When might you need leadership consultancy and who should be involved?

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Leadership consultancy is an essential part of creating and supporting a growing and thriving business. So how can you know whether your organisation is at the right point in its evolution to warrant the investment of time and energy required? And if the time does indeed feel right, then who should you involve to give you the greatest chance of success?

→ Support to help navigate change

Organisations do not exist in a silo. There is rarely a time when things stand still. More often they are trying to keep up with a dizzying level of change, whether due to external forces or internal ones: a new CEO with big ideas, a change of plan to respond to emerging market forces or embracing a new technology to automate business processes.

It’s these changes that might result in a need for a new approach, a new strategy and a change of behaviour and direction.

→ Advice for evolving businesses

Growing organisations go through stages of evolution that fundamentally change the way they operate. The strategy and business processes that have seen you through a stage of consolidation and steady growth will be quite different to what is required to help you ramp up quickly and sustain rapid expansion. But as that growth period begins and you’re battling the day to day, it may be difficult to take a step back until it seems too late. Fire-fighting becomes the norm, with little time to work out how to get back on an even keel.

Likewise entering into a merger or acquisition will undoubtedly throw a curveball at your carefully curated culture. Forcing the blending of different behaviours and attitudes that may or may not work harmoniously alongside one another. Add multiple regions or an international expansion into the mix too and suddenly getting the two finance departments to talk to each other may become the least of your worries.

→ Guidance when things just don’t feel right

Good people started to leave. Then it was tough to replace them with new talent. There’s a niggling sense of misalignment and a feeling that the ‘sparkle’ has gone. But no one is sure exactly what’s wrong, what needs to change or where to even begin.

Leadership consultancy won’t offer a quick fix or magic solution. But an external pair of eyes can often see more easily what questions need to be asked to make what is implicit inside an organisation explicit.

→ Involving the right people from within your business…

They say the best ideas emerge when different perspectives meet. That’s why building a multi-disciplinary team can often lead to the best outcome for your leadership consultancy project.

Create an internal task force that includes comms, HR and senior management. Consider including a cross functional cohort from those working on the ground. Make it a solely HR endeavour and it almost certainly won’t work. Instead select stakeholders from across the organisation who can offer insight into the current attitudes towards leadership and culture and diverse opinions about what’s needed to make things better.

→ …and complementing them with the right agencies from outside

And while internal teams provide the background and insight, external players can use their experience to help the organisation meet its future goals.

Strive to include organisational design consultants, experienced facilitators, leadership consultants, coaches and comms agencies to help your messaging land. They’ll act as neutral observers, devil’s advocates and cheerleaders. They’ll offer analysis, guidance and advice based on both theory and experience.

Of course, the ideal is to choose a consultancy like TPC Leadership that has strengths in management, organisational design and the training side too. That way they won’t only conduct analysis and create the model, they’ll help you put a training strategy in place to successfully embed the solutions inside your organisational cultures and behaviours.

→ Take advantage of new technologies

Traditionally, leadership consulting has been delivered through workshops and face-to-face meetings. But even before COVID-19 it was not a requirement. With new systems and technologies such as social engagement platforms, what used to require hours of expensive face to face meetings, focus groups and away days can be delivered online. No doubt, this will prove useful for all of us as we begin to explore new ways of remote working as we come to terms with the restrictions caused by coronavirus.

When it comes to assessing employee mood and opinion, we have found that an anonymous online survey tends to provoke honest responses that give us a better idea of what’s really going on inside the organisation. Employees are more likely to be open in a virtual space than in a group workshop or face-to-face interview.

If you’d like to find out about what it’s like to work with our experienced multidisciplinary team, please contact us.

Co-written by: Andrea Cardillo, Managing Partner TPCL Italy https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreacardillo/

& Christian Scholtes, Managing Partner TPCL Romania https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-scholtes-9844721/

Navigating change is now more important than ever. This post is part of a series of six TPC Leadership original articles on leadership consultancy – and its role in helping organisations engage with the bigger picture while staying adaptable to the present moment. Next in the series: 7 things that can go wrong with leadership consultancy and how to fix them.

@Copyright TPCL (2020)

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