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High Performance in Leadership Teams

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High Performance in Leadership Teams

To deal with expanding challenges, greater complexity, and uncertain situations, every organisation is becoming more reliant on better teamwork. The need for collaborative processes across all levels of an organisation has never been greater. We are seeing more and more businesses recognise the value and benefits of implementing high performance development training at the top levels. When senior leaders are able to work in collaboration and alignment with one another, cohesion improves throughout the entire organisation.

Understanding High Performance Leadership

High performance teams consist of individuals with complimentary skills that excel at what they do collectively by making optimal use of each person’s capabilities. They are aligned in their goals and committed to achieving a shared vision. Leading high performance teams focuses on communicating that vision to direct reports and supporting them in meeting objectives. Similarly, high performance leadership aims to engage senior leaders with the greater objectives of the organisation and encourage collaboration between departments in order to achieve those goals.


Developing high performance teams at the senior level ensures that broader business objectives are communicated consistently throughout the organisation. In doing so, you instil a ‘team-first’ mentality and sense of community within your employees. Team members who have an ‘every person for themselves’ approach may function well as individuals, but struggle to succeed as a group. The combined impact of a team is far greater than the sum of its individual contributions. A team’s abilities and experience must complement one another, and ideas improve when discussed.

“Team members who have an ‘every person for themselves’ approach may function well as individuals, but struggle to succeed as a group.”

The most effective teams continue to succeed because of the deep trust and mutual respect their members share. This allows them to be creative in problem solving, make high quality decisions, and accomplish results efficiently with few distractions or frustrations. The best leadership development programs will spend considerable time strengthening the personal connections between team members. Leadership teams with strong, trusting relationships repeatedly perform well by relying on one another to achieve what needs to be done and offering support to ensure collective success.

Building high performance in leadership teams fosters a deeper sense of unity and commitment between different departments. This allows for greater outcomes to be achieved by the organisation as a whole. Leadership training for performance does not only benefit the teams that take part. Time and again, we see that investing in creating stronger, more cohesive leadership teams improves performance at every level. Having the support of other leaders and their team’s capabilities, and reciprocating in kind, encourages stronger performance of one’s own. 

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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High Performance in Leadership Teams

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The Role of Leaders in High Performance Teams

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The Role of Leaders in High Performance Teams

The collaborative and dedicated nature of high performance teams are key contributors that make them so desirable to have and be a part of. Individuals within these teams possess complementary skills, aligned with the object of fulfilling  shared goals. It is the responsibility of leaders to ensure that those goals are met, but that is far from the most important role they play in promoting the success of their team.

Provide Support

The focus of high performance leadership is establishing an environment of open communication, trust, and innovation. Cultivating a high performance culture fosters inclusivity, where the contributions of each team member are recognized. Leaders who support and celebrate the efforts being made by their team encourages creativity in performance that results in greater levels of success. They recognise the importance of nurturing talent and provide opportunities for development through high performance team programs. Employee development in succession planning contributes to higher levels of retention and future performance.

Mitigate Conflict

There is no way for even the best teams to operate without occasionally experiencing conflict. While some conflict can be productive, when it becomes disruptive, leaders must step in. Effective leaders are prepared to assist their team in resolving disputes as swiftly as possible. To keep their teams focused and on-task, leaders know that any conflict that arises must be constructive. Conflict management through executive leadership training, can help leaders and teams resolve larger disputes while instilling the skills to do so themselves. Recentering conversations towards solving problems helps foster relationships and unity among team members.

Future Focused

When developing high performance teams, leaders must carefully balance the immediate needs of the business with aspirational targets and goals. Teams are often created with leadership development potential in mind. Observing the skills and behaviours of teams allows leaders to identify high potential talent and provide opportunities for growth and to enhance performance. Training high performance teams in skills that serve their development and prepare them for career advancement, ensures that organisations have the means to continue to succeed as they expand their growth.

The role of leaders in high performance teams can never be reduced to a singular task. They are responsible for ensuring their team’s success while providing space for them to develop the skills they will need as they progress through the organisation. Leaders of the best high performance teams often take a back seat and only step in to offer guidance or support when necessary. 


For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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The Role of Leaders in High Performance Teams

Why Do You Need a High Performing Team in 2026?

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Why Do You Need a High Performing Team In 2026?

Updated November 2026. Originally written by Loren Pettigrew.

HPT ASSESSMENT

Why do you need a high performing team more than ever in 2026? And is the recipe to success different in our current climate? 

Is it because the “great resignation” is here and people have had time to think about what they really want and need from a job? Is it because the competition is bigger, bolder, and brighter? Is it because when we lose our top talent, it costs us a lot more than the loss of IP and hiring and training that new team member? 

It is all of these things and more. The landscape has changed and the need for businesses to perform is more important now, than ever. 

The disruption of basically everything to do with the way we work over the last few years is undeniable, but has it actually changed the fundamentals of building, driving and retaining a team of high performers? I’d like to say no! The modality has changed a little but the underlying principles of getting a group of people to overachieve together and drive high performance has not changed. The same as the principles of a great leader and how to create a great culture have not actually changed in this upside-down world. 

Our teams need great leadership more than ever. People are tired and there is some fragility within the ranks. The cost of losing good people and not achieving our targets and strategic goals feels higher, but the rules and the methods we need to use, have not. 

Yes, we have new technology, distributed workplaces, virtual meetings, and far less physical time in an office with our teams, but human behaviour and patterns have not changed! That is why some of our favourite leadership books from the early 1900’s are still full of gold, and current in 2026. 

There are patterns that we see within high performing teams that we know drive their performance. We work with 1000’s of them across the globe. In fact, we are working with a couple of teams at the moment who have the direct opposite of what I am about to list and, as you would expect, they have the correlating organisational under performance. 

Before we start on that take this assessment to see where your team is sitting: 

High performing team scorecard

Don’t worry, we won’t spam you, we will simply send you your results! It’s interesting to stop and look at where your team and business is currently compared to where you aspire to be. This assessment is the foundation of the work we do with teams, who are trying to go from good to great. The results show us the team alignment and the aspirations of the group. This identifies how much work we have to do to build their performance. 

The Discovery Survey also shows us the level of trust within a team and how aligned they are. We get visibility of the disparity between rankings which identifies the key areas for the team to work on. Those are two of the key components of a successful high-performing team, Trust & Alignment. 

Trust

Trust is a fundamental component of not only high-performing teams, but of any successful business. There is not one team that we have worked with that would not experience an increase in profitability if they increased their levels of trust. Surprisingly, it is one of the things that we find is consistently put at risk by questionable behaviours from leaders, often without knowledge of the impact of their actions. The number of books, articles and strategies around the speed of trust is in the millions and there is a very sound reason for it. 

When there is a lack of trust, it is almost impossible to create sustainable change in a team until trust is built. Mistrust and the assumptions of ill intent more than triple the time it takes to embed new initiatives and “turn the ship” if you will. 

High trust allows for real and robust discussion, smooth execution, far fewer disruptions to delivering results, happier staff, less HR issues and a lower attrition rate. The upside of these things is higher revenue, more time to achieve proactive and strategic objectives and less time in the reactive ‘fire fighting’ space. 

How can you increase trust in your team today? 

  • Have a leadership team that displays consistent behaviours 
  • Have clear communication and transparency 
  • See things and say things, accepting poor behaviour is a quick way to lose the trust of your other team members
  • Do what you say you will, when you say you will, sounds simple but it’s not always! 
  • Set agreed team behaviours 
  • Make sure your mission, vision and values have behaviours with them and they are talked about. They are not just a poster on the wall.

Alignment 

This word is slightly overused just like “un-precedented” and “pivot” over the last few years but it is on point! The teams that achieve greatness and growth, all have high levels of alignment at every level. 

Alignment creates clarity, increases productivity and contribution within teams. Alignment on where they want to get to, how you will get there, and what is involved. 

We wanted to share the model that we often use to define and drive high performance. 

The Integrated Leadership Development Model firstly invites consideration of the ‘field of play’ or Context in which effective leadership is required. This helps to gain clarity about the reality of the organisation, team(s) and their leaders, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and an articulation of its short and long-term aspirations.Once Clarity has been established, Capability must be built to fit. Finally, Contribution means the leader(s) and team(s) contribute in a meaningful and constructive way towards the strategy, the achievement of business results and a focus on people.

How can you increase alignment in your team today? 

  1. Engage in robust discussions to (truly) understand the current situation, including an internal and external perspective.
  2. To borrow a terms from Susan Scott (author of Fierce Conversations), take the time to ‘interrorgate reality’. Don’t make assumptions about what people are thinking or feeling! 
  3. Discuss and agree on an aspirational and exciting future.
  4. Create a strategic and operational plan on how to bridge today with the future aspiration.
  5. Work to create clarity – every day.
  6. Build the capability to get there.
  7. Reward, acknowledge and hold people accountable for their contribution to realising the aspiration.
  8. Build a requisite amount of safety and trust to achieve the above. Otherwise, your conversations and outcomes will be more fantasy than fact.

Wishing you and your team an awesome 2026, full of overachievement and enjoyable work days! 

If you would like to discuss how we can support you and your team to go from ‘good to great’  you can book a meeting with one of our Business Engagement team here:

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Why Do You Need a High Performing Team in 2026?

Identifying High Performers

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Identifying High Performers

When building high performance teams, selecting the right people and creating the best fit can be a difficult task. Without having the right framework in place, you risk bringing together a group of people who are unable to work collaboratively, or require hands-on management. Knowing what traits and skills you require of your team is useful in this process. Leadership assessment and profiling allows you to gain a deeper understanding of an individual’s capabilities and performance. This is often a good indication that they will have the necessary qualities desired in high performance teams.

