I encourage my clients to think of strategy implementation, cultural change, leadership, engagement and communication as the same thing. Why? Because you really can’t have one without the others. These organisational challenges do not exist in isolation.

This means that effective organisational change requires a holistic approach, and constant up-skilling in all of these areas for all leaders. The right time to offer skills training to leaders is within the context of the current change effort.

It can be helpful to think about the challenges of organisational change competitively. Consider this approach:

There are two commercial firms in the same industry, with relatively similar strategies. Both have “about average” leadership teams: some good performers, some not-so-strong. Both have roughly industry-average engagement scores. Both have some technically talented managers with strong people-skills; and others in leadership roles with not-particularly-strong people-skills.

One firm offers its leadership team appropriate communication-skills-development workshops and supports their communications efforts at times of organisational change; the other doesn’t.

Which firm “wins”?

Let’s take this idea up a notch. Suppose the two firms are tackling similar markets in similar ways. Which firm “wins” the strategy implementation marathon? The one that taught its leaders to tell the organisation what to do, or the firm that taught its leaders to listen and seek feedback from everyone in the team — thereby engaging them in the change?

You can equip your leaders with strategic implementation and communication skills, and help them drive change, while you engage them in strategy discussions, and this is the way that I like to deliver leadership skills workshops. Ultra-short up-skilling sessions within strategic retreat conferences, to help the leaders drive the change being discussed, in the moments when they “return to work”.

If you’re running a big annual conference or leadership retreat, the moments at which your leaders “return” to the organisation really matter. They engage immediately with their teams, who want to know what happened. Offer your leaders new skills and approaches to support them as they engage their own teams with the change messages.

Fortunately, there is a lot of good science to guide leadership communications programs.

Quick tips: Some elements of psychological science that can help leaders in times of change:

• Collective intelligence (this is the science about the ways that teams can outperform individuals)
• The role of emotions in motivation, and how to engage them effectively
• Emotional contagion
• Self determination theory (people want to be motivated)
• The robber cave (teams need an explicit shared goal)
• In-groups and out-groups
• Fundamental attribution error
• Warmth and competence
• The big six (or five) personality traits
• Active-constructive responding
• Effective calls-to-action in complex circumstances
• Positive psychology and well-being (which has its own page)
• The processes of strategic alignment

Key products and services I offer in this space:

• Story-telling workshops: from ninety minutes (usually on the last day of a conference to prepare the leadership team to take strong, engaging messages back to the organisation) through to full-day leadership- or sales-skills story workshops
• Engagement and emotion for strategic and cultural change
• Positive leadership / Positive organisation workshops
• A quick introduction to workplace well-being (keynote): what you need to know to get started
• Emotion for leaders: the executive summary, with quick-start skills
• Bespoke workshops