Building Leadership Capacity
Approach
The Nebo Company worked closely with the agency to design and deliver an integrated, experiential, and individualized leadership program. Nebo designed a cohort-style program that brought together leading edge concepts, expert instruction, and individualized advising. By combining full-day and half-day applied leadership workshops, practical take-aways and experiential activities, and one-on-one leadership advising/coaching, participants gained essential leadership skills, practiced new leadership tactics and strategies, and shared their successes and challenges with colleagues in the cohort. While a majority of officers participated in person, Nebo accommodated remote participation with live streaming.
Orienting Leaders
To kick off the program, participants were invited to learn more about The Nebo Company, the objectives of the senior leadership program, and our team of expert facilitators and coach advisers. Our orientation process clarified program objectives, set expectations, mapped out the curriculum, aligned organizational and individual goals, and secured buy-in by seeking input for coach/advisor selection.
Exploring How to Lead in a Complex World
Nebo delivered eight focused and applied leadership workshops to senior leaders over eight months. Leaders gained essential perspective, insight, and skills in communication, emotional intelligence, adaptive leadership, visioning, developing others, and presence. The experiential workshops provided a strong foundation for growth and increasingly useful distinctions about leading change. Each applied workshop challenged leaders to not only consider how to “do” leadership, but more importantly how to “be” leaders.
Practicing Leadership
Between workshops, leaders were given practical take-aways and experiential activities designed to challenge and grow their leadership skills. Nebo provided customized materials, practical guides and assessments, and other resources for each skill and concept. Leaders shared their success and sought support and guidance on challenges from each other. Nebo also provided agency sponsors with after-action summaries to measures outcomes and results.
Individualizing the Experience
Nebo matched each participant with a leadership coach from our pool of experienced coaches. Coaches acted as learning advisors and met with participants one-on-one to offer guidance and support in applying newly-acquired leadership skills to their unique context.
Impact
Participants reported managing with a new level of awareness and intention. Many developed better ways to delegate, develop, and empower their direct reports, which yielded better outcomes for their teams. During the program, participants routinely mentioned they were more aware of the quality of their conversations and the impact of their presence on others. Most importantly, many identified the power of making the shift from reactionary to purposeful and visionary leadership as the most significant benefit. Finally, participants developed positive, collegial relationships with their peers, creating a strong, collaborative internal network of leaders.
