Consulting

Leadership consulting to assess and build leadership bench strength, improve business climate and deliver better business performance.

Sara partners with other leadership experts to work with senior leaders and Boards on a range of consulting requirements:

  • Leadership strategy
  • Executive and Board assessment and development
  • Board strategy facilitation
  • Board effectiveness
  • Leadership facilitation
  • Succession planning
  • Business climate diagnostic
  • Business change and business improvement programmes
  • Organisational design and organisational effectiveness

Leadership behaviour drives business performance

Leadership behaviour is proven to drive organisational climate and business performance.

Organisational climate refers to ‘how it feels to work around here’, as opposed to organisational culture which refers to ‘how we do things in this organisation’.

Climate is determined by three climate levers; leadership behaviour, organisational structure and business processes. Of the three climate levers, leadership behaviour is proven to have the greatest impact on climate and therefore on business performance.

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Impact of improved climate on business performance

Leadership consulting supports senior leaders and Boards to create the leadership behaviours, climate and conditions required for improving business performance.

It’s about understanding diversity of leadership styles, to harness diversity of thinking and get better outcomes.

Recent research by Hay Group found that business performance improves by up to 30% when employees experience a great climate where people are aligned and motivated, and up to 70% of variance in climate can be explained by leadership behaviour.

Conversely:

  • An HBR survey found that 70% of leaders rate themselves as inspiring and motivating
  • A Gallup engagement survey found that 82% of employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring
  • A Forbes study found that 65% of employees would forego a pay rise if it meant seeing their leader fired

Impact of leadership behaviour on climate and business performance

A study of 33 managing directors in global technology companies found that leaders who created high performing climates outperformed their peers by $711 million in profit terms.

A healthcare organisation has found that divisions of the business with the best climates had 40% less drug errors, 36% lower staff turnover and a 57% reduction in absenteeism.

A team of ambitious and positive problem solvers on the Management Board of a global financial services business found that by assessing the differences in their approach, they gained an understanding of each other’s predisposition for either adaptive creativity or innovative creativity. Their new-found understanding and insight resulted in increased collaboration within the Board, greater clarity on where to improve or innovate and accelerated the pace in which they agreed on and completed a strategic acquisition in Europe.

In this section

Sara’s skills cannot be under-estimated; she is  constructively challenging, thought-provoking and results-focused. She quickly gained the trust of my Executive team and made a very positive impact in a short space of time, delivering innovative, insightful recommendations that moved our strategic thinking to a new level.

Nicola Hurst, CEO, MyCSP, Pensions Mutual Company