 Hello and welcome to today's webinar, Building Alignment within your Executive Team. Today's topic introduces a framework of vision, alignment and execution. It will focus on tangible steps directed towards leading a group or organisation towards common goals and achieving desired outcomes. I would now like to welcome our presenter for today, Tracy Morgan. Tracy is the founder and managing director of About HR. She works with client organisations to build HR frameworks, which link directly to their strategic objectives, delivering business excellent and growth by building people and systems capability. Her commercial background in finance, coupled with extensive HR experience, enable her to offer consulting services that focus on delivering commercial return on investment for her clients. So without any further ado, I'd like to welcome Tracy. How are you today? I'm very welcome. Thanks, Sarah. Welcome, and thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on leadership with you. What we're going to look at today is building alignment within your Executive Team. We're going to look at the VAE model of leadership, which stands for vision, alignment and execution, and how it could improve the effectiveness of the Executive Team in your organisation or any leadership team. I want to also briefly introduce you to a leadership development programme based on the tool. Firstly, ask yourself what is leadership? Is it effective communication? Accountability? Collaboration? Is it providing direction or issuing instructions? Can anyone do it? Is it an innate quality you were born with, or can it be learnt? In my opinion, it's a combination of all of the above characteristics and qualities applied in different situations. So let's have a look at how one of the top graduate schools look at this. So we're going to look at a quote from one of the leaders at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, who said, learning to be a leader is like learning to be a great athlete, musician or artist. It's a capability that develops over time through trial and error, hard work and practice. Does everyone agree with this description? Or anyone like to challenge it or add their own description? Please feel free to type in the box if you've got a different definition of leadership. But eyes are a green. Everyone's flow to get started today, but that's fine. Please feel free to interact throughout the presentation. I'll try to answer the questions as we go and also give you some opportunity at the end to participate in questions as well. Let's have a look at the VAE model, vision, alignment and execution. So we're going to look at leadership versus management. What's the difference? Does anybody want to suggest what the difference between leadership and management is? Thank you, Nick, for your comment there. It does take time to build leadership skills. So for the purposes of this model, the VAE model, I'm going to look at leadership as a one on many relationship. I'm going to consider management to be a one on one relationship. So within the VAE model, this considers that leaders have three fundamental responsibilities, crafting a vision, building alignment and champion execution. So we're going to look at each of those above drivers of leadership in turn. Yes, thank you, Rebecca. I agree with you. Management equals day-to-day and leadership is the bigger vision, which fits very nicely into this model as well. So let's firstly look at crafting a vision. This means imagining and improve future states that the group will make a reality through its work. This is very much applied to a workplace situation. One of the things that sets us apart as human beings were the only animal that thinks about the future. Think about this scenario, getting home from work one day, and finding that your dog has rearranged the living room. Perhaps he was bored, or maybe he's mad at you for leaving him alone all day. Or maybe he was set up by the cats. Not quite sure. Some cats are capable of that. Or what is he thinking? The stuffing inside this sofa doesn't quite work. What would happen if I scattered it all over the carpet and rearranged the room? Would it pull the room together nicely? So I think we'll all agree that no dog is capable of such a thought process. But one thing is certain, he has rearranged the room, but it was not part of a great master plan. This is what makes us different as human beings. We can think and we actually look to the future and we plan and we vision. We have a vision for what our lives could look like. So congratulations to everybody listening today. We're all more qualified to lead an organization than a black Labrador. We can think ahead and we can envision a future that doesn't currently exist. It may not sound like much, but biologically speaking, it's quite an outstanding ability. Think about this common interview question. Where would you like to be in five years' time? Answers might include running my own company, living overseas, having completed my MBA. This is not just planning. What we're actually doing is imagining what our world would look like in the future. So this is what leaders are doing when they craft a vision. So I'm just gonna share a little quote by Helen Keller. The only thing that's worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision. Does anybody know who Helen Keller is? She's actually an American author, political activist and lecturer. It might be before some of your time, but she's very, very famous. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, at a time when women were rarely going to university, let alone disabled people. So the name of Helen Keller has become known around the world as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. So let's look at vision. Is this a gift or can it be learned? Has anyone heard of the myth of the mountaintop? This basically assumes that the ability to create a vision is a trait that's possessed by the truly gifted and that crafting a vision is an independent exercise done by a lone genius. And that a vision's something to be delivered from on high, the mountaintop down. But that's basically to what it is. It is a myth. Consider instead that most people can learn. Great visions rarely come from one source. It's an art that can be understood and practised. And that leaders at all levels are responsible. So why is it important? Experienced leaders see vision as critical to their work as a leader, to every leader in the organisation. And to establish them where they want to take the group. I'm going to share some research with you now. As part of a project, a research project through a group of employees, they were asked to rate their organisation's leader on an overall scale and also whether they created a strong vision for the future. Interesting, the ones that rated their leaders very highly did say that they created a, so the highest rated leaders said that they created 87%, said they created a strong vision for the organisation. Of the worst rated leaders, only 10% created a strong vision and 90% didn't. So there is a direct correlation between creating a vision and being rated by your followers as a strong leader. So why is it important? It helps us stand out. It provides purpose. It can drive the creation of goals and elevate our work to the next level. And it sparks our imagination. It touches on our human need to do something of value with our lives. It can help us stand out from our competition. Most people here would have heard of probably Jim Collins' business classic book, The Good to Great. I'm sure most people have heard of that. And the concept is the BHAG, B-H-A-G. So the big hairy audacious goal. It's something that serves as a focal point and galvanises people into action and creates team spirit. And one thing to remember, if you don't know where you're going, you're probably not going to end up in the right place. So whose responsibility is it? Is it from the top or from every level in the organisation? Thinking of an example, your CEO's vision could be for your organisation will shift from domestic leader to international market leader within five years. Quite a bold goal there and vision for the organisation. So how does that sort of drift down through the organisation and drift down and filter through? So the customer service manager may establish his team's vision as being to ensure we are viewed as the international leader, we will offer 24 seven support in the local languages of all our customers. So very much aligned with the top level vision, but that's his own vision for his team. So both the CEO and the customer service manager are doing the work of leaders in crafting a vision. So there is a need to support each other. What we're going to do next is look at how to craft a vision. So as human beings we're remarkably curious. Think of how babies learn. They try some things such as learning to walk and when they fall over they try again and again. Even as adults we're pretty keen to explore new things although we do become more conservative and cautious as we get older, but we are keen to try new things such as the new restaurant in our suburb or a new brand of wine or maybe a new holiday destination. But when we walk into work on a Monday morning our sense of curiosity and sense of exploration seems to take a nosedive. Why? Because we've got deadlines to meet, meetings to attend and usually an inbox full of messages demanding attention. So curiosity is one of the first casualties of responsibility. Have you ever heard the phrase there's just not enough time in the day? You've probably said it yourself, I know how I have. So let's look at a little bit more of the research data. We have the same group of people. What should leaders do more of in your organization? So these are the requests that came through. So I wish my leader would be more active about finding new opportunities, would focus more on improving our methods, do more to rally people to achieve the goals and do more to encourage the group to stretch the boundaries and be more open to input from others. We'll keep that one in mind because we will come back to that. So let's look at the first step in crafting a vision. We're going back to the model now. There's three steps into crafting a vision and the first step is exploration, which is remaining open and prioritizing the big picture. So this is about remaining open is don't dismiss ideas too quickly. Explore the what ifs. It's easy to say and knock somebody down very quickly and say, oh, that idea is not gonna work. Oh, that's just pie in the sky. So think about these things, the what ifs. What ifs we teamed up with the London office? What if our two systems could talk to each other? What if we went paperless? Not every options would be good and would be practical, but at this stage we're just really exploring the ideas and that should be encouraged. We need to remain open and that's difficult sometimes. We're wired to reward closure. Think how good it feels to kick off those things on your to-do list at the end of the day or to clear your inbox. I know that's one of my to-do lists today and I've not made much progress so far. So how do we remain open? Give yourself permission and time to think, to toy with an idea and just mull it around. Is that gonna work? How could it work? Don't reject an idea if you're not sure how it could be implemented. That's for later. We'll look at the practicalities later. Keep yourself as open as possible. And prioritizing the big picture. It's easier to put together a puzzle if we can see the picture on the box and use it as a guide. Think about the last time you did a jigsaw puzzle, usually on a rainy public holiday. But for leaders, there isn't usually a box available with a picture of what that's going to look like. It has to come from imagination. So leaders are going through the process of thinking what will the big picture look like when all the pieces have come together? So how do we prioritize the big picture? We need to understand our context and clearly see it. How does the outside world see your organization? What do they like? What are their frustrations? We need to ask questions. So just to give you some tips for the exploration stage, allow yourself time, give ideas a chance and don't dismiss them too quickly. Look outside of your organization to understand the context. Ask questions and remember to part the details at this stage. The second driver in crafting a vision is boldness. This means being adventurous and speaking out. We talked about the CEO that had crafted a vision to be the international market leader from domestic market leader within five years. That's pretty bold and you could say he was being fairly adventurous when he thought up that idea. But it is bold, so boldness is important. I think when we ask ourselves why boldness is important, most of us realize, in fact all of us realize that the world is constantly changing. But what is sort of becoming more and more prevalent is that the pace of that change is getting faster and faster. As a result of this, what's panning out is that the lifespan of businesses is becoming shorter. So if leaders don't advocate bold visions, they'll quickly become irrelevant or obsolete. So they do actually need to have the courage and that's easier for some than others. So why is it difficult to be bold? People don't like disruption and change by nature. Boldness can be quite uncomfortable for the vast majority of people but it can also open you up to failure and put your head on the chopping block. Some people just think it's not worth it. It's just too risky if we make mistakes. Peter Drucker, an American economist, basically said people who don't take risks make about two big mistakes a year on average. People who do take risks make about two big mistakes a year on average. So exactly the same outcome. So risk takings to be advocated and to be encouraged in business. But calculated risks are usually the best way to go. And speaking out means voicing ideas that may seem unconventional or even impractical. So that's sort of been courageous as well. The desire not to look like an idiot is woven into our DNA and it is healthy to care about what people think about you but not to the detriment of being too cautious all the time. So leaders in any organization or in any field need to rein in their self-protection instincts and push themselves to go out on a limb. Have you ever heard of the phrase, let me play devil's advocate for a minute? I would suggest that most of us have heard this in meetings and in conferences and unfortunately in brainstorming sessions when we're trying to create ideas. This is the one phrase that stifles innovation and we should really ban the phrase from any organization. So just give you some tips here to ask yourself what's the worst that could happen if we follow this idea? What's the best? And usually that's far better than the worst. Try your idea out first on a smaller group if you are cautious and never use that phrase I know this is a bad idea but because people already have a negative connotation with your idea so never preface your ideas with that. And assume that you're gonna have to deal with resistance. So the next step in crafting a vision is testing assumptions but first what we're gonna do is try a little poll and I'm gonna hand you over to Sarah and I want quick answers to this one please. Can you just click the box? I'll hand you over to Sarah for the poll. Yes, okay so I just go into launch a quick poll to get everyone's opinion on this question. So if you can just click the answer that best corresponds with you but just as quick as possible like Tracy said. So a bat and ball cost $1.10. If the bat costs $1 more than the ball how much does the ball cost? Is it $1, $0.10 or five cents? So I think we're going for instinct here, aren't we? Yeah, quick questions. It's a little bit of fun to make sure you're all paying attention. We'll allow everybody a minute to get their answers in. So at the moment we're standing on 100% for $0.10. Yeah, so eight people have responded. I'll respond as well, why not? I'll go for $0.10 as well. We did test Sarah earlier and that was her. Yes, I've had my test so I'm not going to give anything away. Okay, so thank you for those of you who responded to the poll. We've got a nice one response here. Tracy, $0.10, is that the correct answer? Actually, $0.10 is not the correct answer. Think about it, the bat costs $1 more than the ball and you've only got $1.10. The correct answer is actually five cents. So it needs a little bit of time to get to that and the trial and error. So I'll just click through that. If you were wrong, which 100% of you were, you can actually check your answer. The most intuitive answer is $0.10, which you all went for, but that is wrong. It can take a little trial and error to reach the correct answer, but if it's $1 more, you've only got $1.10, then the bat costs $1.05 and the ball costs $0.05, which is a dollar difference. But we assumed we knew the right answer instinctively. So this is where we do actually need to test our assumptions. So how do we test assumptions? We need to seek counsel and explore implications, which we didn't do in the poll and we weren't meant to. It was basically intuition. So, and just to share with you, those of you that did put your hands up and take part in the poll, when this was done at the Stamford Graduate School of Business, very similar results and that 95% of people got that question wrong. So you're in good company, so. One quote that I really like this one, people might have heard of David Ogilvy, the famous American advertising magnet, but his quote was that most companies use research like a drunk user's a lamppost for support, not illumination. I find that one quite interesting. So have you ever fallen in love with an idea and you can't wait to tell the world about it? How do you feel when the first person tells you, you've just sort of spoken about your great idea, you're full of enthusiasm, the first person you tell says, I don't get it or that'll never work. So your bold vision has just encountered its first reality check. So this is the time to actually ask yourself, is the idea not ready for the world or is the world not ready for my idea? And you think of some business leaders that you admire out there and sometimes they've actually created something through their vision and been ahead of their time, but everybody will catch it eventually if it's a good solid idea. So some tips for this in terms of testing or assumptions is consult with people that you trust. This could be your co-workers, it could be a group of people you trust externally, your friends or colleagues in an industry body. Approach people individually and test your idea in smaller company first. Get different perspectives. So ask somebody that is totally removed or would not get any benefit from your idea, just sort of a completely objective perspective and test your ideas through research and try to predict the outcomes of different ways of doing things. Warren Benes said the first basic ingredient of leadership is a guiding vision. So unless you know where you're going and why you're going there, you cannot possibly get there. I would tend to agree with that. So now let's look at building alignment. So we've now crafted our vision, it's bold, we've tested our assumptions, we've got a very strong vision in place. Now we've got to build alignment within the team. This basically means getting to the point where everyone in the group understands and is committed to the direction. So no matter how clearly you may see the picture of your improved future, your vision, without aligning others and getting them on board or getting buy-in, your vision is gonna remain a pipe dream. So this is the next logical step after crafting a vision. It's the act of gaining buy-in for the vision and it's absolutely critical in moving from imagination to reality. So if crafting a vision is probably the most conceptual part of the VAE model, building alignment is the most people-centric. Therefore, dealing with people, it can be quite complex and it can be unpredictable. But the magic words here are committed to the direction. There is a difference between building alignment and demanding compliance. And unfortunately a lot of organizations, particularly the multinationals and the larger companies, this is a step that often gets missed and that they just say, right, this is our vision and this is what you're going to do and this is what it means. So there's no buy-in, it's more of an instruction so it's a demanded compliance. But it's important to note that building alignment happens both at an emotional and a rational level. Not one or the other, but both. So why is building alignment important? It can conserve time and energy. You know, it's like to try and fight against the grain if people are going against your ideas. It takes a lot of energy to get them on board. It's better to do it up front so it does conserve a lot of time. It can actually provide a forum for questions and concerns and it can unite and excite people around your vision. So effective leaders make sure that everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing and why. So no wasted energy. Effective leaders invite feedback and input. Acknowledging that some of the whole is actually greater than some of the parts. And leaders should not be afraid of healthy debate as it creates an opportunity for everyone in the organization to feel a sense of ownership of the vision. And it's essential to not just gaining but maintaining buy-in. So if team members are unclear about the big picture and they don't get the vision and they don't have a personal investment, it can actually lead to feelings of disconnection and frustration. So whose responsibility is it to build alignment? Then ask the same question, is it from the top or from every level? That everyone needs to buy-in for something to be effective. So we're next gonna look at how we do that. The first step in building alignment is actually gaining clarity. So this is actually communicating your vision with clarity, explaining your rationale and structuring messages clearly. The research suggests that the leaders often overlook communicating what is obvious and intuitive to them. They've come up with a vision, it's their baby. But to others, it can seem like a mystery. So leaders actually need to connect the dots and put the rationale and put the message out there that this is the thinking behind their decision. So I've listed a few tips here in terms of how we can get clarity. So be straightforward and be as transparent as possible when you're communicating your message. Try to look at it from the listeners' view. Put yourself in their shoes. Monitor people's reactions when you're actually communicating your message and try to find the headline of your message. What's the core thing that people are gonna grab on to and reinforce it regularly? Remember that providing clarity is a delicate balance between keeping it simple and addressing the real world complexities. So you need to share enough information to anticipate basic questions without drowning the listener in details. So the second driver in building alignment is actually dialogue. So this means exchanging perspectives and being receptive to feedback. There's important difference between discussion and dialogue and I don't want to bore you with the literature, but discussion literally means tossing ideas backwards and forwards in a sort of winner-takes-all competition. If you look at the definition of it. However, dialogue is a little bit more subtle and sophisticated. It's from the Greek word deologos, which means putting together. So deat means through and logos means word or meaning. So putting this together, it suggests sort of a free flowing of meaning through a group and allowing time to discover your insights not attainable on an individual basis. So it's group theme, I suppose, and different perspectives. So some tips for this stage. Try to create an open and relaxed environment. It is a two-way conversation. So have one-on-one conversations, but make sure you listen to the other person. So give them a voice. So practice reflective listening. Your tone and body language are very important. So stay receptive. Try to keep your body language open and stay neutral. Remember, it is a two-way conversation, and people that are going to be affected by your vision should be given a voice. So we've all probably heard of the fifth level of leadership. Does anybody know what the fifth level of leadership is and want to hazard a guess or type it in quickly? Because this is very, very valuable in this stage. Nope, nobody has it in their guess? Okay, I'll just say it's actually humility. So nowhere is the value of humility made clearer than in the process of dialogue. It should allow leaders, if done effectively, to benefit from different perspectives by being open and receptive. So the next driver is actually inspiration. So what I want you to do is ask yourself if you're inspiring. This was the same leadership group. And actually, very, very small percentage of organizational leaders actually rated themselves as compelling. Only 5.8% gave themselves a top rating for this. And looking down those lists, captivating was only 8.1% down to dynamic. So if you were to rate yourself on a five-point scale in any of those characteristics, what would you score? The barter in this table would suggest that only a handful of people would rate inspiration as being their thing. For most of us, someone telling us to be more inspirational is like telling us to be taller. It's actually something that's very, very hard and can make us uncomfortable. However, we can all improve in this area. So let's look at inspiration. What does it mean? It means being expressive and being encouraging. Have you ever read a poem and been moved by it, or perhaps a book or an article? So if you read something that's really profound, it can be just an equally profound reading off the written page or when you hear somebody say it. But the reader, in that instance, has found a way to communicate his passion in a way that connects with the audience. So he's been expressive and he's inspiring. So think about your own situation and how hard it is to encourage somebody at work. It seems easy, but it's actually something most of us struggle to do. Or we just simply forget to do it. Most of us need to make a conscious effort to encourage others and to provide positive feedback. It's easy to be negative, but it's not easy to encourage others and be positive and provide positive feedback. So let's just look at a few tips what we can take away from this. So identify and label in what your passion feels like. So if this idea is successful, what does that feel like for you? And try to get that message across. So speak to people's emotions. You need the rationale, but you also need to get them to buy in and speak to their emotions. Remember, when you communicate in your message, when you're trying to build alignment, your body language and mood is infectious. So everyone said that somebody has an infectious personality. If it's very positive, then people will actually buy into your and be aligned with your vision. Try to provide a common aspiration. What we're trying to do is build alignment and everybody pointing in the one direction and working towards the same goal. And rally the truth. As a leader, that is very much a core responsibility. So thinking about the benefits of this, George Labovitz, and again another American economist, said, in an aligned organization, every employee from the executive suite to the loading dock understands not only the strategy and goals of the business, but also how his or her work contributes them directly. I remember a famous story. We all know who Richard Branson is. He walked into the foyer of a business. And it was actually he got a meeting with the board of directors because it was a business he was thinking of purchasing. So he did his due diligence while he was waiting in the reception area. He walked around and spoke to a few people. And one of the guys he noticed was actually a disabled guy that was sweeping in the foyer. And he was intellectually disabled. So Richard Branson walked up to him and said, what's your job? It's pretty obvious the guy was sweeping the floor and mopping the floor. And the guy turned around to him and said, I'm the director of first impressions. So he knew what his responsibility was there. It might be a menial task, but he knew that it was his responsibility to keep that reception area stick and span and clean so that anybody coming in had a good first impression. So that was his role, he was the director of first impressions. So that's what we mean about aligning everybody. He knew his role in the bigger picture vision of the organization. So we're going to look at the next level of the third driver of the VAE model, which is championing execution. This means ensuring that the conditions are present for the imagined future, your vision, to be turned into reality. So share a little quote by Thomas Edison here, which is always one that amuses me. Vision without execution is actually hallucination. So Thomas Edison is a light bulb thing. So now we've crafted our vision and we've got our people aligned behind the vision. They're all very keen. So what does the role, the leader play in execution? As a leader, you need to create an environment that stimulates creativity and productivity. And leaders need to encourage a sense of positive challenge of collaboration and the development of new ideas. So in effect, the leader needs to champion execution. Let's have a look at why. It serves as a tangible sign of the leader's commitment. They don't just need to talk the talk, they need to walk the walk as well. The leader needs to develop concrete strategies that can be implemented. And it gives people a sense of achievement. So whose responsibility is it? We've asked this question before. Is it from the top or from every level in the organization? Again, it's all levels. So what does execution involve? Let's have a look at how the VAE model addresses execution. The first step is building momentum. So Ralph Emerson basically said, the speed of the leader is determined by the pace of the pack. So the leader's got to bring people within. He's got to be driven and he's got to initiate action, but he's got to make sure everybody keeps up. This is probably the most intuitive part of the VAE model. So he's got to initiate that action. He's got to lead by example. He's got to commit to deadlines and make sure other people are committed to deadlines. And reducing the time between meetings when you're looking at executing a vision, keep the momentum going. Challenge your priorities to make sure that you are focused on the end goal. And the leader needs to recognize proactivity and reward proactivity. Think about a time when you've been on a successful team and you know what it feels like when things are going well. You seem to be getting all the breaks and things are moving ahead at speed. Who wouldn't want to have momentum on their side? So when you've got momentum and you've got everybody working in the same direction, people don't necessarily focus on the pain or the pain of the journey, but they focus on the satisfaction the eventual outcome will bring. The next stage in champion execution is actually providing the structure. So the leader's role in any organization is to provide the plan and to analyze in depth. So involve people in this process. