Creating Resilient Leadership Development Programs to Navigate Change

If creating better team management wasn’t already a priority, investing in resilient leadership development programs appears top of mind for more organizations this year. Companies realize the need to create resilient leadership to help guide teams through the year’s challenges and uncertainty.

For years global leaders like PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and IBM have used Whole Brain® Thinking as a foundation to build more meaningful leadership development programs.

These programs consider the individual cognitive profile of each participant to allow them to recognize their own strengths and blind spots. They’re then able to gain a better understanding of how their leadership style and thinking fit within a complete team.

And the benefits don't stop with better management. Our research, as reiterated by the World Economic Forum this year, further backs the use of cognitive diversity models to build the strongest, most collectively intelligent teams as a whole.

The positive effects become obvious at all organizational levels.

It’s why our team focused on creating and developing digital tools that allow you to gain greater insights into the thinking preferences of your team. And then you can continue to use that data to apply the model in meaningful ways for resilient leadership development and team building.

Herrmann Chairwoman and Chief Thought Leader Ann Herrmann-Nehdi shared her thoughts on how to create successful leadership development programs.

Here’s the complete transcript of the video:

There are a few common threads that really are what make the secret sauce in terms of using Whole Brain® Thinking as a foundation for great leadership development.

What we know from our research is that leaders really need to be using all of their thinking, irrespective of what their preferences are.

So you start with that premise, and you help leaders understand that the brain is pretty malleable and plastic. And we can shift our thinking to be a lot more agile than we might think we were able to be. So the premise of being able to truly be a Whole Brain® Thinker as a leader suddenly becomes the best option for everybody.

One of the typical things that you find with leadership development is there is usually some kind of [existing] mindset or a formula inside of the company that says, “Well this is how we do leadership development.”

And what I typically recommend is that you step back and take a hard look at what kind of thinking your leaders need. Not today, but what will they be needing in the years to come?

Using Whole Brain® Thinking as the foundational premise for leadership development allows you to take almost any internal language model or competencies that an organization may feel are important and anchor them in such a way that people in the organization can feel personally connected to it.

Whole Brain® Thinking has become that foundational premise for leaders. It's the first thing that they're going to experience.

PricewaterhouseCoopers had done a great job doing this with their Pathways program, which is really focused on agility.

IBM had it as one of the foundational premises for their Basic Blue program for many years.

For the most part, leadership development, when it's really done well, starts with Whole Brain® Thinking as a foundation premise, looks at what leadership looks like in that organization within the context of Whole Brain® Thinking, and then allows each individual leader to personally get connected to that model through their HBDI® data.

And that just makes it really effective.

Want to learn more about creating better leadership development programs supported by cognitive science? Get in touch with us and schedule a free consultation!