Many of our clients use Situational Leadership^® programs, based on the popular model to improve the interpersonal skills of leaders and managers. Situational Leadership helps leaders and managers adapt their communication approach with those whose performance they need to support and develop. It’s a powerful program that has helped many leaders and managers communicate more effectively in key working relationships. Like other programs that teach critical interpersonal soft skills, it can have significant impact on how leaders and managers relate with their people.

The phrase, “user friendly” means different things to different people.

The theme for our 9th Annual Six Boxes Summer Institute,  June 17-21 on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle,  will be Performance Thinking Across the Enterprise. 

“Beware of managers who stay in their offices!”  

 

As we've worked with clients and adapted our Coach-Manage-Lead family of programs for different organizations and participants, we've identified two big differences between our programs and most others that we've seen.

It’s gratifying to know that our models, tools and programs for driving performance improvement across organizations have shown long-term viability, not just “flavor of the month” popularity. They are sustaining over time, and growing.

Our overall theme this year for the 8th Annual Six Boxes® Summer Institute (June 18-22)  will be SUSTAINMENT of performance improvement. Most of the sessions we are planning will explore or unpack issues and methods emerging from Six Boxes Performance Thinking for ensuring long-term return on investments in performance interventions. We'll be talking about sustainment at different levels.

As I've looked into organizations that are our clients, as well as some where I have colleagues or professional friends, it has become clear to me that the pace of business growth and change these days often causes leaders to "save time" in ways that can be counter-productive. Supposedly saving time, or moving too fast, leaders and managers often skip over opportunities to clearly specify expectations, provide positive or corrective feedback to keep people on track, or to recognize successful performance or milestones toward important goals. These are among the most valuable and impactful things that a manager or organizational leader can do. And yet, we often don't take the relatively small amount of time required to do them well.

I often look back over my management career and wish I could go back and re-solve some of those performance problems with the Six Boxes. How much time and energy was wasted! One of the most memorable for me, especially because the outcome was the loss of a good employee, always comes to mind.