How the Foundational Leadership Program and QO2 profile can strengthen your leaders’ ability to deal with personal change and business disruption.
Executive Summary
The Foundational Leadership Program was created by Paul Mills Consulting Pty Ltd in 2010 as a true action learning program, with an initial focus on supporting leaders in the media sector as disruption was challenging traditional mindsets and business operating models. More than 2000 leaders have undertaken this program since in Australia and New Zealand, and the QO2 feedback tool from TMS has been front and centre in that process. The Opportunities-Obstacles Quotient Profile provides participants with deep self-awareness, the cornerstone of leadership, and is particularly resonant in environments experiencing rapid change, technological disruption or where complex decisions require multiple lenses on the problem at hand. The tool also provides insight into managing personal resiliency during change, and what might help or hinder the development of learning agility, especially during adverse events. In combination, the Foundational Leadership Program and the Opportunities-Obstacles Quotient Profile, provide a solid basis for leaders to maximise the advantages of disruption for their enterprise and transform the way they think and work.
Using the QO2 Profile Summary
For years now, at Paul Mills Consulting Pty Ltd, we have been talking about the future of work. That future has arrived, and organisations are needing to adjust at pace. We do know that capabilities like emotional intelligence will become more important in the human workforce as AI and automation change the nature of jobs and tasks. The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report (2018) provides compelling insight into emerging and declining capability requirements, and highlights the importance of leaders being able to lead with intellectual integrity. Knowing the lens that we apply to complex problems including those associated with change, is a critical component of this. The QO2 Profile Summary is therefore an invaluable snapshot into the individual that does not limit and pre-determine responses but rather allows the individual to own their data and experiment with different practices to establish if this aids effectiveness in a changing environment.
Application for Leadership and Team Development
There are many applications for the QO2 Profile in a team context. Some years back, we provided individual QO2 profiles to the Leadership Team at Fairfax Digital, including a team profile. This enables them to experience the same tool as their leaders who attended the Foundational Leadership Program, creating a common tool and language in the business. The team profile also assisted them to better engage with each other by better understanding the value of diversity and the value of the different lenses at the table. We would see this as a feedback tool that:
Strengthens self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-management
Provides analysis that assists individuals to survive and thrive during challenging experiences and events
Gets teams together to focus on their strengths and opportunities
Provides a roadmap for development, as well as development tactics for leaders to experiment with
Is consistently validated by participants as accurate and insightful
Leveraging the Sub-Scales in the QO2 Profile
The best part of the QO2 profile resides in the nuances of the sub-scales. For example, bringing together results on the Moving Towards Goals and Multi-Pathways Thinking sub-scales can provide insight around persistence in solving complex problems and managing energy levels when set backs occur. Time Focus and Optimism when considered together provide a rich insight into how the individual sees the world compared to others, and assists to deal with conflict that occurs when different lenses are focused on the same issue. The point is around understanding your impact as a leader, and also leveraging diversity – dissenting voices are important to take account of when your enterprise is being disrupted, whether those views align to yours or not. Whilst the profile does not measure Change Leadership capability, it does paint a compelling profile around how individuals respond to change, including the perceptions that may accrue about you from others when this occurs.
Applying to an Action Learning Process or Adaptive Challenge
The Foundational Leadership Program was designed to assist leaders on three critical, contemporary leadership attributes and capabilities – curiosity, collaboration and personal influence. The program uses action learning principles to encourage individuals to research and experiment in their practice, in the pursuit of making better decisions, communicating more effectively and collaborating with others. Whilst the Foundational Leadership Program focuses on individual leadership development goals, it also works effectively where leaders or teams are engaged in an adaptive challenge. Many participants arrive into our programs with strong technical skills, and attempt to solve complex problems with a technical mindset. When they leave our programs, they have an awareness and skillset that allows them to tackle complex problems in an adaptive way, signalling true transition to a leadership role.
Challenges
Most participants entering this program are facing considerable disruption, whether related to their business or operating model, how they work, new expectations around teams and collaboration, establishing trust with stakeholders and customers or embracing digital transformation. Resiliency is often challenged in these environments, reflected in fatigue and sometimes anxiety. Leaders are expected to drive environments that are inclusive and psychologically safe, yet the dynamics of rapid change often expose a raw nerve that requires deep self-reflection – how do I as a leader see the environment and its challenges? What do others see in me as I navigate these challenges? Part of that answer resides in the QO2 Profile. When change happens, we respond in terms of transitions. William Bridges, the American Psychologist, once concluded that change often fails through a lack of leaders thinking through who will need to let go of what. The QO2 profile helps us to understand the diverse range of responses, including those of the leader, and to use this knowledge to get a balance of lenses on complex problems. Leaders with an appreciation of the QO2 orientation towards risk are better able to make decisions, engage teams and stakeholders, communicate more effectively and manage change resistance.
How the Foundational Leadership Program and QO2 Profile helped
The Foundational Leadership Program assists individual leaders to set development goals that align to their specific needs and needs of their enterprise. Leaders set goals after the program workshop which they actively research and pursue over a period of 8 – 10 weeks. They then have the opportunity to present to an executive panel on their journey, their commitments to act, their learnings, successes and set-backs. Presentations are graded to reflect effort and impact. This means that there is a real accountability around learning, including for relevant insights from the QO2 Profile. Clients of Paul Mills Consulting Pty Ltd have, for the past decade, reported strong examples of personal change as a direct result of the program. Goals formulated during the program are agreed by line Managers and written into performance plans and individual leaders have reported greatly enhanced learning agility through the personal research process that forms the heart of action learning during the Foundational Leadership Program.
Results, Return, Future Plans
Measuring return on learning investment beyond level one workshop evaluation has been a priority for most organisations. We take care in measuring impact from the program, highlighting personal growth and improved impact. We have partnered with one client to take a data driven view around leadership goals set and executed, grades awarded for the final panel presentation and calibrated this against a separate talent assessment exercise conducted using the nine box performance potential matrix. This exercise highlighted a direct correlation between presentation grades and talent assessment, allowing this client to target development spend going forward. We hear time and time again about the impact of the program and its profiles, including the QO2 profile, and look forward to the next decade of developing leaders in the region.
Testimonials
‘The Foundational Leadership Program was an excellent eye-opener, with well delivered content that was thought provoking. I now have skills that will make me more effective in the workplace’.
‘Extremely enlightening, with very useful tools to support me’.
‘Paul is an amazing Facilitator – he held the attention of the floor for the whole two days’.
Learn more about the Foundational Leadership Program on the website
Paul Mills is Director of Paul Mills Consulting Pty Ltd and an Adjunct Faculty Member of the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales. He has 26 years of experience in designing and delivering leadership development programs on four continents, for leaders at all levels including Executive Teams.