Leader’s Toolkit

Leader's Edge > Leader’s Toolkit

Welcome to the N Vision Leader’s Toolkit section! Keeping to the spirit of our Statement of Purpose, especially “we motivate and enable people to develop pragmatic mindsets that stimulate change”, here you will find pragmatic tools that may help you clarify your vision and engage the group to release their true potential.

A word of caution here; we’ve used the following interventions with very positive results, however we cannot guarantee your outcomes. From time to time we will describe activities from other sources, and if so, will clearly identify the source. If you are a leader and would like to use one of these learning interventions, please prepare carefully and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Additionally, we nvision this section to be organic and dynamic, and continue to grow from your suggestions. We will review your contributions and consider listing them in this leader’s toolkit section! Just send us your experiences and let us know if you’d like us to post them on this site with your name.

Push or Pull Kick-Off Meetings (36 KB)
Your Leader's Forum (30 KB)
Leader Feedback Processes (36 KB)
Your Expectations Exchange (34 KB)
Capturing Your Leadership or Group Reality (30 KB)

Ensure exercises are clearly explained, and use these “learning interventions” as positive and constructive development opportunities! Review and discussion afterwards are very fruitful, especially when relationship issues and differing perceptions are raised. Plan and practice all unknown aspects of the activities before using them. Logistics, facilitation and especially how you split the group into the numbers of team members per team are factors which have a big effect on how the exercises work and the experience for all.

Additional ideas for leadership development and group dynamics can be found at:

How Leaders Build Value

Using People, Organization, and Other Intangibles to Get Bottom-Line Results
Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood

Team Fitness

A How-To Manual for Building a Winning Work Team
Meg Hartzler and Jane E. Henry, Ph.D.

The World of Moderation

The Neuland Approach: Philosophy and techniques for extraordinary group performance and active learning
Michèle Neuland

Winning Group Results

Techniques for guiding group thought and decision-making processes with the Moderation Method
Karin Klebert, Einhard Schrader and Walter G. Straub

Learning Instruments

The world would be a pretty boring place if everyone were the same. Thank goodness we're all different in some ways. Yet differences can be difficult to talk about constructively. Psychometric instruments are a tool for objectively making differences between individuals transparent. They have a wide application within personal and team development. We prefer to call them "learning instruments" because they help people learn about their strengths and development areas. By providing a framework in which people can learn and talk constructively about similarities and differences, they can significantly improve individual, team and organizational functioning.

Find out more about the following learning instruments:

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator MBTI (42 KB)
STRUCTOGRAM (51 KB)
The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory (33 KB)
The Intercultural Development Inventory (30 KB)
The Kolb Learning Style Inventory (32 KB)

Leadership Facts & Figures

In this section, you’ll find new, interesting and useful facts & figures about leadership from latest research on various leadership topics, selected studies and publications. Please note, however, that the facts stated below are not always empirically proven facts.

Women Do Have Leadership Aspirations

One-third of European women and one-quarter of the men aspire to senior-most-leadership (CEO, firm managing partner, executive or management committee member).

However, more men (53%) than women (35%) believe they have already made it to the top. Of those who don’t already consider themselves senior-most leaders, 52% of women want to advance to the top.

Women in Leadership, A European Business Imperative, The Conference Board, 2002

The Two Jobs of a Leader

Leaders have two jobs relative to leadership intangibles: be and build.

First, leaders must be the leaders they expect others to become. Leadership by example is a given, not an option. Employees take their cues from leaders. The personality of the leader at the top generally becomes embedded throughout the organization.

Second, leaders must build other leaders. Leaders have the ultimate responsibility of building leadership bench strength by wisely investing in future leaders, i.e. finding out where people are, then helping them to grow into what they can be.

Adapted from Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, How Leaders Build Value – Using People, Organization, and Other Intangibles to Get Bottom-Line Results

Adaptive Corporate Culture Key to Financial Performance

Companies with adaptive corporate cultures and strong leadership practices financially outperform with non-adaptive cultures by a factor of 900 to 1.

Companies with adaptive corporate cultures and strong leadership practices financially outperform with non-adaptive cultures by a factor of 900 to 1 as measured by long-term net income and stock price growth, according to a major study of Fortune 500 companies from 1994 – 2004. Under increasing pressure to affect business change, corporate leaders continue to struggle with strategic initiatives and their successful implementation. On average, only three out of ten strategic change programs produce the business value or financial return that company leaders plan for.

Crawford Leadership & Culture Study, www.crawfordinternational.com