"It is when leaders and their people want the same things, when they go home knowing that they have, in some way, made a difference and been extraordinary that I know leadership is flourishing."
Ian Lock Associates are a leadership consultancy. All of our work with clients, be it, Leadership Development, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Teams, and Creativity and Innovation is based around your needs. Experience has shown us that leadership is an applied practice based on the future you are building and the approach that reflects your values and beliefs. True leadership is situational and requires leaders to flex their approach within a clear framework.
We work in partnership with our clients, often having the conversations that no one in the organisation is willing or able to have. We will stand with you and for you and it won’t always be comfortable. Our belief is that Leadership is and should be simple, but it’s not easy. It requires practise and commitment, both from you and from us. We therefore place an emphasis on our partnership with our clients that then creates many more possibilities for the organisation’s success. Our approach with our clients is based on the challenges that you are facing and we design and work with you to create the most powerful and effective interventions that make the biggest difference to your leadership and organisation. We have found that there is rarely a ‘one size fits all’ approach to leadership.
The best way to see how leaders and leadership is flourishing in your organisation is to look at your people and their behaviours. Some questions that you can ask yourself right now are:
What do you notice about your people’s engagement:
- Are they enthusiastic and committed?
- Are they constantly coming to you with new ideas and different ways to approach the challenges?
- Are you constantly pushing them forward or do you have to hold them back?
What do you notice about the impact of your leadership:
- Are people inspired around you and how do they show it?
- Are they clear on your vision of the future and do they feel part of it?
- If you left the organisation for a month would it run, day to day, without you?
These are just a few of the questions that can help leaders start to grow their capacity.
We bring a live and experiential approach to leadership that creates lasting shifts in the culture and ways of working in your organisation. We are purposefully non formulaic in our approach and work with you to address the relevant issues within the group we are working with. Whilst we will always cover the territory that you need to develop leaders in the organisation, we will do so by addressing the way your people work at a level of beliefs, possibility and relationship. In our experience more training and processes in this area work to a degree but to create the shift in culture you are looking for requires your people to fundamentally shift their approach.
We are different, our role is to stand with you and help create the leadership needed to improve your on track performance, whatever it takes. We look for organisations to work with who are willing to work with us and allow us to help them based on our experience.
If we choose to work together it won’t always be comfortable, we won’t just go through the motions – we’ll be with you all the way – and, in our experience, it’s always hugely engaging and often enjoyable too.
I wholeheartedly recommend Ian Lock, we have worked with many firms in the past and have never had the results we have seen through our team’s engagement. Ian has a subtle-yet-confident approach that resulted in his being immediately embraced by our team.
Ian is not only creative; he possesses the rare skill of being able to communicate ideas and bring the team to a new level of understanding not just who we are as an individual, but who we are as a team. We have seen an increase in openness, trust and communications as well as improved morale with our staff. We are convinced that this is largely a result of Ian’s efforts. Working with Ian been an excellent return on investment for us, resulting in one of the most successful periods to date.
- Abdul Butt, CEO, Hoeganaes Corporation