Assessment and Profiling

High performers set themselves apart from others by delivering consistently strong results and often exceeding expectations. This makes performance assessment relatively simple, as there are specific metrics or behaviours that can be measured. Where profiling tools provide an added benefit is in gaining insight into how personality contributes to performance and collaboration. The Hogan assessments reveal an individual’s preferences for how they approach work, how they best interact with others, and respond under pressure. In developing high performing teams, this information is incredibly valuable. It allows you to play to the strengths and dynamics of your team and the relationships they have with one another. Doing so leads to greater long term performance and establishes a culture of excellence.

Observe Behaviour

The most effective way of identifying high performers within your organisation is simply to observe their behaviour. Think of how they interact with others, and whether they regularly seek more challenging tasks. Peer and direct report feedback provides a comprehensive perspective of a candidate’s performance and behaviour in a range of situations. Completing a leadership assessment for performance can provide guidance on the type of leadership training that would maximise the benefit to both the organisation and the individual.

High performers typically:

  • value feedback from others,
  • think innovatively,
  • act as role models,
  • have high emotional intelligence,
  • seek opportunities to challenge themselves,
  • are early adopters of change.

The best tools for leadership assessment are those that go beyond telling you what a person can or cannot do. Strong leadership and high performing teams require more than the ability to hit certain targets. Who a person is, and how they support the success of the team can be a far more impactful measure of performance.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation

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Identifying High Performers

Getting the Most Out of Performance Assessments

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Getting the Most Out of Performance Assessments

In almost every industry today, having strong leadership skills is becoming equally, if not more vital to success than being technically capable alone. Many companies are choosing to focus on developing these skills in their teams to help them become stronger leaders. Determining the needs of your team and how to further their skills in those areas can see a significant increase in performance, growth, and success.

Develop Self-Awareness

The best tools for leadership development and assessment are those that reveal valuable insights into the strengths of your leadership team. The HBDI assessment helps individuals gain a deeper understanding of their own thought processes and how to work effectively with others who think differently. Understanding each person’s unique thinking style preferences, enables them to become better communicators and problem solvers.

Build Adapatability

Understanding key areas of strength and development opportunities within teams helps to form a clear basis from which to make improvements. High performing teams that receive development training are more likely to overcome challenges successfully. Their commitment to reaching their goals enables them to adapt quickly when faced with unexpected difficulties. The ability to adapt and creatively problem solve is integral to maintaining consistently strong performance.

“When each individual is playing to their strengths, the effectiveness of the entire team increases.”

Greater Effectiveness

One of the hallmarks of successful leadership teams is their ability to retain focus on the greater business objectives, while When implemented skillfully, leadership assessment tools can expand your emotional intelligence and strengthen personal relationships within teams. This enhances the organisational culture, making it a healthier, more positive environment. The benefit of engaging with leadership assessment and profiling tools for teams is that each individual discovers where their greatest strengths and passions lay. When each individual is playing to their strengths, the effectiveness of the entire team increases, often resulting in higher employee engagement and productivity.

The most successful leadership training programs address the specific challenges faced within each team or organisation. This is why assessment and profiling tools are so important. Not only do they help us to understand where there may be gaps, but they can also help to identify a person’s untapped potential within their team. Keeping a strong performer in a role they have outgrown, limits the impact their contributions could be having on the overall success and growth of the business. Selecting people with both the skills and passion to succeed is key to creating and sustaining high performance teams.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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Getting the Most Out of Performance Assessments

How Team Coaching Improves Performance

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How Team Coaching Improves Performance

Often when we hear about leadership coaching, we automatically think of it as a one-on-one process designed to help the individual reach their goals. What we don’t usually consider is how executive coaching can be an opportunity for leadership teams to stretch beyond their current capabilities. As is the case in coaching sports teams, coaching a leadership team involves cultivating both individual skills and group talent to improve the performance of the whole team.

Leveraging Relationships

Effective leadership development coaching for teams should harness the shared experiences and existing relationships that exist between members in ways that support collective goals. The role of the coach is to facilitate group learning. To do this, they must understand the dynamics of the team and how they work together. This allows the coach to provide better opportunities for individuals to gain insights and implement new strategies in the context of the team as a whole.

Assessment and Feedback

When individual assessment and feedback is given during the leadership team coaching process, it is in service of improving overall team performance. The advantage of assessing individuals in the context of team performance is that the coaching that follows can be targeted towards achieving team objectives. Not only does this improve the individual’s skillset, making them a better asset to a more high performing team.

“When the strategy is built into the culture of the business, teams experience stronger performance and greater success.”

Provides Direction

One of the hallmarks of successful leadership teams is their ability to retain focus on the greater business objectives, while ensuring that daily tasks are delivered. High performance training helps with this by identifying the group’s key strengths and areas for improvement. Coaching for high performance provides leaders with the ability to create and stick to an accountability framework that is aligned to the organisational strategy. When the strategy is built into the culture of the business, teams experience stronger performance and greater success.

Executive coaching is frequently used by leaders who are looking to expand their skills and improve their capabilities. Coaching can benefit entire leadership teams in similar ways by directing individual performance towards common objectives. In doing so, teams learn to collaborate more effectively, a greater clarity of where the business is going, and how to get there.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and high trust organisation.

How Team Coaching Improves Performance

5 Benefits of Leadership Team Coaching

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5 Benefits of Leadership Team Coaching

Organisational success is a cumulative effort of individuals at every level. Their continued growth is dependent on each person understanding their roles, and purpose of their contributions. This is particularly the case in high performance teams who often receive coaching to become more effective and increase output. To build such high levels of performance across an entire organisation requires a leadership team that is committed to bettering their own capabilities, as well as that of those they lead.

Individual vs. Team Coaching

Typically when individuals undertake executive coaching, it is to address personal challenges or to help them achieve personal goals within their role. This can and does often have a great impact on the performance of their team. However, teams may fall back into old habits if that individual moves into another role and is no longer driving those changes.


Team coaching helps create consistency in leadership throughout the organisation. They establish greater clarity and communicate effectively between departments to support each other in achieving company goals. When there is unity amongst the leadership team, the whole organisation benefits from it.

5 Benefits of Leadership Team Coaching

Creates Clarity

Creating clarity among leadership teams is a key factor in determining the success of any business. When those in leadership are able to communicate the broader business objectives with their direct reports, individuals at every level can understand the importance of their contributions. This fosters a greater sense of solidarity amongst teams and a determination to execute higher performance.

“Team coaching enables them to problem-solve collaboratively and execute those ideas together.”

Supportive Environments

Successful businesses rely on the unique role that each department plays in order to reach their objectives. This is why it is important when coaching for high performance to establish company-wide understandings of what those roles are. Leadership teams are empowered to seek the support of different departments for solutions. Team coaching enables them to problem-solve collaboratively and execute those ideas together.

Builds Emotional Intelligence

Leadership development training creates more empathetic and emotionally intelligent leaders. This allows leaders to examine their biases and consider different perspectives. They are better prepared to have difficult conversations and overcome conflicts while ensuring that individuals are treated fairly, with a sense of belonging and of being valued.

Improved Performance

Leaders who engage in high performance team programs learn to help their teams work more effectively and efficiently. Coaching leaders drives collaboration and encourages innovation by nurturing skills that allow teams to contribute their collective expertise towards common and measurable goals.

Instills Trust

Team coaching is most effective when used as a tool to address the specific needs of an organisation. It demonstrates to all employees that their leadership team is committed to enacting the desired changes, and not simply making statements. This facilitates a connection amongst both employees and leaders. The mutual trust and respect this creates allows teams to be more innovative, creative and productive.

Providing executive coaching to leadership teams creates a lasting impact throughout an organisation. Many of the benefits of leadership development programs interconnect, often resulting in a more positive workplace culture. When individuals experience greater levels of clarity, empathy, and trust from their leaders, efficiency and performance increases.

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For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

5 Benefits of Leadership Team Coaching

What is High Performance Leadership?

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What is High Performance Leadership?

Great leaders have a clear vision and inspire others around them to translate their vision into reality. This is high performance leadership. They understand the direction they want to take. They support, and are supported by, their teams to get them to that place.

Provide Teams the Tools to Succeed

Leaders of high performance teams do everything they can to ensure their team is capable of reaching their goals. They provide their team with the tools they will need to succeed and trust them to get the job done. This often includes customised leadership development training that meets the specific needs of the business. These teams see greater levels of productivity and success because they invest the necessary resources into developing their skills. Their learning is reinforced by leaders outside of the ‘classroom’ setting to make certain it becomes a part of day to day operations.

Onboarding courses can help to establish the expectations for new employees. Including high performance training as a part of this early process equips every person who joins your team with the ability to meet existing standards. This also allows you to identify high potential talent early and grow them within your organisation.

Receptive to New Ideas

It can be easy to discount the benefits of leadership development for performance, when teams are already meeting their goals with great success. However, effective leaders understand the importance of remaining open to new ideas. Just because the current method is working, doesn’t mean that another approach should be discounted. High performance leaders are always looking for ways to gain a competitive edge. To do this, they must allow themselves to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

“High performance leaders must allow themselves to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.”

One way leaders can nurture this mindset is by continually seeking new experiences and developing new skills they may incorporate in the future. When leaders are receptive to new ideas, they allow teams to be more creative, inventive, and take calculated risks that often pay off.

The most successful leaders become so through nurturing their own curiosity, as well as that of their teams. They understand what it takes to elevate performance to achieve outstanding results. Great leaders see training for high performance as an investment not only in the individual, but in the team and the organisation.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

What is High Performance Leadership?

