Touchstone
Executive Development Program

Unleashing Your Potential For Leadership Excellence

Touchstone: A fundamental or quintessential part or feature; a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a person, organization, place or thing. Cutting edge leadership is a touchstone for sustainable success.

Introduction

In today’s fast paced world, executives are being driven to perform to the cutting edge of their competency. But executive development has not kept pace with these demands. As a result, in this chaotic and evolving business environment, many executives are asked to perform beyond their capacity.

The Cleveland Consulting Group's individual executive development programs provide custom leadership development opportunities for senior managers and executives to identify the specialized skill sets they need to thrive, grow and expand their capacities. Executive development supports each individual client by bridging the gap and creating extended competence. Often necessary after a recent position change or the addition of job responsibilities, bridging the gap focuses on what is missing in the present level of performance. It builds on existing competencies, using them as pillars to build new competencies that are required to meet new demands. Our framework for executive development ensures a sound and constructive relationship with you. Our consultants build on this relationship, supervising the assessment, challenging the participant in a manner that encourages the stretch needed for development, and then supporting the participant to promote positive change.

See the brochure for more details.

Developing Your Natural Talent To Lead

Cleveland Consulting Group (CCG) founder and CEO, Herb Stevenson, believes it is possible to find and nurture personal qualities that fund the capacity to lead.

As an executive development specialist with over 30 years of experience in Global Executive and Organization Development, Herb Stevenson states that leadership derives from traits of emotional maturity which may lie behind unexamined assumptions about oneself — assumptions that have never been tested and may have no basis in fact.

Executive Development: Overview

The Cleveland Consulting Group (CCG) was established to support clients that recognize that business is more than a problem to be solved. The keynote supporting this philosophy is that we unleash personal and professional potential by:

• Establishing a clear baseline from which to create executive and organization development.
• Supporting systemic changes at the individual, two‐person, group, and organization levels of system.
• Supporting executive and organizational change using methodologies that are congruent with your executive's capacity and organization's culture.
• Providing support for constructive conflict, where the environment is too hostile to dialogue and the next step requires a dialogue.
• Supporting succession planning to prepare the next generation of leaders.
• Supporting executives needing multicultural understanding whether within the USA or in foreign assignments.
• Imparting understanding that global leadership begins with self‐awareness that can be applied to local cultures in the pursuit of collaborative success.

See the brochure for more details.

Executive Development: Methods

Our success in executive leadership development is grounded in methods that are highly customizable to the needs of each organization and to the needs of their leaders. Our offerings span from assessments, individual development and team development to executive trainings. We work globally, and our delivery can be in-person or virtual, via secure video conferencing.

Assesments

In order to create a baseline for executive development, there needs to be an in‐depth self‐ awareness of what works and what does not work. This means an in‐depth understanding of one’s personality preferences that may no longer serve as leadership responsibility increases should be established. We use a variety of assessments and combine the information we obtain with information from a 360‐degree feedback process. The total results are reviewed, and a developmental plan is created.

Application: Leadership Development
& Maturity Framework (LDF/LMF)

Assessments do more than just support individual development. The Leadership Development Framework (LDF) and Leadership Maturity Framework (LMF) are field tested examples of multifunctional tools that offer a powerful interpretive framework for use in the development of the whole organization. These frameworks can be used to support:

Talent identification and development

International organizations have worked with the LDF and LMF to:

• help match capabilities to organizational demands
• create “real" development agendas for leaders
• shed light on why capable people have been underperforming
• support promotion processes into critical positions

Development of Leaders

The LDF and LMF creates a baseline for how the leader makes meaning and orients the organization for the future. The assessments can act as a foundational personal development module, highlighting how individual leaders orient to their environment and their role. This input illuminates the trends in the organization through the lens of individual leaders. Profiling individuals has enriched many in‐house leadership development programs.

Organizational Development

Profiling entire departments and functions of an organization can provide useful information about the current operating ethos of the organization, departments or specific management areas. This is particularly useful where the task of the organization is complex and a great deal is being demanded of managers and staff.

Recruitment

LDF and LMF profiles are added to other tests in providing a rounded psychometric profile of a candidate. Some consider the meaning‐making implicit in these frameworks as "core or baseline traits," second only in importance to intelligence as a defining aspect of capability. This is a very important measure that is often neglected by those involved in recruitment.

See the brochure for more details.

Individual Development

CCG’s Competitive Edge

Executive Development is evolving at a brisk pace. Awareness of the value of providing developmental coaching as a learning tool for executive and leadership development is becoming common. A recent study reported in Simply Business, February/March, 2005 have shown that 94% of the individuals that earn more than $1 million per year have a personal or executive coach support their development and their thinking processes. To say the least, executive coaching and development is a competitive edge for senior executives.

CCG's individual development provides one‐on‐one custom leadership development opportunities for senior managers and executives. Our development framework ensures that the coach establish a sound and constructive relationship. The coach builds on this relationship, supervising the assessment, challenging the participant in a manner that encourages the stretch needed for development, and then supporting the participant to ensure positive change.

Development Principles

CCG business coaches act in accordance with the CCE Board Certified Development guidelines. Our Coaches assume the following time‐tested Gestalt adult‐learning principles and will enact them throughout the development relationship:

• Learning occurs through examination of here and now experience.
• Awareness is the precursor to effective action; awareness leads to choice.
• There is an inherent drive for people to behave as effectively as possible. The coach's task is to support the client to discover this drive.
• Growth is facilitated by the interaction of client and coach. The presence of the coach is a critical element.
• Growth occurs at the contact boundary, between what is known and that which is unknown or rejected.
• Change is the responsibility of the client, not the coach.
• Individual autonomy is crucial to healthy adjustment.

These traits are consistent with the development orientation. The business coach’s orientation is prospective, focusing on goals, untapped potential, and critical success factors in a person who seeks to maximize his or her fulfillment at home and in work. A coach focuses on helping an individual "learn what it takes" for him or her to improve existing capabilities, set meaningful goals, and be accountable for his or her results. A coach helps an individual understand and eliminate barriers to more effective performance. These traits suggest the core of development is to support the emergence of an individual engaged in life‐long learning.

See the brochure for more details.

Team Development

The goal of team development is to help a group of people with a common purpose identify and meet business goals and simultaneously enjoy the journey as a team. Team development works in principle very much like individual development, the main difference being that the coach more visibly and explicitly manages the team's working process to ensure that the team members move forward together and that the team doesn't fragment. In doing this, the coach seeks to ensure that the team members attend to two key areas — achieving team goals and getting better at working together effectively.

Performance Orientation

Developmental coaching improves team performance because it:

• is results-oriented. The coach helps the team identify under supported and under‐ developed team dynamics.
• builds on the experience, skills and talents already present in the team.
• generates shared commitment to and accountability for the goals of the team as a whole, not just individual's own goals.
• sharpens communication and interpersonal skills.
• values and builds on the diversity in the team, rather than seeking uniformity.
• promotes an appreciative and challenging climate in which members are able to perform to their best.
• ensures that meetings are focused ‐ and hence more effective and efficient.
• manages the group dynamics which can undermine team effectiveness and uses them to move the team to higher levels of performance.

Bottom Line Benefits

Participating in team development can assist your team to:

• align around a shared vision, purpose and goals.
• work with ease, confidence and trust in each other.
• cultivate shared leadership where all members contribute fully.
• create open, direct and powerful communications among members that forwards your team's vision, purpose and goals.
• develop and implement team operating principles.
• create and run highly effective meetings.

Senior / Execcutive Leadership Training

The following pages provide a schematic of the various senior and executive leadership trainings provided by the Cleveland Consulting Group, Inc., called TouchstoneTM. Each session can be developed as a standalone for one day or as part of a larger three‐week program.

Custom trainings can be organized:

• In-Person. We work with multinational organizations based throughout the world. For onsite executive trainings outside the USA, we require a minimum offering of three day‐ long sessions.
• Virtual. Just as many companies now manage globally dispersed teams via chats and web‐based meeting software, we are also technologically current, and frequently provide trainings via web‐conferencing software.

All individual sessions, as well as the full program, are formulated to teach and apply throughout the session. This process of "learn then do" overcomes Sutton’s “Knowing‐Doing Gap” that preempts the success of many executive programs.

Most of these sessions have been designed around specific levels of system, individual, group/team and organization. We will help you build your own program with these levels in mind to maximize the effectiveness of your development program for your organization.

The entire three‐week program (three 5‐day trainings) presented here has received accolades for its depth, application, and insight into executive development.

See the brochure for more details.

 

To Top