Accelerated Performance Program
• Do you have a group of emerging leaders who need to quickly step up into higher levels of responsibility?
• Are you asking an intact team to deliver results well beyond their historical performance?
• Do you need a cross-functional team to deliver breakthrough results with a key strategic initiative?
• Are you looking for a performance breakthrough that will enliven your organization and change your culture?
All organizations need a regular infusion of positive energy. No one, however, welcomes an empty rah-rah session that does not have practical relevance or follow through. You know it’s important to develop your people’s capabilities, but no one wants to take time away from their real work.
The Accelerated Performance Program (APP) offers an ideal solution to these needs and dilemmas. The purpose of the APP is to create a performance breakthrough in your organization while developing people’s leadership skills as they work on what matters most.
All too often talented and creative people lose heart and compromise their skills to survive. This phenomenon diminishes their well-being, your company’s morale, your financial performance, and your contribution to the world. LionHeart’s APP will bring out the leadership talent that has been inadvertently suppressed or underdeveloped, while applying real-world coaching to your emerging leaders’ most important business priorities.
How does it work and what are the benefits?
1. You declare a clear performance mandate that calls for improved leadership and collaboration among those invited to participate in the APP.
2. We support you to invite the participants in an empowering manner that calls for a high degree of self-responsibility and commitment.
3. We provide a set of tools that are customized to the performance mandate and the participants’ readiness level. For example, one of our tools, Accountability with Heart, includes:
• Making clear agreements versus having repetitive ambiguous conversations about the same problems
• Making promises into what’s needed versus complaining, waiting to be told what to do, or responding with language that deflects real responsibility
• Growing through our own failures versus playing small or blaming others when performance doesn’t match expectations
• Addressing other people’s missed agreements in a way that fosters learning and responsibility versus defensiveness
• Overcoming the hesitation to have the difficult conversations about what’s not working
4. Participants design projects that incorporate your most important business results and their personal leadership development intentions. These projects become the laboratory for the organization’s accelerated performance, as well as participants’ capability development.
5. We use our unique coaching model to quickly identify and release the subtle compromises that are at the root of the participants’ experience of struggle, overwhelm, or diminished passion. People recover their own inspiration, creativity, and power initially, and then learn to bring the best out of others as well.
6. We offer practical coaching to each participant that relates to the real world obstacles impacting the project they are committed to.
7. We illustrate how individuals’ personal breakthroughs develop into a collaborative culture that unifies the team into a powerfully aligned workforce. As this synergy occurs, participants experience success and naturally spread a virtuous cycle of enthusiasm throughout your organization.
8. Participants form small wisdom groups that meet independently, with our consultants, and with an assigned executive sponsor. The wisdom group activities ensure that people keep their projects alive by learning to coach and be coached by one another to resolve the problems that impede their project success.
How do the logistics work?
1. We begin with pre-work that prepares your people for an extraordinary experience. This includes reading material, committing to the customized process we’ve designed, and obtaining input from senior leaders about the capabilities they are being asked to develop and the projects they will work on.
2. We conduct a powerful two day event that:
• introduces the participants to an experience of the freedom that comes with LionHeart’s five principles,
• launches their projects with committed action, and
• begins the coaching process that leads to group unity.
3. Depending upon your participants’ geographic proximity, budget, and objectives, we schedule a series of 1-2 day follow up events over the next 6-12 months. During these sessions participants report on project progress, receive coaching to break through their current obstacles, and receive further training and practice with the tools and capabilities we have selected for the group. All of this occurs in the context of the immediate business challenges and opportunities they are working with on a daily basis.
4. In between these face to face sessions a LionHeart facilitator meets with each wisdom group on a conference call to provide additional coaching and create a process for the wisdom groups to learn to facilitate their own coaching sessions. Each wisdom group meets on their own (without a LionHeart facilitator) approximately every two weeks in between each face to face session to practice coaching and being coached with one another. Wisdom group meetings with the executive sponsor occur as needed.
5. There are also a predetermined number of thirty minute personal coaching sessions built into the process to allow participants to receive help immediately and privately.
6. We also consult with the executive team regularly to assess the progress of the participants, focus the coaching where it will be most impactful, and fine tune the process to optimize the group’s success.
For further information on how we can customize a program for you, please email Paul Werder at paulw@lionhrt.com or call 503 632 8572.