How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

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How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

High performance teams are critical to an organisation’s success. A leader’s role in developing these teams is to continue to involve them and support their performance. There is a perception that high performance teams are free from conflict, this is simply not the case. Rather, it is their ability to freely express ideas, disagreements, and challenge one another that allows strong teams to succeed again and again.

Create Space for Conflict

TexHealthy teams are rarely silent. In fact, silence may be a signal that your team is hesitant or afraid to speak up. Strong teams build ideas on each other. They hold space for debate and challenge ideas to come up with solutions that will provide the maximum benefit. As a leader, you create the culture by reinforcing the value of your team members and ensuring their voices are heard. Engaging in a high performance program can be an opportunity for leaders and teams to develop healthy debating habits. Healthy conflict can result in greater innovation and performance.

Conflict Builds Trust

For teams to sustain high performance, they must learn how to overcome conflict productively. Leadership development training allows teams to establish collaborative problem solving skills. This requires them to trust in one another’s capabilities and expertise in order to succeed. From here, stronger personal relationships develop that are based in trust. When future conflicts do occur, they are overcome much more efficiently and without personal attacks that can derail progress.

“For teams to sustain high performance, they must learn how to overcome conflict productively.”

Conflict that Matters

High performing teams have clearly defined roles and expectations that increase productivity. Not only are individuals aware of their own responsibilities, every team member understands the role each of them plays in achieving their goals. This is important for developing high performance and to eliminate occurrences of blame shifting. Conflicts that arise in these teams are about the work. They happen only because every team member is dedicated to producing high quality results.

Conflict is an unavoidable part of life, and it is certainly unavoidable in high pressure environments. Participating in a high performance leadership development program gives teams the opportunity to air disputes and gain the skills necessary to overcome challenges together. Healthy conflict leads to stronger teams, capable of achieving far beyond expectations.

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For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

Why High Performers Leave

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Why High Performers Leave

Why High Performers Leave

Last year saw a significant increase in high performing talent leaving high level positions in what became known as ‘The Great Resignation.’ The corporate landscape has seen a fundamental shift in how many businesses operate, and employees have preferred the flexibility this has afforded them. Retaining top performers is integral to the success of teams and businesses alike. By looking at some of  the reasons behind the exodus, we can ensure that we are providing value to our employees and our organisations.

Limited Career Advancement

When individuals are consistently performing at a high level, or making oversized contributions to the company without being considered for advancement, they may not envision a long career there. This can be incredibly frustrating, and they will seek greater opportunities elsewhere. If it is a simple matter of there not being enough high level positions available, then it is worth considering alternate ways to provide growth opportunities.

By discussing what their career goals are and how they can achieve them with your organisation, demonstrates your interest in their success. Providing high performance training to further enhance their skills prepares them for leadership development opportunities in the future while strengthening their current contributions.

“Prepare [high performers] for leadership development opportunities in the future while strengthening their current contributions.”

Disconnected From the Work

Even when productivity is high and results are being achieved, top performers can be disconnected with the work they’re doing. If efforts are not made to re-engage them, they may feel ‘stuck’ and start looking for a more challenging or exciting role. High performance team leaders are responsible for inspiring and motivating their team members to exceed expectations.


Having a clear vision of team goals is one of the most effective ways of provoking engagement in others. Leadership training programs can provide leaders and their teams with the opportunity to develop the strategy for achieving goals together. This allows individuals to take an active role in shaping the direction of the team. They form a personal connection to the work that drives them to be more innovative and higher performing.

Losing high performing talent is difficult, no matter the reasoning. Organisations are strengthened by individuals at all levels who participate in leadership development programs. Providing growth opportunities and supporting the career goals of top performers can have a considerable impact on the rate of retention within your business.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and high trust organisation.

Why High Performers Leave

5 Factors that Drive High Performance

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5 Factors that Drive High Performance

5 Factors that Drive High Performance

Strong leadership is fundamental to establishing success in all areas of business. They determine the culture and direction that the organisation takes. In driving high performance, leaders are responsible for motivating, engaging, and developing their teams by inspiring them and helping them to reach their full potential.

Focus on Purpose

For consistently high performing businesses, their purpose is a central focus of their daily operations. They have dedicated time to establish what sets them apart from their competition, what they offer, and how they make a unique difference for their clients. Their purpose determines the direction that the business will take. Leadership development training helps to embed your purpose into your practices. Having a shared purpose enables teams to connect and collaborate while working towards a common goal, resulting in greater output, better innovation, and stronger performance.

Employee Engagement

High performing teams are comprised of passionate and dedicated individuals. Their commitment to achieving success is driven by their own motivations and the guidance of team leaders. Providing space for high performance development often leads to a significant increase in employee engagement. When engagement is high, businesses see higher rates of retention and productivity.

“Their commitment is driven by their own motivations and the guidance of team leaders.”

Honest Feedback

Teams are only able to become high performing when they are provided with constructive feedback regularly. Effective leadership training programs provide leaders with the skills to communicate feedback that adds value and encourages growth. Doing so enables team members the opportunity to better their own skills and improves their contribution to shared goals.

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High Performance Culture

Executives often underestimate the impact that their workplace culture has on performance. Cultural and environmental factors are influenced by all team members, although leaders need to be aware of how they set the standard for how others interact with one another. It is important, when training for high performance, that time is spent understanding the underlying factors and attitudes that contribute to behaviors.

Growth Mindset

Organisations that engage teams in high performance programs see a considerable return on investment in both the short and long term. While such programs might be sought out as a solution to current issues, the impact they have is far reaching. Learning to perform at a higher level becomes a sustained practice that they will apply when developing their own teams.

“Purpose, engagement, communication, and culture all have a direct influence on growth and performance.”

There are countless factors that contribute to high performance. It is up to leaders to understand the motivations that drive their teams to succeed. They are the ones who set the expectations of what their teams can achieve. Purpose, engagement, communication, and culture all have a direct influence on growth and performance. These are key, interconnected drivers for success that should be areas of focus for all leaders.

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For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

5 Factors that Drive High Performance

High Performance

3 Steps to Building High Performance

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3 Steps to Building High Performance

A strong relationship between leaders and their team can make a significant impact on productivity and performance. There can be little doubt that great leaders produce better business outcomes. When it comes to leading high performance teams, actively seeking opportunities for improvement is what ensures and maintains their success. 

Understand your Leadership Style

Effective leadership stems from a great self-awareness that means leaders are able to continuously improve business relationships and push for exceptional results. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all have preferences in the ways in which we lead others. Becoming cognisant of what our preferences are, and how this forms our personal leadership style, allows us to implement business strategies that are more effective. When we know ourselves better, we are able to leverage leadership excellence to drive performance.


Advocate for Innovation

Developing high performance in teams can be as simple as challenging them to think more innovatively. The success of many high performance teams is often due to their ability to come up with new ideas and creatively solve problems. Leaders of such teams are willing to experiment and take risks in order to reach higher levels of achievement.  Building effective teams along with real leadership is one of the most important drivers of organisational success. A strong capability to innovate in service of their goals enables teams to outperform expectations by delivering exceptional results.

Engage Learning with Experience

Performance training programs are continually proven to be more effective when the lessons are then applied on the job. Too often, we will engage in shorter workshops or seminars but fail to incorporate the lessons in practice. Effective leaders develop their leadership in action; discovering strategies that drive performance, and learning from mistakes. In order to inspire lasting changes in the performance of others, leaders need to make a deliberate effort to display changes in their own behaviour.

The success and growth of any business is largely dependent on the implementation of strategy by leaders and the performance of their teams. Great executive leaders understand the necessity of leadership development training for building high performance at all levels of their organisation. Developing our leadership style and implementing our learning to push for innovation leads to stronger, more outstanding performance. 

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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3 Steps to Building High Performance

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5 Reasons for Building Leadership Excellence

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5 Reasons for Building Leadership Excellence

Great leaders empower and inspire us to perform at our best. Effective leadership allows space for direct reports to flourish and make valuable contributions towards both their personal and organisational goals. Senior leadership training provides the opportunity for leaders to develop and leverage their ability to influence the behaviour of others that improves performance. 

Increase Productivity

Leaders who regularly practise leadership excellence understand the value of encouraging self-sufficiency in their teams. Their primary  role is one of motivation rather than instruction. Teams are able to drive their own success with the support of their leader. Effective leaders inspire passion and pride within their team to increase productivity and achieve results. A leadership excellence program helps participants to create a framework that allows teams to be independently motivated and high performing.


Better Decision Making

Training for leadership excellence builds higher levels of emotional intelligence. This gives leaders a greater perspective when it comes to decision making. Developing our emotional intelligence is advantageous to mitigating risks or potential negative consequences of our decisions. Understanding how our emotions affect our choices allows us to gain insight into the driving forces behind the behaviour and decisions of others. As leaders, we must support others in recognising their own unconscious emotional biases to allow space for more informed decision making.

Retain High Performers

An investment in leadership development training significantly reduces the likelihood of losing your top performers to other opportunities. Identifying high potential talent and nurturing their development can ensure future, long-term success. Programs that focus on refining and implementing business strategies help participants connect and commit to the goals of the company. Providing leadership training to high potential employees supports career pathways,  succession planning, and increases retention.

Builds Confidence

Confidence is an important pillar of effective leadership. Leaders must have the confidence in their own knowledge and capabilities, as well as that of their team members, in order to drive success.  Both established and aspiring leaders experience self-doubt from time to time. Unfamiliar challenges and changing business landscapes can create uncertainty. The benefits of leadership excellence provide us with the groundwork for figuring out how to overcome these challenges. We may not have the exact answer to a problem, but we are able to rely on our ability to source the solution and lead teams effectively. 

