Leadership

Like everything else, effective leadership development begins with a plan…

Like everything else, effective leadership development begins with a plan — a plan that should be firmly rooted in the strategic objectives of the business. Clearly define your leadership development goals and then develop an integrated plan aligned with the business strategy to get you there.

Effective leadership development requires a multi-pronged, integrated approach connected to the overarching business strategy. Starting first with an understanding of the key business drivers, Crosby Consulting can help you define your leadership development vision and develop an integrated strategy to deliver results. Michelle has worked with numerous organizations to translate the needs of their business — whether it is growth in China, merging two disparate organizations together, doubling the size of the company in three years or building a brand that resonates with consumers — into effective leadership development strategies and programs. Michelle also brings with her the experience of having built world-class leadership development functions in other organizations from the ground-up. Michelle can help you think through how the pieces of the leadership development puzzle can best come together to achieve desired outcomes and create competitive advantage.

The foundation for effective leadership development begins with a clear picture of what leadership success looks like in your company…

The foundation for effective leadership development begins with a clear picture of what leadership success looks like in your company — brought to life by language that uniquely reflect your organization’s brand and DNA.

Effective leadership development starts with defining what effective leadership looks like for your organization — the knowledge, skills, abilities and personal characteristics needed for effectiveness, defined in behavioral terms. This model should speak in your company’s voice and communicate your brand — crafted in the right language to resonate with your leaders. Your competency model should be the lynch pin for your integrated leadership development strategy with all elements working together.

Through two decades of experience with job analysis and competency modeling in dozens of organizations, and a core belief that to be effective competency models must be both practical and speak in the voice of the brand, Crosby Consulting brings together the art and science of competency modeling to define what effective leadership performance looks like in your organization.

Once you have a clear picture of what is needed for leadership effectiveness in your organization, you need to understand how well your leaders measure up…

Once you have a clear picture of what is needed for leadership effectiveness in your organization, you need to understand how well your leaders measure up. State-of-the-art assessment methodology provides a clear lens to better know your leaders.

Leadership assessments, including tools like cognitive tests, personality and style assessments, 360 degree feedback, assessment center day-in-the-life exercises, career and life interviews, and so on, provide an independent, in-depth view of a leader’s strengths and developmental needs. These assessments are useful both for the selection and promotion of leaders into key roles, for the identification of high potentials, and for profiling current leaders to create robust, tailored, developmental and career plans.

As an industrial-organizational psychologist, Michelle Crosby is uniquely qualified to bring the right assessment tools to shed light on your leader’s capabilities and provide insight into their strengths and developmental needs. Her two decades of experience with assessment combined with her pragmatic, humanistic approach as a practitioner working inside organizations ensure that the assessment process used will meet your leaders and your organization’s needs and not be another academic exercise.

Well constructed, hands-on, experiential development programs that provide a framework for leadership success are an important tool in the leadership development tool kit…

Well constructed, hands-on, experiential development programs that provide a framework for leadership success are an important tool in the leadership development tool kit. The best programs touch leader’s hearts and minds and bring about new ways of thinking about their role, themselves and the people they lead.

While effective leadership development is not just about programs, they are an important tool for developing leaders, to help them understand their role, understand themselves, understand others, and build their leadership skills. Programs that include assessments and experiential, hands-on learnings that leverage real-life scenarios move beyond traditional classroom training to create powerful, memorable transformational experiences that push leaders to think differently about themselves and their roles as leaders. In addition, incorporating opportunities for leaders to teach leaders adds a depth of relevance and sharing of personal experiences that enriches learning.

Crosby Consulting can work with you to create memorable, game changing leadership development programs that enhance your leader’s self-awareness, build their skills in developing others, define the role of leaders in your organization, and create a roadmap for their future development. Past successes include award-winning program design and delivery to leaders around the world, described by many participants as a career changing experience. Michelle excels as both a program designer and facilitator, where she draws on her wealth of real-life organizational experience to illustrate her points and engage with her participants.

When you are effectively managing talent you are effectively developing leaders…

When you are effectively managing talent you are effectively developing leaders -- therefore, Talent Management and Leadership Development must be intertwined and interdependent. Organizations that understand this leverage their talent management programs as their most important leadership development tool.

Effective talent management is leadership development. Because the most important, long lasting and life changing leadership development comes from on-the-job experiences. Therefore, the thoughtful, planned movement of leaders to stretch and grow them must be an essential part of any effective leadership development program. Tools like performance management, 360 degree feedback, talent review and succession plan should be key elements of your leadership development strategy and effectively integrated with the other tools in your leadership development tool kit. (To read more about our Talent Management approach, click here.)

Crosby Consulting brings extensive experience in how to unite programs, systems and tools in the leadership development and talent management arenas to ensure the messages are unified and mutually reinforcing. Having built these functions from the ground-up, Michelle knows the right tool for the job as well as how to make those various tools work together to maximize organizational results and build credibility with leaders.

All leaders, even great ones, can benefit from an independent reality check that helps them see themselves as they really are…

All leaders, even great ones, can benefit from an independent reality check that helps them see themselves as they really are, provides a safe venue to test new skills, challenges their limiting beliefs and less effective behaviors, and provides a sounding board for their strategic thinking about their people and their business.

The key leaders in your business are a critical strategic asset; invest in them by providing personal, tailored, one-on-one assessment, feedback, and coaching to bring out the best in them.

Michelle’s background as an industrial-organizational psychologist combined with her many years living with the practical and political realities of organization’s from working on senior teams, working with Boards of Directors, outside owners and other stakeholders provide her with perspective and a wealth of experiences to draw upon in coaching leaders. Her ability to build trusting relationships and invite open dialogue in a safe environment are a recognized strength.