Our goal and development philosophy is to take a macro view of the organization, person, or team, and create unique and customized experiences based on the individual’s or team’s needs, the desired behavioral outcome goals, and the client’s own starting point, to help them grow. Then, drawing from our extensive “tool box”, our knowledge of the client, and our own background and intuition, we take complex leadership concepts, blindspots, and issues, and break them down into more basic, relatable, and usable pieces – taking them down to their raw components. We help clients take their enlightened perspectives, their aha’s and shifts-in-thinking, based on the basic raw elements, and piece them back together resulting in a higher developed sense of “leadership self” – the Macro Leader.
UPwords Inc. development fundamentals:
- There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Leaders are overlooking/forgetting/underutilizing/downplaying important basic leadership concepts and best practices while looking for the next cool concept that will fix everything. Going back to basics, internalizing these concepts anew, and integrating them into daily practice (the difficult part) have proven to be a recipe for success.
- Interactions should be uniquely designed and customized for each individual, based on their commitment, capacity, and capability, creating a space for self-awareness, reflection, and growth.
- Great leadership development begins with the “self”. Only after you have this strong foundation in place can you truly be effective in the remaining tiers/parts of your leadership.
- Interactions should be tied to the business, with a behavioral measurement in place to determine the positive business results that impact bottom-line results.
- Each client has a unique development path based on their starting point, potential, and individual goals. At a high level, there is an overarching and universal goal for clients to be more confident, more aligned with their core self, and happier. Clients instinctively know they bring different aspects of themselves to each environment. Their paradigm of “who I should be” dictates who they reveal to the world and even their perception of themselves and their capability. Often, there is a disconnect between who the world sees and “who I am” at the core. The bigger the (unrealized) gap, the more unhappiness, disengagement, and loss of productivity, in life and in the workplace. We recommend you bring your “whole self”. This alignment ultimately translates to stronger connectedness to the organization, increased engagement and productivity, and more impactful contributions to the organization. An employee disconnected from their core is a client disconnected from business-effectiveness.
- Interactions should be designed to help participants have awareness regarding the impact their actions, attitude, and leadership have on the organization culturally and financially.
- A leadership model can act as a lens through which clients view themselves and gain self-awareness – seeing themselves from a new and objective perspective, and growing in the ability to self-coach and self-manage. Our toolbox contains many models, assessments, analogies, and stories.
- Understanding people, their blind spots, and having the courage to be real, are foundations of development work. We have earned a reputation for integrity, for “doing the right thing” and “telling it like it is” while delivering high-quality service to our clients while focusing on positively impacting their bottom-line.
- We are responsible for providing an environment where learning, aha’s, and deep connections to leadership concepts can happen. The client is responsible for their own learning by participating, engaging, and making time to process.