Implement Effective Leadership

One of the benefits of leadership excellence is developing the capability to uncover your personal leadership style. There are a number of different leadership styles, each with unique benefits and disadvantages. Understanding your personal ‘life-story’ and how to use it as a tool for leadership, builds a connection between you and your team. Leveraging this connection can help you to hone a leadership style that your team will best respond to.

Building leadership excellence creates more effective leaders and higher performing teams. Strong leaders are able to connect their personal experiences to their leadership style and inspire confidence and motivation in others. Their role is to support and develop the skills of their team members to foster an environment that values growth that leads to increased performance.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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5 Reasons for Building Leadership Excellence

lifestyle inventory assessment

Getting the Most from Leadership Assessments

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Getting the Most from Leadership Assessments

Before embarking on a leadership development journey, you need to understand what the changes you want to make are and why it is important to make them. We can not get to ‘point B’ if we do not know where we are at ‘point A.’ Completing a leadership assessment survey provides us with clarity about our current capabilities. We can identify areas for improvement and create a pathway to help us achieve our goals. Reviewing our competencies will allow us to track our progress in real time and make ongoing, valuable change that make us better leaders.

As an Individual

A leadership assessment can reveal insightful nuances about an individual person’s behaviour and way of thinking. When developing leadership excellence it can be helpful to understand these nuances so that training programs can be tailored to suit the individual’s thinking preferences and so, be more effective. Leadership assessment tools like the HBDI® and Everything DiSC® look at leadership through a personality based lens. The decisions we make are intrinsically biased by the ways in which we prefer to operate. Knowing what our unconscious biases are allows us to mitigate their impact, or leverage them at times they can be most effective. Knowing which traits we avoid is also useful in providing us with a place to start our learning. Effective training programs will be able to frame these limitations in ways within the scope of the individual’s preferred leadership and learning style. This makes the skills they are still developing more accessible when approached from a place of familiarity.

As a Team

The importance of leadership assessment at an individual level should extend to benefit the teams being led. There is a great value in assessing the leadership capabilities of an entire team. It is of course important that the members of a team get along and work well together. But there is also a risk that a lack of diverse perspectives will lead to stagnating performance. The benefits of leadership assessment for teams is that it discloses areas where there are gaps in skills and ways of thinking. Understanding each other’s thinking preferences makes us better communicators and effective problem solvers.  Building balanced, well-rounded teams provides more opportunities for collective growth.

Showing Up

It is not enough to simply fill out a survey about your skills and be done with it. You have either chosen, or have been asked, to complete a leadership assessment because you want to know yourself better. This includes accepting the areas in which you lack strength, and being willing to put in the effort to improve those skills. The best leadership assessment tools can, and should, surprise you in some way. Recalling why it is important for you to undertake this assessment holds you more accountable to yourself, your team, and helps you ‘show up’ in your leadership as someone open to opportunities for growth.

Assessing leadership excellence creates a space for individuals and teams to deepen their understanding of themselves and how they show up to face challenges. It allows us to form stronger relationships and improve performance through harnessing the differences in where our strengths lay.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

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Getting the Most from Leadership Assessments

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5 Benefits of Leadership Self-Assessment

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5 Benefits of Leadership Self-Assessment

Updated: December 2025

What is a Leadership Assessment?

A leadership assessment is the process through which individuals, teams, and organisations can better understand their capabilities and talents as a business leader.

Having a strong understanding of your competencies allows you to capitalise on your strengths and mitigate the impact of potential skills gaps. 

Types of Leadership Assessment Tools

There are numerous leadership assessment tools available, and each one will address varying aspects of your leadership style. Some examples include:

  • DiSC: The Everything DiSC Personality Assessment measures personality traits and generates a detailed profile with insights on communication styles, leadership tendencies, and team interactions. The results help individuals and organisations adapt their approach for better workplace relationships.
  • Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument®: The HBDI® is a leadership style assessment tool that identifies the thinking styles of individuals and teams. It teaches you how to communicate both with those who think the same as you and those who think differently.
  • 360 Feedback: Leadership assessment tools like the Leadership Circle Profile or Hogan 360 Profiling Tool utilise feedback from direct reports, peers, and 1-up level leaders as well as the individual’s self-reporting to form an holistic view of their leadership style and capabilities.

Assessment of Leadership Skills and Qualities

The assessment of leadership skills that are critical for effective leadership, are often the focus of these types of evaluations. These include: 

  1. Communication Skills: The ability to clearly articulate ideas, actively listen, and foster open dialogue within teams.
  2. Decision-Making: Assessing how leaders analyze information, weigh options, and make sound, timely decisions.
  3. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Evaluating self-awareness, empathy, and the ability to manage emotions in oneself and others.
  4. Conflict Resolution: The ability to mediate disputes, find common ground, and maintain harmony within teams.
  5. Strategic Thinking: Assessing the capacity to think long-term, anticipate challenges, and develop innovative solutions.
  6. Team Building: Evaluating how leaders inspire, motivate, and cultivate collaboration among team members.

In addition to skills, effective leaders will also find it beneficial to conduct a leadership qualities assessment. Such qualities evaluated will include:

  1. Integrity: Demonstrating honesty, ethical behavior, and consistency in actions and decisions.
  2. Adaptability: The ability to remain flexible and resilient in the face of change or uncertainty.
  3. Vision: Having a clear, inspiring vision for the future and the ability to align others with that vision.
  4. Accountability: Taking responsibility for actions, decisions, and outcomes, while holding others accountable as well.
  5. Empathy: Understanding and valuing the perspectives and emotions of others to build trust and rapport.
  6. Influence: The ability to inspire and persuade others to achieve common goals.
  7. Innovation: Encouraging creativity and fostering an environment where new ideas can thrive.

5 Benefits of Leadership Self Assessment

Leadership self-assessments, including leadership strengths and weaknesses assessment, benefit not just individuals but also enhance team relationships and organisational performance. By understanding their leadership style and areas for growth, leaders can improve communication, foster trust, and align their strengths with organisational goals.

Increase Self-Awareness

Learning more about yourself and the way you lead has a direct impact on your leadership effectiveness. An honest assessment of your leadership capabilities will reveal ways you can build upon your strengths and help you to confront weaknesses. This is not only key for your personal development, it will also increase your team’s trust in you and boost your credibility. It can be difficult for direct reports to offer candid feedback to leaders, so increasing your own self-awareness will have a greater impact on developing and sustaining leadership excellence. 


Create Goals

No matter what stage of your career you are in, a leadership self-assessment can provide insight into your abilities as a leader. There are a variety of tools that will help you to understand your strengths and performance in different areas. In developing this understanding, you will also discover the areas in which you need to focus future learning to be able to take on new challenges. For those with aspirations of becoming senior leaders, this can provide clarity and specificity on the experience and leadership training required to reach their career goals.

Progress Tracking

A lifetime career in leadership means that you should regularly be reassessing your own leadership skills. As the business landscape changes, so too should our approach to leadership. It is beneficial to both you and your teams that you stay ahead of current strategies and teachings. Undertaking leadership assessments at different stages throughout your career ensures your development remains aligned with your goals, and may even open up new opportunities that weren’t previously possible.

Clarify Development Plans

Leadership assessment tools play a critical role in the progression of organisational success when utilised as part of a leadership development plan. Assessing leadership excellence across all levels of the organisation helps executives to identify gaps within the talent pool, as well as those with the potential for senior leadership development. Opportunities for development can be prioritised to have the greatest chance of success. Leadership assessment allows individuals to gain a better sense of the part they play in the success of the organisation, and how they might expand their scope in the future.


Improve Working Relationships

Gaining clarity on your own styles of leadership and performance makes it easier to recognise in others. You can meet them where they are to develop personal connections and trust. More effectively influence their behaviours by adapting your approach. Understanding your own ‘life story’ and how to use it as a touchstone for leadership allows you to form meaningful relationships with your team and improve overall performance.

While it is important for current and aspiring leaders to gain insights into their leadership capabilities to excel in their career, they should also be aware of their impact on team performance as well. The best tools for assessing leadership excellence will have benefits that stretch beyond the individual. Role-modelling a desire to improve both personally and professionally, leads to increased levels of trust and productivity throughout organisations.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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GROW Model

What is the GROW Model?

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What is the GROW Model?

The GROW coaching model was developed by coaching pioneer Sir John Whitmore and has been used for over forty years. It is a structure within which executive coaching may be conducted to aid leadership development. The coach is an objective facilitator whose role is to assist their client in identifying the best options available to them that will serve their goals, without offering specific advice or direction. It is up to the client to discern what is best for themselves. The use of the GROW model as a tool for leadership excellence within teams differs slightly from this because as leader, you will have some expertise that allows you to guide your team through options to avoid ones that could bring harm. The GROW coaching model is a four-step lens through which options are analysed and decisions can be made; Goal, Reality, Options, Will.

Goal 

The purpose of many coaching relationships is for the coach to help their client get clear on their goals, and identify strategies to help them reach them.  The focus of the Goal stage is on the solution and what the coachee wants to achieve, rather than the problem being addressed. Often, leaders will have a broad idea of what this looks like, though they may have difficulty articulating what needs to be done in order to succeed. An executive coaching program  provides leaders with the opportunity to explore their goals thoroughly and help them to establish specific targets they are then able to work towards.

Examples of Goal questions a coach might ask are:

  • Where are you going?
  • How long will it take to get there?
  • What are the benefits of achieving your goal?
  • How will you measure progress?

