OFFERINGS

LEADERSHIP COACHING

Two questions to help you decide when and how to start:

A successful coaching partnership starts with intention. For example:

  • Gain clarity on your role and the full impact you want to have on others at work
  • Identify and overcome patterns that are getting in your way
  • Better understand how other experience you as a leader
  • Work with peers in ways that are more mutually beneficial
  • Feel a greater sense of satisfaction and well-being at work

Your intention can be further explored with your coach – the important thing is that you have a desire to make some kind of personal change.

There are many good coaches. Look for one whose:

  • philosophy resonates with you. My philosophy is that leadership is about connecting with others to create shared impact.
  • approach is something you believe will create results. My approach is based on helping you see the unconscious thoughts present in interpersonal and group situations. Then I help you reframe your own thoughts to more helpful ones, and act on them.
  • experience is relevant to yours, from having worked in the same industry, played similar roles, or from coaching other clients similar to you. I have an engineering degree, worked with clients as a business and technology consultant, and led sales and service delivery across a number of different industries. Then I started and led various talent functions within a large organization.
  • interpersonal style feels comfortable to you. I balance listening and encouragement with challenging questions to help you move past your comfort zone and unlock your potential.

If my profile sounds like it might be a good fit, please contact me or schedule a brief call for us to explore your situation.

LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS

How do you think about leadership development?

A leadership program has three interrelated components:

  • Leadership Model – what should leadership look like in your organization? How can you be confident the model you define will lead to the results you desire?
  • Assessment – how are leaders behaving and performing against your model? What are the most common strengths and development areas?
  • Leadership Development – how can you help your leaders grow in their most important development areas? This usually takes the form of workshops, coaching, offline work and experiences where leaders apply their learning to real work situations.

  • Every organization is different, and the “right” leadership program is going to depend on your strategy, culture and your greatest opportunities and challenges. I work with organizations to integrate these components into a holistic approach to developing leaders at scale. To see an example of how I did this at Sapient, watch this video.
    I’m proud of the work we did, which led to improved performance, engagement and personal wellbeing in a sustained way for many leaders. As a certified facilitator and coach in this method, I continue to work with its creators at Burnham Rosen Group to offer it to organizations.

If this approach to leadership development sounds interesting, please contact me or schedule a brief call for us to explore your situation.

LEADERSHIP TEAMS

What is a real leadership team?

  • Leadership teams are often not teams; they are a group of people reporting to the same leader. A real team meets two fundamental criteria: (1) a common purpose and (2) clear interdependencies. Once teams have established these baselines, they can become high-functioning through developing healthy conflict, mutual trust, accountability and decision-making.

  • Most leaders want to keep it simple, so they create a single leadership team. But the world has become too complex for this model. Leaders need to be informed by a large and diverse team plugged into external and internal environments. Yet decisions need to be made by small teams – some research says no more than seven people! Once a decision has been made, a large team may be necessary to align the disparate parts of the organization. But how can you have both large and small teams at the same time? The answer is a leadership system built from interlocking teams.
  • I help organizations design the leadership system they need to meet their unique needs, define their purpose, clarify interdependencies, and work on other aspects to become high-functioning.

How do we decide what to work on as a team?

  • Teams implicitly know what they need to focus on, but sometimes need help from a team coach to surface the greatest areas of opportunity.  I use a range of techniques from interviews to self-assessments and survey-based tools to identify possible focus areas.  Sometimes I interview the team’s stakeholders, or encourage team members to speak to their stakeholders directly.  Then the team can agree on what they’ve uncovered and where it’s most important to grow as a team.

CULTURE & TRANSFORMATION

How can we change our culture?

  • The way culture works is often misunderstood. Because it influences behavior, customer experience and performance, we want to change it to improve the organization. But culture is shaped implicitly – through what people experience, and what they see their leaders doing, deciding, promoting and investing in. Artifacts like the “culture deck” help if they already align with what people are observing in their day-to-day, otherwise they can be seen as insincere (or even corrupt) and are usually dismissed.

  • Culture and climate are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Culture is the set of beliefs, values, norms, etc. that have formed over time to drive behavior. Climate is how people are feeling right now; it’s more transient, although it is related to the culture. When a company holds a fun event, that’s far more likely to affect the climate than the culture.

  • Cultural work can start with alignment on organizational purpose — the culture can be shaped to support that purpose. At the same time, purpose is part of culture — a compelling purpose that people feel aligned to will shape the culture by influencing what people believe, value and prioritize.
  • When the purpose is clear, you can revisit or define the organization’s values — once again, in support of the purpose. Many organizations define their values based on what people personally value. I think it’s more powerful to define values in support of the organizational purpose.
  • Activating purpose and values means enlisting the entire organization, enabled by including people across the organization at all levels from early on. That way they feel a sense of agency in the work and are far more likely to engage with the culture you define together.

WHAT
PEOPLE
ARE SAYING

Josh helped me gain a better understanding of the motivations beneath the surface of peoplesʼ actions, which helped us create a plan to alter behaviors and ultimately achieve our results.

Alan Wexler, Former CEO, Publicis Sapient

I was looking for someone who could help me unlock my potential by understanding me as a person first, and professional second.  Through the leadership development program, Josh was able to bring out the best in me by helping me see myself more clearly and be more aware of my strengths and potential.  He has a keen sense of observation about individuals, their body language and group dynamics. There is so much he can offer to help groups become teams – powerful, impactful teams that can be a force to reckon with.

Shikha Bajaj

My team’s level of engagement has increased and our ability to work together to solve problems has substantially improved. Our improved culture and ability to set ambitious goals has also created a more scalable and empowered leadership structure.

Sears Merritt, Head of Technology and Data, MassMutual