Client’s Challenging Situation:
A family business friend was planning annual strategic planning sessions. She wanted to hold a special workshop to initiate discussion of annual corporate goals. In the past, strategic sessions had failed to yield the results she expected. She wanted her company’s leaders to participate more actively.
Scope of the Problem:
The company’s leadership team consisted of more than 10 leaders. A few of the company leaders had failed to talk at previous strategic planning sessions, sitting silent rather than sharing thoughts. These leaders viewed strategy sessions as “necessary evils” and distractions from getting work done.
Our Solution:
We proposed beginning the strategic planning sessions with a special workshop on strengths-based leadership and development…then move into the goal setting session.
The Value Delivered:
We completed StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessments on all the business leaders. We began the strategic sessions with energizing talents and strengths exercises. We talked about people’s talents. We planned upbeat content for small-group discussions of talents & strengths. Then we progressed to full-group discussions of talents & strengths. The group responded enthusiastically to the positive aspects of talking about individuals’ talents & strengths. With that base established, we transitioned to group discussions of Values and then Goals. Building on the enjoyable talents & strengths discussions, all participants were comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.
The group created a set of beyond-SMART Goals.
After the planning sessions, we were told the “strengths-based” strategic sessions generated the best goal setting results the leadership team had ever achieved.