Reality

The Reality stage is used to frame the identified goals within the context of the coachee’s current situation. The executive coach helps their coachee to understand the problem they are trying to solve, and how doing so will impact themselves and those around them. It is an opportunity for the leader to  view the situation from alternative perspectives. The solution to certain problems can begin to emerge as a result of speaking aloud about them. Developing this style of thinking through senior leadership training will have considerable benefits for team problem solving once the new strategies are implemented.

Some useful Reality questions are:

  • What is happening now?
  • Who else is affected?
  • What steps have already been taken towards reaching your goal?
  • What may be preventing you from reaching your goal?

Options

Once goals have been set and the current reality has been examined, we can then begin the process of exploring what options are available. It is particularly important in this stage of the executive training  program, that the coachee leads the discussion. The coach must of course be able to provide clarity and guidance, but they can not make the final decision. The objective here is  for the coachee to come up with as many possible solutions that could help them succeed.

Questions asked during the Options stage should be open ended in order to drive discussion:

  • What are the options?
  • Who could help you with this, and how?
  • Where can you find more information?
  • What else could be done?

Will

By the time the Will stage is reached, the coachee should have a clearer idea how their goal can be achieved. It is here that specific actions must be committed to, that will make achievement possible.  The coach’s role now, is to help the coachee determine which of the options discussed should be taken up. Typically, the coachee will already have made the decision for themselves but will still benefit from assistance in building and committing to a measurable and actionable strategy. If the coach senses a hesitancy to commit, revisiting the Options is necessary for clearing roadblocks and finding the best way forward.

Examples of Will questions are:

  • What action are you going to take?
  • How are you going to do that?
  • What will keep you motivated?
  • What could prevent you from taking action? How will you overcome this?

The GROW model is an important part of building a coaching culture within teams and organisations. It helps groups and individuals to identify strategies for reaching their goals, including how to overcome obstacles they may face. A leadership excellence program that teaches the GROW model encourages meaningful conversation as a part of the problem solving process. It should also be noted that the model is not meant to be followed as a rigid structure. The GROW model is a framework that aims to prompt discussion that leads to effective solutions. While Goals and Reality will typically be explored first, coaching conversations can move between all four elements.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

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What is the GROW Model?

Building Good Habits

The Importance of Building Good Habits

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The Importance of Building Good Habits

We often set ourselves aspirational goals when we are feeling highly motivated and energised, only to find later on that we do not possess the tools needed to reach those targets. This can lead to feelings of self-doubt, or perceived inadequacy in our own capabilities. In turn, we lose motivation to act in pursuit of our goals and we stop making progress. Reducing the scope of our goal setting however, is not the solution. After all, developing leadership excellence requires clear and ambitious goals. To achieve those goals, we need to give ourselves the advantage of having the right tools in place that allow us to succeed.

Turn Goals into Habits

An issue that often arises when setting goals is that we want – or even expect – that we will be able to achieve them in a short timeframe. Even when we understand that logically, lasting change takes time and effort to accomplish. The number one way you will reach your goals is to create habits around them and build them into regular actions. It is about transforming the idea of what we want to achieve into actionable behaviours that contribute to greater, long lasting changes. 

The formation of entirely new habits makes them inherently difficult to stay consistent with because we are not used to performing that behaviour. In order to affect change, the best course of action is to anchor the habit you want to create to a specific time, location, or both. Using this method, the time and location become a trigger for you to implement the new habit you are forming. The Actionable Habit Builder calls this the New Habit Formula:

When (trigger) happens, instead of (current behaviour), I will (new habit).

When building new habits, specificity is important for establishing a metric by which we can measure our progress. The Actionable Habit Builder is a useful tool for senior leadership training because it encourages us to create specific habits that lead to effective behavioural changes.

Amplify Motivation

Our motivation to complete tasks is one of the most unpredictable factors in reaching the formation of new habits, even ones we want to initiate. When we experience high levels of motivation, it is more likely that we will enthusiastically commit to immediate action. However, if we are constantly waiting to be in the ‘right’ frame of mind before we take action, we simply don’t; and our behaviours do not change. It becomes a question of how we overcome feeling demotivated in order to make positive changes.

One of the benefits of executive coaching is that it is an opportunity for participants to explore their goals with someone who understands their underlying motivations. Working with an executive coach reveals the deeper thought processes that go into decision making and habit formation. In coaching leadership excellence, you are given a deeper understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. The relationship you form with your coach allows them to identify key factors that may be getting in the way of consistent habit practices. They can then assist you in creating strategies that overcome those roadblocks. Through regular coaching sessions, you and your coach work together to implement those strategies and hold you to account. Forming new habits takes time and effort to succeed. There will be times when your self-motivation depletes. When this happens you need to understand why that is happening and what you can do to overcome it so that you are still able to make progress.

Making lasting changes in our behaviour can be a daunting and difficult undertaking without the right support in place. Habit building tools and executive coaching programs provide support by allowing us to dig into what it is we want to change and why it is important that we do so. They hold us accountable so that we can see for ourselves the progress we are making. Forming good habits has many positive benefits on our behaviours and when tied to larger goals, helps us take regular action to achieve them sooner.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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Authority and Leadership

The Difference Between Authority and Leadership

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The Difference Between Authority and Leadership

The ability to successfully influence the behaviour of others is entirely dependent on the source. Influence via authority may at first appear to be an obvious example, the influence it yields may not have the desired outcome. Conversely, influence affected by inspirational and self-modeled leadership is far more likely to result in the desired action being taken. While there can be overlap of these two concepts, it is important to remember that they are not mutually inclusive. Confusing one for the other may have damaging effects on team performance.


Authority

In many workplaces, a person’s authority often stems from the title or position they hold within either their team or the organisation. This is often the case when there is a clear distinction between the person ‘in charge’ and the rest of the group. Managers and executives may use the power their title gives them to make and enforce decisions. While necessity sometimes calls for this, a manager who makes uncompromising demands of their team regularly may also find that performance diminishes or that there is high employee turnover.

Having authority over another group of people does not grant you dedication or respect from them on the basis of your title alone. Authority is merely the right to use the power your position allows you. It  can be a necessary tool in leadership and developing high performance. However, a reliance on authority over more influential leadership skills, will only alienate your team from their goals. Training for leadership excellence shows us how to overcome the mindset that authority is equal to leadership. 

Leadership

Where authority is bestowed upon a person in a certain position of a hierarchy, leadership is a characteristic that can be found in people regardless of their position. Those with strong leadership qualities are often able to motivate and inspire others simply by setting the example for them to follow. When this kind of person also happens to be a manager, the result is often high performance teams. A manager or executive who asks for the support of their subordinates to implement decisions will have a greater chance of meeting collective goals than those who order tasks to be completed.

Leading high performance teams requires some relinquishing of authority to ensure that achievements are reached through a collaborative process. Building and sustaining leadership excellence means that leaders understand how to have a more impactful influence on team behaviours because they take the care to engage on a more personal level. Important challenges are solved with peer consultation and individuals are empowered to put strategies into action. 


Finding a Balance

People often confuse the terms authority and leadership because we have historically considered authority as a defining trait of leadership. However, attempting to influence behaviour through authority alone can be met with resistance and changes take longer to accept. 

Gaining the respect and trust of colleagues is understood by great leaders to be a privilege. By forming a personal relationship with their teams, leaders earn the authority their position provides. High performance training programs aim to develop trusting relationships within teams that lead to increased productivity. Leaders who use their positional power to support, coach, and further develop their teams will gain followers who chose to be led. While it is true that authority is a necessary aspect of managing a team or running an organisation, it is not always the most important.

As a leader, how do you overcome the limitations of authority?

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

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The Difference Between Authority and Leadership

Dare to lead

Overcoming the 5 Dysfunctions of Teams

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Overcoming the 5 Dysfunctions of Teams

No matter how cohesive and successful a team may be, it is inevitable that they will face challenges that could potentially derail their productivity. When this happens in high performance teams (or indeed, any team), we need to look beyond the symptoms of low performance to find the true cause of this behavior. Based on the work of Patrick Lencioni, the 5 Dysfunctions of Teams explores the idea that to resolve surface level issues, you must first attend to lower level needs. Each dysfunction impacts on overall performance and must be overcome in order for teams to perform at their best. 

Dysfunction 1: Lack of Trust

The first dysfunction Lencioni identifies is a lack of trust amongst team members. When trust is minimal or absent, it is often because individually, we are afraid to appear vulnerable in front of others, and want to maintain an image of infallibility. This stops us both individually, and as a team, from asking for advice and developing collectively. We may even hesitate to provide positive feedback to others, or assist in areas outside of our own responsibilities.

Overcoming this fear of vulnerability, opens up opportunities to understand each other on a more personal level. Nobody is perfect. Being able to own up to that and admit to our weaknesses makes others around us more comfortable, and more likely to start doing the same. Learning about Rumbling with Vulnerability is a pillar of the Dare to Lead™ program, based on the work of Brene Brown. This section of the program aims to dispel many misconceptions people have about vulnerability. Typically thought of as a display of weakness, in Dare to Lead™, vulnerability becomes known as one of the fundamental tools for leaders to establish trusting relationships in their teams.


Dysfunction 2: Fear of Conflict

Team performance is enhanced when there are diverse voices contributing to the conversation. While this provides an incredible opportunity to achieve better results, it can also cause hesitancy to share an opposing idea for fear of creating conflict. Controversial topics are ignored even if they have the potential to create success for the team.

