I was once given several stretch assignments as part of an emerging leaders program early in my career in aerospace at Bombardier. Leveraging my experience, I share four ways to accelerate development and inclusion of diverse talent.

You made it! You achieved a hard-earned goal or achievement or you go to the end of an intense project, the end the year, the end of something important. Now what? If it feels anti-climatic, you’re not alone. The feelings of ambiguity, fuzziness, lack of clarity about the next step or direction, boredom, or indifference are normal. We’ve had clients end up here from time to time, some even regularly land here as a part of a regular cycle of activity. One of our clients calls this the time for “coffee and contemplation”.

Let’s start by looking at the process of how you got to the goal or end point. Here we are talking about the big, transformative and monumental goals rather than operational or routine tasks. In the beginning of the pursuit, you started with some lack of clarity and uncertainty of your true ability to get to the outcome you want. With each step you took to get closer the vision and the finish line, you got greater clarity of the vision and increased confidence that you’d be able to make it happen. This clarity and confidence helped spur you on to push into higher gear and as the end came into focus, you sprinted to the finish line with an all-out effort.

Behaviours are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for organization values. They provide the framework and metrics for assessing leadership and the culture it creates. However, defining these everyday behaviours can prove to be a challenging exercise. Behaviours are tangible expressions of values, the actions we can see or hear, and are the building blocks of a thriving organizational culture. They are objective, meaning that two people could describe it the same way. Behaviours can be recorded by a video camera.

When you are frustrated, annoyed, or disappointed there is a boundary that has been crossed. Boundaries are the conditions of our expectations that tell us what’s okay and what’s not okay. Inside the boundary are the behaviors and outcomes we want; outside the boundary is all the stuff we don’t want. When we are enthusiastic, pleased, or satisfied we are experiencing behaviors that fit inside our boundaries. Letting people cross your boundaries deteriorates your resilience and takes you away from being the leader you want to be.

Leadership development is one of the key ways successful organizations can become more strategic and operate even more effectively. As an executive, I sponsored and was part of a number of really great executive development programs as well as some that were interesting and fun but didn’t yield the long term impact that we hoped for. What I observe as the difference to success was integrating the program into everyday business so that leaders can put ideas and concepts into practice with real activities or experiments to make progress.

When your leaders have the opportunity to work on real topics that matter to the organization and themselves, your leadership program can have lasting impact and reinforce the culture you want.

Here are six principles to consider when building your leadership development program

Inviting your team to present at executive meetings is a unique opportunity to showcase your team and their work (and your leadership). When your team has the opportunity to present to the executive, it is a career opportunity to showcase their expertise, credibility, and impact. As their leader, it is essential that you support your team before, during, and after the meeting to be at their best, have the opportunity to influence, and continue learning to become even better.

We have so many words to try to describe a hunch – sixth sense, our Spidey senses, intuition, gut feeling, instinct. A hunch is an intuitive feeling or suspicion that something might be true or important, even if there is incomplete evidence to support it. It can be a valuable source of insight and creativity yet we sometimes don’t use our hunches to full advantage.

Leadership is more than just achieving fast results. It involves building strong relationships, earning trust, and establishing credibility with your team. Acting alone without considering the impact on your direct reports can sabotage their effectiveness and damage relationships, which is bad for your team and the business. This can ultimately result in reduced engagement, productivity, and negatively impact the bottom line. The solution? Slow down, practice empathy and humility. Take the time to build strong relationships, have those tough conversations, and work towards common goals. This approach creates a culture of trust, autonomy, and collaboration that sets your team up for long-term success.

The 2022 word of the year, according to Collins Dictionary, is permacrisis: an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events. 2022 globally has been filled with pandemic, war, volatile markets, weather chaos, rising inflation and more. As leaders you’re dealing with supply chain, talent retention and attraction, quiet quitting, hybrid work environments, economic uncertainty, rising costs for labour and materials and so much more.

Imagine if we could harness all the lost energy by eliminating the times when people in our teams said ‘yes’ but really thought ‘well maybe’ or ‘nope, not doing that’. That is a dirty yes. It’s is an invisible process that drags down the speed of every organization. Not only that, when this happens we lose mental energy, get frustrated with each other and erode trust – all the things opposite to what we want in great leadership.

This is especially relevant right now as many organizations are renewing their business strategy and looking for buy-in to new priorities. Exposing the dirty yes takes some courage – what if I get disagreement? How will I convince everyone? This is a great opportunity to practice ways to eliminate the dirty yes – success of those new initiatives is at stake.

So what does a dirty yes look like?