Dr. Ron

We are often asked to explain how 360 Facilitated^® fits into an organization’s development program that may well include leadership training, quality management, teamwork, communication, learning and development, performance management and much more!

The answer is that it contributes fundamental components to all of them – it can even be made central to all of them. Why? Because it is based on a holistic model of how managers and teams interact – which includes all of that. Let’s consider just one component...

Leadership
Ideas about leadership can be learned in a classroom but leadership only becomes part of the person when they are confronted by the real world, make choices about what they do and learn from them. If we accept Peter Farey’s definition of leadership as proactive, future oriented, changing people’s beliefs and developing values, then the top half of his Leader/Manager Model (see the diagram) is about that. If leadership is thought to be lacking in an organization, then what better way to find out what is missing than by asking those who are led! Of course, you’ll only get their perceptions (what else!) but can leaders safely ignore perceptions?

If team members ask for more leadership, or less, then managers must act to change this perception – whatever the cause may be. And what better way to find the cause of a perception than ask the perceiver? The Leader/Manager Model has the virtue of raising the great body of leadership issues, whether of leading the people or of leading the task into the future. Yet at the same time it raises the management issues – how the people are being dealt with and how the task is being carried out – the issues that are in view right at the moment.

The Leader/Manager Model is not one of those models that in recent times discovered leadership as the new trend, another swing of the pendulum, and had to add it in. Because of its broad based, holistic nature, it has always (since Peter Farey first published it in 1988) stood for the balance of leadership vs. management, of future vs. present.

In its 360 Facilitated^® programs, Leaderskill Group makes the Model its prime approach to developing the relationship between team and manager. When this interaction is facilitated, the invitation is given to all parties to be open to all the issues. A clearly structured process is used to build morale, develop understanding, take up challenges, and address the central issues, leading them through to action plans and learning contracts.

Facilitators demonstrate fast and effective leadership in the way they make this process successful, and encourage managers and team members to make the process their own. There is role modelling, learning and reinforcement. Yes, it is most certainly leadership development.
To be continued...
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