Leadership development
What we mean by developing leaders:
We believe that we can develop managers, through experience and learning more about themselves and others, to be better and more confident decision makers. Organisations can, as a result, become more agile and more resilient. We also believe that we can use similar experiences to help managers become genuine leaders for their teams, knowing their people better.
Although we are not solely focussed on leadership development, our own training and extensive experience as leaders gives us the credibility and deep understanding required to create games and exercises to teach, develop and practice the techniques and attitudes required to manage and motivate a team. We believe that practical experiences are uniquely suitable for training leaders; simply put, leadership theory is easy to learn, but practicing it is much harder, particularly in the demanding sorts of situations we can create to stretch participants.
Aspects of Leading:
There are 2 separate aspects of developing leaders that we aim to achieve through games and exercises. The first is the more obvious – making leaders make decisions, perhaps complex ones under pressure, so that they can practice making good calls and creating coherent plans. The second is more subtle, but can be worked on alongside decision making; through shared experiences and learning from mistakes and successes in a safe environment, we can enable leaders to become more effective at the slow-burn business of leading a team. By allowing them to develop and demonstrate real character and to recognise it in their team, we can start to show inexperienced leaders how they might earn the respect of their teams.
With our approach we:
- make leaders make decisions
- teach leaders how to create coherent plans
- provide a safe environment to learn from mistakes and successes
- enable leaders to lead a team
- help leaders demonstrate real character & recognise it in their team.
- show leaders how to earn the respect of their teams
How do we do it?
We develop leadership through a very well-worn approach, and can either deliver an off-the-shelf experience to introduce concepts and kick-start development or a more bespoke experience, designed to reflect the specific issues and challenges of an organisation or even a small team within it. First, we introduce terminology and theory, illustrated with examples, putting ideas and building mental models in the heads of our audience. Next, we run an exercise, designed to put the players (particularly the leaders) under pressure, through complexity, dilemmas and urgency. Finally, we then enable a reflection session, in which players and leaders can share their emotional and intellectual experiences, which we can then pin back onto the theory covered beforehand.
Stage one:
Terminology, theory, examples and mental models.
Stage two:
Exercise or Game to challenge the players and leaders.
Stage three:
Evaluation, reflections, emotional and intellectual experiences.
Why develop leaders?
Not investing in leader development wastes the potential of not just decision makers and managers, but also of their teams. Investing in developing leaders is very powerful.
Better leaders not only make better decisions under pressure but lead more motivated and task-orientated teams which are then more confident, resilient and agile when situations become challenging.
Our Network
At Evocatus, our focus is on using engagement through games to help businesses achieve their objectives, using our experience as leaders, decision makers, trainers and exercise designers. We are confident that we have the key skills to deliver truly transformational leader development service, but are equally confident that the best events will use the expertise of others, depending on the client’s needs. Our strong links to small businesses offering services as diverse as film-making and organisational psychology in the UK and beyond mean that we have a constant feed of new ideas, innovations and context to make sure we can deliver exactly what our clients are hoping for.
Where we operate
Our base at Hartham Park in Wiltshire is a perfect setting for games designed for leadership development: Swindon, Bristol and Bath are all within very easy reach, as is Oxfordshire. Alternatively, we routinely travel to deliver exercises at an organisation’s own offices or at an entirely different location; this can be particularly effective when a corporate away-day or meeting incorporates leadership development games. London and other major cities with good public transport networks provide an ideal place to look at a leadership development; Swindon and other regional hubs tend to provide more options for getting out into the countryside or for using larger indoor spaces without breaking the budget.
If you are interested in using our Problem Solving services for your organisation or company then please get in touch to discuss your requirements.