A great first step to take in creating constructive conflict is to be intentional about how these conversations take place. Designating even one-hour a month is an opportunity for your team to be able to voice their opinions, safe in the knowledge that they will not be negatively received. A leadership excellence program can be useful in building group dialogue skills that help teams to have conversations that matter. These are conversations that allow teams to delve deeper into topics or issues that are important to them, and they are then able to come up with resolutions as a unified group. It is important too, that these conversations be held regularly for sustaining high performance.

Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment

Perceived inaction, avoiding difficult conversations, and ambiguous goal setting are just a few reasons why there may be a lack of commitment from team members. Without clearly defined goals, teams do not know what it is they are working towards and therefore, have no real investment in the work they are doing. The same is true when there is limited communication surrounding decision making and problem-solving. 

When decisions are made that impact your team, explaining the rationale that led to that decision will help them understand and accept new changes. Inviting your team to be part of the decision making process also gives them a personal incentive to successfully implement those changes. Understanding the ‘why’ is important for building commitment to the actions being taken. Giving your team a strong reason for, and belief in, the work being done leads to increased dedication and better performance.

Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability

The ability to hold oneself accountable is a skill that is closely tied to our willingness (or lack thereof) to be vulnerable and admit to our mistakes. We fear failure. Sustaining high performance in teams also requires that team members hold each other accountable as well. Often we avoid doing this for fear of causing conflict even when an error would be costly. This results in team leaders becoming the sole source of accountability for the whole team. This can quickly become an overwhelming task for one person, especially in large teams.

Owning up to mistakes shows that you are responsible for your own actions. True self-accountability goes beyond this when you make conscious and demonstrable changes in your behaviour, or work to correct specific errors. Holding others accountable does not have to be a combative exercise. Intent is important here. Criticism for its own sake is counterproductive to team effectiveness. Blame is not the same as accountability. Feedback should aim to support the recipient and help them to constructively improve future performance.

Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results

When the vision of team success is overlooked in favour of individual achievement, collective progress stagnates. You may even lose valuable market competition, or results-oriented team members. While leading high performance teams usually means there are high levels of self-motivation to completing tasks, it is the leader’s role to ensure a clear team focus. As with the avoidance of accountability, leaders must ensure that each member of the team has a concrete understanding of how their individual role contributes to the team purpose and achievement of results. 

Measurable metrics will be a considerable aid in maintaining team focus. A useful practice in developing leadership excellence within teams creating habits for success. By setting simple goals, and rewarding the team as a whole for their success, fosters a greater connection amongst team members and continued desire to achieve results. 

Understanding the 5 Dysfunctions of Teams is important for leading high performance teams. The capability to diagnose workplace challenges and overcome them is an integral part of developing leadership excellence. Dysfunction prevents effectiveness in the pursuit of team success and cohesion. Delving into how each dysfunction contributes to challenges, helps teams to form better and long lasting solutions. 

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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Team Management Profile

Benefits of the Team Management Profile (TMP)

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Benefits of the Team Management Profile (TMP)

The key to organisational success lies in the ability of people to work effectively together. This only occurs when individuals understand their unique contribution and use these insights to implement change. The Team Management Profile is a research-based psychometric profiling tool for personal, team, and leadership development that delivers a framework to build high performing organisations. It gives individuals the self-knowledge and strategies required to improve their performance and work.

For the Individual

As a personal development tool, the Team Management Profile helps individuals discover their strengths as a contributing member of their team. When we do not enjoy the work we are doing, motivation is low and results in poor or average performance. The Profile asks individuals to reflect on their role and identify their preferences for certain tasks. They gain a holistic depiction of their individual approach to work. Often what is found is that people are taking on tasks that do not excite them, or provide a sense of accomplishment. When teams achieve a higher level of connection between their work preferences and job demands, it increases the team’s energy, enthusiasm, commitment and motivation, as people are undertaking work they enjoy.

Gaining an understanding of your personal Team Management Profile allows leaders to form a complete idea of their leadership style. This can be particularly useful for potential leaders and those looking to advance to more senior positions. As a detailed, work-focused feedback tool, the Profile provides insights into how an individual approaches work, and working with others. This allows them to develop strategies to improve working relationships, and harness their strengths to make progress in their career goals.


For the Team

From a team perspective, the Profile is even more invaluable. Once you have a map of the team’s collective strengths and areas for improvement, a team can easily strategise on maximising their strengths and minimising the gaps. Designed specifically for use in the workplace, the Team Management Profile provides a complete approach to building balanced, high performing teams. Understanding an individual’s strengths and approach to work, helps leaders to diversify their teams and ensure that there are as few development gaps as possible. Teams that understand each other’s approach to work are better collaborators, better communicators, and better at engaging with conflict resolution. Collectively, this allows for enhanced team productivity. 

Where gaps do occur, the Team Management Profile assesses the likely impact of the least represented roles in the team. From this, an action plan can be created that might involve re-delegating tasks, outsourcing the skills needed, or implementing training programs. By linking the learning back to a concrete training and development plan, the Profile provides a proven framework and model to navigate change. 

The TMP is about learning, not assessment. The Profile can be used throughout organisations to improve performance and achieve better business outcomes. The Profile provides a common language and framework for individuals, teams, and organisations to recognise their strengths in the workplace, enabling positive, lasting change. Constructive, work-focused information helps individuals understand why they work the way they do, and how they can develop strategies to improve how they work with others. The Profile and related materials provide insights about your work preferences in relation to leadership style, team building, interpersonal skills, and communication.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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Benefits of the Team Management Profile (TMP)

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The Barrett Model™ Explained

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The Barrett Model™ Explained

Updated: December 2025

The Barrett Model™ assessment aims to provide an understanding of authentic motivations for our actions. Our values, conscious or unconscious, motivate each action and decision we make. Inspired by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Barrett Values Model™ was developed by Richard Barrett to identify the seven most important areas of human motivation. The model ranges from basic survival to a greater, societal contribution. Looking at it through the lenses of Personal Consciousness and Leadership, we begin to see how we can use this model to become better individuals, and better leaders.

Richard Barrett Values Model™

The Personal Consciousness Model

At its core, the Personal Consciousness Model tells us that we must first focus on meeting our personal needs for survival and relationships in order to establish our strongest sense of self. Before we can begin to work towards being of service to others, we should ensure that we have the capacity, ability, and resources to do so. The central, transformation stage in this model is important because it is the autonomy, freedom, and responsibility we establish for ourselves here that pushes us past satisfying only the needs that serve us. The top of the Personal Consciousness Model is where we begin to identify our externally motivated values and strive to achieve more for the sake of others.

The Leadership Model

Transposing these ideas onto the Leadership Model can see how they connect to their application at the team level. The survival and relationship needs of leadership require that the health and safety of teams are taken care of, and that there is a mutual connection and support to excelling in productivity. Innovation and risk-taking are key to evolving leadership capabilities beyond a results orientation. Authenticity, mentorship, and vision are demonstrated by leaders who leverage their success to bring further opportunities to their teams and greater community. They value creativity and collaboration to achieve long-term goals in service of their purpose. 

The Barrett Values Model™ is used to identify the values of individuals and groups through conducting a series of assessments. In doing so, you gain a precise picture of your organisation’s current and future dynamics. Understanding your values can provide an indication of potential issues or conflict within your organisation. By clarifying those values, you are able to address problems before they can be expressed. Action plans are then based on accurate insights that coincide with the particular circumstances and needs that are unique to you. A targeted and measurable strategy is created that leads to the development of a prospering workplace culture and high performing teams.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

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The Barrett Model™ Explained

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The Leadership Circle® Tools Explained

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Leadership Circle® Tools Explained

There is no substitute for effective leadership. If we want to develop more effective leaders, and to do that more rapidly and sustainably, we need a more comprehensive approach. The Leadership Circle has taken the best of what has been learned over the last half century and woven it into the first Unified Theory of Leadership Development to arise in the field. Based on this unique framework, we offer a complete and integrated System of Leadership Development. The combination is unparalleled. We support leadership transformation – change that evolves authentically from the inside out. We offer tools, methodology, and support for deepening the conversation with leaders so that change can occur on a deep, significant, life-altering level.

*The Leadership Circle Profile™ (LCP)

The Leadership Circle Profile is a true breakthrough among 360 degree assessments. It is designed to accelerate leadership effectiveness beyond traditional competency-based approaches. The first to connect a well-researched batter of competencies with the underlying motivations and habits of thought, it reveals the relationship between patterns of action and the internal assumptions that drive behaviour. The Leadership Circle Profile provides insights into actionable strategies to lift your leadership to a higher level.

leadership development Bob Complying graph

*The Collective Leadership Assessment™ (CLA)

The Collective Leadership Assessment™ delivers a powerful “litmus” test of your collective leadership effectiveness. It reveals valuable data that tells you how your people view their current leadership culture and compares the reality to the optimal culture they desire. Analysing this “gap” allows the CLA to identify key opportunities for leadership development. In comparing your collective leadership effectiveness with that of other organisations, the CLA offers businesses an active competitive edge. 

The ResultsEngine® Follow-Through Tool

Creating successful and effective leaders requires support and an active follow-up process. This web-based ResultsEngine works with the Leadership Circle Profile and the Leadership Circle workshops to ensure that managers and leaders take the necessary steps to achieve their goals. The fastest and most effective way to improve outcomes from development planning initiatives is to actively support and manage the follow-through process. In doing so, you create ongoing and lasting change.

