Strategic leadership programme

Models

The strategic leadership programme of coaching and mentoring uses six core models (and many other supplementary ones).  These describe how people behave in emotionally intelligent terms.  As the eminent statistician, George Box said, “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”.  Our models are useful, too.

One reason for their usefulness is that three of them are dynamic: each describes a process, a series of stages, a movement though time, in which people can visualise themselves.  The models are predictive.  They tell what will happen next, and how to get there (or avoid it!).

These models have been verified in tens of thousands of interventions with real people and not found wanting.  Leaders have to know what’s going on for those they lead—as well as for themselves.  Supplemented by other material, introduced as needed by specific students, they form the substantive part of our approach to strategic leadership.

Relationship model

This model derived from Psychology of Vision describes the way people relate with each other.  Whether it is the leader and the led, the provider and the customer, or the manager and the staff, it is essential to understand the way relationships at work work.

Parent-adult-child model

This is the standard transactional analysis model developed by Eric Berne from the Freudian model of the unconscious.  We also use it as a communication model.

Behaviour cycle

A slightly adapted version of a standard cognitive therapy model which describes the fundamental rationale of our approach in eiw.  It shows the way everyone’s behaviour stems from their beliefs and emotions.  In particular, it explains why behavioural interventions are useful but not sufficient.

Change process

This model is based on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of the stages of grief, which has been frequently generalised to cover the acceptance of any significant change in one’s (working) life.

Think/feel/know/sense

Jung was the first to identify ‘psychological types’:  the ways that people process and express information. These are key to understanding decision making.

Principles and precepts

To supplement the knowledge derived from the models, we teach a set of precepts and principles which help students be a leader.  The precepts suggest how we could be if we want to be effective/successful/happy and to lead useful, meaningful lives.  These precepts, or injunctions, are supplemented by a set of principles which describe how people behave.

The precepts and principles that we use have been checked for appropriateness to strategic leadership;  but, of course, everyone in an organisation would do well to endeavour to live according to as many of them as they are able.

We are advocates of the servant/leader precept as embodied by the motto of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst:  Serve to lead.