The Situation

There was a requirement to develop the leadership cadre across Africa and Middle East, from Sudan to South Africa; from Ghana to Kenya.  Working with University of Pretoria and Barclays Bank on their programme, Leading at the Cutting Edge for their Chief Executives across AME.  This was a leadership programme for its high-potentials to lead its core business and expand its portfolio within AME region.

Our Work

Leadership Development.  We provided a programme to enhance understanding of the concept of trust and help participants forge the link of trust to leadership and strategy rather than HR.  By exploring trust and the related concepts of risk and uncertainty, the aim was for the participants to understand the need to see how it works as a business model.  Relationships have a direct link to value creation and high performance.  As ‘Trusted Leaders’ they needed to analyse how their relationships have a direct link to value creation.  We used experiential media: firewalking, bar bending, music and dance, in a highly innovative approach to explore the issues that existed within the group.

Results

We worked for all three years on their Leading at the Cutting Edge programme held for their senior executives through AME.  We have achieved the highest grading of all the contributors every year for our work.  Typical feedback from the participants:

  • My eyes have been opened to a new dimension in the quest to become the best leader I can be and also in my personal development and the realization that my future needs will have to develop in order to achieve my full leadership potential.
  • Breathtaking.
  • Brilliant.  The best of the programme.
  • Focus on the real problems affecting performance and prompted us to take ownership.
  • Action agreement reached in a manner I haven’t experienced before and the emotional journey I personally took as an individual and in the team context.
  • Realisation that leaders need to balance certainty and uncertainty in order to provoke change and need to ask good questions.
  • Hits us right on the sensitive nerve and puts real emphasis on the need for us to develop trust in others and ourselves. Ended with a “to the point” action plan