The Leadership Circle tools affect change by identifying the competencies and motivations that drive behaviour. By revealing the gap between the current and desired effectiveness of leadership,  you are able to engage in strategies to develop specific areas of growth. Most importantly, the Leadership Circle tools offer ongoing support and feedback to ensure the changes made help leaders reach their long-term goals.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

*The Leadership Circle Profile™ and the Collective Leadership Assessment™ are created and owned by The Leadership Circle®. Certified by The Leadership Circle®.

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The Leadership Circle® Tools Explained

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The Tools of Human Synergistics

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The Tools of Human Synergistics

Increasingly, the idea of the workplace ‘culture’ has become an important part of what makes an organisation attractive to both employees and customers. At its core, the workplace culture is the shared behavioural norms and expectations that influence the way individuals approach their work and how they interact with one another. Many organisations will espouse some philosophy of what their ideal culture looks like. The way their people act however, may not fall in line with those ideas. This is the difference between the ideal and the lived, or current cultures. Determining your organisation’s ratio can help you to identify key areas to improve overall performance at the individual, group, and organisational level.

Individuals

Effective individuals are aware of how their own thinking influences their outlook, their response to others, and the impact of their behaviour on those around them. The Life Styles Inventory™ enables individuals to discover new ways of thinking and behaving to improve their interpersonal relationships. By identifying how their actions are supporting or detracting from being able to provide quality performance, participants learn to better cope with stress and change. 


Leaders can take this even further as they shape the culture by role modelling behaviours that influence the ways that others operate in their work and interactions. The Leadership/Impact® and Management/Impact™ surveys measure leadership effectiveness and can help to identify the relationship between how you lead and the impact it has on the behaviours and performance of others. By assessing a leader’s actual impact, specific leadership strategies can be devised to meet that of their desired impact. 

Groups and Teams

Through highlighting factors that both help and hinder performances teams are empowered to change the way they operate and behave. The Group Styles Inventory™ provides a valid and reliable measure of how people in groups interact and work together to solve problems. Participants are given a safe opportunity to talk about their behaviour and have in depth conversations to identify their impact on group performance. Engaging in conversations that matter, teams are able to improve individual ability to work collaboratively. 

Organisations

Organisational performance is directly impacted by the organisational culture. As with leadership, the impact of organisational culture is a dual measurement of the Organisational Culture Inventory and the Organisational Effectiveness Inventory. Both of these instruments work together to provide a complete picture of the behaviours and factors that drive the culture. They monitor and manage culture over time and continually identify targets for change to enhance strategy implementation. This is important because of the ways culture influences how the business strategy is executed and how effectively it adapts to operational changes.


Managing a high performance culture is one of the most important tasks of any senior executive, regardless of the size of the organisation or industry you are in. A partnership with The Leadership Sphere enables you to develop leadership capability in a way that creates value through leadership effectiveness. We can help individuals, groups, and organisations to understand the value of constructive thinking and behaviour to make them more effective.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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The Tools of Human Synergistics

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The DiSC Profiles

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The DiSC Profiles

The Everything DiSC® profile personality assessment provides insights and strategies for improving working relationships, resulting in a collaborative workforce with an elevated organisational culture. Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness. These are the four personality profiles of the Everything DiSC personality testing suite. Each distinctive profile is designed to help participants better understand themselves and others.

(D) ominance

People who fall into the Dominance personality profile tend to be confident and outspoken. They place an emphasis on accomplishing bottom line results and ‘seeing the big picture.’ Though people in this quadrant can be viewed as demanding or assertive, they will often be willing to face challenges and take action. Being competitive in nature, they are able to leverage their creative thinking to overcome opposition. As leaders, they are pioneering, resolute, and focused on achieving results. 

(i) nfluence

Influential personality types are able to shape their environment and persuade others though their enthusiasm, optimism, and trusting natures. They prioritise relationships and collaboration as motivators to reach team goals. i style leaders engage their teams by generating excitement and enthusiasm for projects. They will often take on the role of coach or counsellor due to this ability. The perception that they are charming and supportive people aids their proficiency in influencing others in their leadership.

(S) teadiness

The person who falls within the Steadiness quadrant may have difficulty in adapting to sudden changes, though they value collaboration and consensus driven problem solving. They aim to cultivate harmony and stability while striving for team accomplishments. Leaders with the Steadiness personality profile do not seek recognition for personal achievements. Instead, their humility drives them to favour cooperation. They will be supportive of others and use their influence to help them reach their fullest potential. 

(C) onscientiousness

Conscientious leaders largely value quality, expertise, and competency in themselves and their teams. They can be extremely detail-oriented and may find it difficult to delegate tasks. Despite this, they are disciplined in providing high-quality results through careful analysis and planning. Their conscientiousness drives a curiosity to attain new skills and knowledge. Critical thinking plays a significant role in their ability to provide objective feedback and in challenging the status quo to achieve better results.

Each Everything DiSC profile is designed to help participants better understand themselves and others. Gain insights on why we behave and perform the way we do, that is based on over 40 years of research. Leverage these insights to improve communication and organisational skills in all areas of the business. From engaging each individual to building more effective relationships, teaching managers successful leadership skills to tackling workplace conflict, there is an Everything DiSC profile to deliver strategies and insights.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and high trust organisation.

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The DiSC Profiles

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Actionable Conversations Explained

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Actionable Conversations Explained

Actionable Conversations™ are an innovative training platform that connects individuals to organisational objectives and enhances team culture. Engaging in meaningful conversations establishes better relationships and leads to lasting, measurable change. This is achieved through the powerful combination of authentic conversation, technology, and insight-driven data. It is a three stage process that happens on the job, around the real issues your people are currently working through. Investing just one hour a month develops: stronger leaders, individual skills, and enhances team culture.

Three Levels of Actionable Conversations™


SUSTAIN

Sustained, social learning helps to reinforce key principles in ways that contextualise them within the bounds of day-to-day responsibilities. It is supportive of real-world application that takes learning out of the ‘classroom.’ This enables participants to understand the practical effectiveness of what they are learning and how it applies to what they do. By putting lessons into immediate practice, their retention for the material is heightened and becomes ingrained in an ongoing routine.

SCALE

You are able to cascade key concepts by leveraging live sessions and engaging in better conversations that improve your relationship with your teams. It reinforces learning through teaching. Were it possible for every individual employee to attend development training, many of us would surely jump at the opportunity. However, this is not practical in today’s fast-paced working environment. To truly make changes sustainable throughout an organisation, it is up to those who do attend to pass on the knowledge to the entire team. Not only does this reinforce the learning for themselves, but they are able to build it into the culture and onboarding programs so that current and future employees also experience the benefits.

SYSTEM-WIDE

It is a cost effective way to get all stakeholders across key information while quickly and easily translating organisational objectives into relevant actions at an individual level. As we’ve already discussed, lasting change only occurs when each individual is engaged and committed to putting those changes into action. Success in this is determined by each person’s willingness to engage in discussions that lead to meaningful problem solving. These conversations must seek to provide tangible and actionable steps that can be followed, measured, and reviewed when necessary.

Actionable Conversations™ are a way for teams to connect with each other to address concerns and concepts that help them to engage in meaningful problem solving and create lasting change. It is a platform that improves workplace effectiveness by building better relationships and measurable behaviour change.

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and high trust organisation.

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Actionable Conversations Explained

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5 Steps to Improving Performance Management

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5 Steps to Improving Performance Management

The prime objective of performance management is to work towards the improvement of performance at the overall organisational level. To achieve this, efforts must be made to develop the skills of all employees.  Without support and regular communication with leaders, you can not hope to see improvements in effective performance management. Small changes can have a significant impact on both performance and productivity.

Frequent Feedback

Performance management differs from performance reviews that are usually only an annual reflection of past behaviours. In comparison, performance management involves providing regular feedback that allows for improvements to be made when they will have the most benefit. It is better to take preventative measures to identify potential skills gaps and correct them immediately, rather than address them after the fact. By engaging in frequent feedback conversations, you increase employee engagement and productivity in high performance teams. 


Establish Expectations

One of the most successful ways to ensure high performance is to have a clearly defined set of expectations for your team to adhere to. Engaging in a high performance training program and useful in establishing roles and goals beyond the job description alone while providing participants with the skills to achieve them. Getting clear on expectations reduces confusion on the part of both employees and leaders that would otherwise lead to miscommunication and potential errors. 

Provide Support

To achieve successful performance management, your teams must have the support of executive level leaders. Not only through verbal communication, but in their actions and the culture of the organisation. Developing leadership excellence should be a priority of executives who wish to cultivate a culture of high performance. When leaders participate in the same performance management processes as their direct reports, they project the importance of developing skills in order to reach new levels of success. 

Adaptive Goals

One hindrance to achieving high performance is in setting non-negotiable goals. Specificity and deadlines are necessary for goal completion, but failing to account for changes in market conditions or other circumstances beyond a person’s control will only have a negative impact on performance. Making goals that are adaptable reduces pressure felt to deliver results when conditions may prevent it. Regularly reviewing goals ensures that both leaders and employees feel there is a balanced workload and identifies opportunities to set stretch goals.


Leader Coaching

There is a direct relationship between effective coaching and managing high performance teams. Leaders who invest the time to coach and develop their employees are more likely to see an increase in performance. Building leadership excellence allows leaders to become coaches capable of positively influencing the progress of others. Ongoing development conversations between leaders and their direct reports support better outcomes and have a positive impact on individual performance.

Leadership development training for both leaders and employees makes it possible to build effective performance management processes across the entire organisation. Engaging in conversations that address the goals and expectations of an individual’s role help to foster a workplace culture that values development and filling skills gaps. Providing role clarity, opportunities for growth, and regular feedback are simple ways to improve performance management that can make a significant impact on your business.

