variety of team challenges - The Journey.  As well as having participants struggle over whether to plan and organize or to "seize the day", each event is carefully crafted to reveal the effects of varying styles of leadership, decision making, role allocation, planning as well as building upon the strengths of individuals in a shared experience that contributes to group synergy and purpose.  Facilitated reviews and discussions link the learnings back to the workplace.

We tailor our approach to fit each client. You are unique.  We regularly travel to clients across Canada and the United States.  If you would like to discuss Leadership In Action for your organization please Contact Us!

Situational Leadership

Gareth is a Certified Situational Leadership Program® Trainer and Facilitator. 

Situational Leadership is the world’s most comprehensive and up-to-date, yet practical method for effectively leading and developing people into peak performers. 

Situational Leadership provides a model and process that leaders can use to inspire, communicate, direct, take action, empower, and develop their people into outstanding self-directed performers.   People get the direction and support they need for individual development and high productivity.  Individual goals are clarified and tied to organization goals so that everyone is working toward the same business result.Situational Leadership is designed to increase the frequency and quality of conversations about performance and development between managers and the people they work with so that competence is developed, commitment is gained, and talented individuals stay with the organization. 

The role of the Situational Leader is to provide whatever it takes – goals, direction, training, support, feedback, and recognition – to develop employees’ skills, motivation, and confidence to excel.  The model teaches leaders to diagnose the needs of an individual and to use the leadership style that matches the situation.  The result is an organization where people feel more empowered, engaged, and open to new challenges where they can contribute their ideas and energy.

We tailor our approach to fit each client. You are unique.  We regularly travel to clients across Canada and the United States.

If you would like to discuss Situational Leadership for your leaders or leadership team please Contact Us!