Hayden designs and facilitates work sessions for leadership teams to plan & achieve specific objectives
Executive/Business Coaching may identify an opportunity to strengthen leadership teams via on-site or off-site work sessions.
Hayden designs the Agenda based on the objectives defined by the CEO, often with input of the management team.
Such work sessions focus on specific objectives, E.G.,
- strategy development
- operational problem solving
- profit improvement
- team building or some combination of these
During Hayden’s four years as a Vistage Chair he designed & led 50+ all day group meetings with 6-15 members attendees. The content & theme of these varied widely.
Since returning to management coaching & consulting in 2006, Hayden has designed/facilitated numerous work sessions for leadership teams in service and manufacturing businesses.
The development of an effective agenda involves :
- meeting with business leader & management team members
- identifying the goals for the work session
- developing an approach for achieving them
- creating a safe, open, & engaging environment
The keys to success for such work sessions are: involving all attendees as people first, addressing key issues, doing real work, AND having fun in doing so!!
Every attendee contributes uniquely and importantly to the “collective wisdom” of the group.
Breakout sessions are designed to ignore the company structure and titles, so as to level the playing field in this endeavor. Often new ideas & insights arise in this mode.
More perspectives on such work sessions
Hayden’s Group Facilitation Process is all about real work and effective interaction . . .
Hayden’ strong belief is that leadership teams are most effective when fully empowered by the business leader
- Requires clear statement of vision & expectations
- Demands well defined goals (SMART Goals)
- Works when team is held accountable for results
With this context in place, then the business leader can confidently expect that:
- Challenging the team with key issues &/or opportunities
- Will result in real work getting accomplished
Sometimes the initial work session is about creating this context in the first place.
Occasionally, the key elements of this context need to be defined and put in place before real work can begin.
Group Meetings include a variety of activities structured to engage attendees in open and frank communications
- Sign-In with sharing of personal goals for the day
- Exploration of a topic, issue, challenge or opportunity
- Protocols such that all first understand, then clarify with questions, and ultimately offer recommendations
- Various exercises so all see one another as “other than” title holders, and specifically as individuals
- Breaks in the agenda to allow all to relax and enjoy one another’s personalities in different ways
- Commitment to actions & responsibility for results
- Finally, Follow Up Process to ensure results achieved
Ultimately attendees must feel that they had the opportunity to engage in the process and actually make a contribution to the end results for the day.