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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5 Steps to Improving Performance Management

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Striving for Excellence

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Striving for Excellence

Organisations who achieve regular success have leaders who understand the importance of constant growth. They know that to reach their goals, they must rely on their direct reports to bring their purpose and vision into fruition. To do this, they establish strong personal relationships with their team and support them in their development. 

Purpose Clarity

Great leaders know that success begins with defining the purpose of the work you do. Understanding why it matters, and more specifically, why it matters to you. Leadership development programs help participants to understand themselves better both personally and professionally. Through the use of leadership assessment tools, their sense of purpose can make itself known. To achieve leadership excellence, you must be passionate about your purpose and able to communicate it with your team in ways that will inspire others in working towards the same purpose. 

Embrace Vulnerability

The scope of what leadership looks like has had a significant shift from being purely authoritative to now requiring the development of personal relationships. The research of Brenè Brown places vulnerability at the centre of daring leadership. The Dare to Lead™ Program, based on her work, encourages participants to embrace vulnerability in order to form stronger personal connections with others. When we lead with authenticity, we foster a culture of trust that results in better communication, collaboration, and success.

Empowering Leadership

Training for leadership excellence teaches participants to lead others through empowering them to reach higher levels of performance. Empowered employees have greater autonomy in their day-to-day tasks and have more creative problem-solving skills. In organisations where empowerment is common, company loyalty is also higher. This creates a sense of community where individuals are more willing to volunteer for additional assignments and assist one another. Both of which contribute greatly to improving overall performance. 

Ongoing Improvement 

Even the highest performing teams and organisations understand the benefits of reviewing their best results. Developing leadership excellence is an ongoing endeavour. There is value in revisiting past success in order to determine what worked well and how it might further be improved in the future. Providing access to leadership training programs ensures that you and your team are knowledgeable of the most recent trends in your field. This gives you a competitive edge and allows you to remain at the forefront of your industry. 

In the pursuit of leadership excellence it is important to first define your purpose and share your passion with your team. A leader’s success is often measured by the performance of their team, so empowering them to perform at their best will have significant benefits for you both. Leadership excellence is a continually moving target that requires you to have an invested interest in your own development and the growth of your team’s capabilities. 

In what ways to strive for excellence in your leadership?

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and  high trust organisation.

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Striving for Excellence

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The Positive Impacts of Leadership Excellence

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The Positive Impacts of Leadership Excellence

There are many benefits to developing leadership excellence for both individuals and teams. In building a deeper understanding of your personal leadership values, you establish stronger relationships with your team. The importance of these relationships is fundamental to creating meaningful change across all levels of your organisation. 

Coach, Grow, Develop Others

The benefits of leadership excellence extend far beyond only those in executive or management positions. Great leaders know that success comes from the combined efforts of everyone in the team. It is therefore the responsibility of leaders to facilitate the growth and development of others. In training for leadership excellence, leaders learn to take on the role of coach. As a coach, you provide support to those on their own development journey by helping them to implement their learning into their day-to-day responsibilities. By serving your team’s development, you also ensure your collective success.

Values Driven Leadership

There is no singular practice of leadership that applies to all situations. We often need to adapt our behaviour as the situation calls. What is important to remember when faced with a difficult decision to make, is to act in accordance with your values. Executive leadership development  helps participants to explore their values and narrow down those they feel are most important to practice in their role as a leader. Exhibiting behaviour that aligns with your identified values shows your team that you are dedicated to your commitments. You position yourself as trustworthy while establishing a culture of collaboration.

Create Meaningful Change

Leadership excellence is needed for creating meaningful change within your team and organisation. Through the development of leadership skills at the individual, team, and organisational level, executives can ensure their vision for success is a foundational component of daily practices. Interpersonal leadership skills are necessary for creating change. Leadership training programs teach us to communicate with clarity to inspire passion for the work. Those you share your vision with will become responsible for implementing it under your guidance. 


The positive impacts of training for leadership excellence flow from the individual level to ensure the growth of the team and organisation as a whole. Leadership development training provides a platform through which individuals and teams gain a greater understanding of their personal values. This contributes to the formation of deeper relationships and establishes a mutual trust. Trust is needed when creating change and coaching others. 

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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The Positive Impacts of Leadership Excellence

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Measuring Leadership Excellence

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Measuring Leadership Excellence

Understanding leadership excellence is important for leaders at every stage of their development journey. It establishes a clear measurement of where they have started, how far they have come, and where they still hope to go. Such measurements can be calculated through the implementation of leadership assessment and development tools. Receiving these assessments regularly are a valuable part of any leadership development journey.

When assessing leadership excellence, the two facets most often associated with strong leaders are their character and influence. In particular, it is how a person’s character contributes to their influence that indicates their level of leadership excellence. 

Character

A person’s character is the driving factor behind their ability to influence and lead their team or organisation. Those with a strong character tend to be viewed by others as being trustworthy, responsible, and fair in their decision making. It is these skills that make them appealing and incite positive responses from other people.

It can be difficult to assess for a quantifiable measurement of these aspects of character, but it is possible to gauge these characteristics by interpreting how a person’s peers and employees perceive them. The 360º Feedback Report is designed around this model of assessment. Both the individual and a select group of those they work with are asked to complete a survey that, when compared, provides a complete picture of the leader’s character. 


Influence

Influence is one of the biggest measurements of leadership excellence. Being able to inspire and motivate others into reaching their fullest potential is a critical aspect of your role as a leader. By making use of leadership tools for individuals as well as groups, you begin to form a clearer impression of the impact that the individual’s leadership skills have on the performance of their team.

An individual’s ability to influence the behaviours of those around them stems from their existing interpersonal relationships. Having good character and establishing trust between yourself and others, allows you to build effective interpersonal relationships. The benefits of leadership assessment tools like the Trust Inside Assessments include in-depth measurements of a person’s ability to build trust at both the individual and team level. 

Character and influence are two of the defining aspects of leadership excellence. The higher a person’s character is perceived to be, the greater the amount of influence they are able to impart onto others. To gain a full understanding of an individual’s measurement of leadership excellence, the best leadership assessment tools should be administered at both the individual and group level. 

What characteristics are most important for you as a leader?

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About the Author: The Leadership Sphere

The Leadership Sphere helps small and medium businesses and larger organisations in Australia, in creating value through leadership. The Leadership Sphere provides a humanistic approach to the way it delivers leadership, performance and coaching services. We work with leaders and senior teams who need to gain increased clarity, build capability and ensure contribution at every level in the organisation, and enable a safe, inclusive and high trust organisation.

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Measuring Leadership Excellence

leadership excellence meaning

5 Ways to Develop Leadership Excellence

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5 Ways to Develop Leadership Excellence

Developing leadership excellence should be a top priority for leaders at every level of an organisation. Making leadership assessment tools accessible provides current and future leaders with the opportunity to begin their development journey. Investing in the further education of your organisation’s leaders, ensures that you remain at the forefront of innovation within the industry.

Complete a Leadership Circle Profile™

Developing leadership excellence begins with identifying key areas and opportunities for improvement. Completing a Leadership Circle Profile™ provides a holistic measurement of an individual’s competencies and, more importantly, why they are the way they are. This can have a greater impact than just completing a 360º Feedback Report that only evaluates competencies. Understanding the reasons behind your past behaviours is imperative to being able to take the necessary action to lift your leadership to a higher level. 

Integrate Learning

Forward-thinking organisations understand the critical importance of developing high potential talent, though are concerned about the challenge of maintaining day-to-day operations while training occurs. Actionable Habit Builder is a leadership development tool that allows participants to incorporate their training into everyday practices in a way that creates meaningful and noticeable change. It empowers individuals to take control of their learning by identifying the habits they want to build, and encourages regular reflection to track progress. By integrating your learning, you establish lasting habits that lead to continued success.

Build Team Alignment

Trust and clarity are the two most important factors in building team alignment. Identifying where the lack of alignment lies can help you to re-establish your team’s commitment to achieving goals. Though an unconventional tool for measuring leadership excellence, the Team Alignment Survey will reveal the specific areas that are blocking the team from communicating effectively and what needs to be done to remove those barriers. Collaborative teams are more efficient, will generate better ideas, and share in the responsibility of decision making.

Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

It is widely understood that to be successful in business requires intelligence and expertise in your industry. But to be a successful business leader requires much more than a practical knowledge of the products or services you offer. Long term success in performance also requires having a strong emotional intelligence, or EI. Emotional intelligence is a measurement of your own self awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation. All of which contribute to the way we form relationships with co-workers and clients. Developing a strong EI and relationships with your team will have a direct impact on improving your leadership excellence. 


Leadership Impact

Leadership excellence is often thought of in terms of the level of influence an executive has over the behaviours and resulting performance of others. Effective leadership assessment tools will be able to determine whether an individual’s influence is prescriptive or restrictive. Do they guide others towards goals, or do they create limitations? The Leadership Impact Survey is designed specifically for senior managers and CEOs to evaluate their current effectiveness against their desired impact. When developing leadership excellence, you can not ignore the significance of the influence you have on those around you. 

The best tools for assessing leadership excellence are those that provide valuable insight into an individual’s current behaviours. More importantly, discovering your subconscious or forgotten reasoning for certain actions establishes a starting point for reinforcing strengths, and unravelling weaknesses. For a complete understanding of your impact as a leader, it is helpful to assess your leadership at the individual, team, and organisational levels. 

For more information about The Leadership Sphere and how we can help you unlock performance through leadership, by supporting your leaders at every level of the organisation with leadership development, executive coaching and high performance team programs please visit our website or call us on 1300 100 857.

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5 Ways to Develop Leadership Excellence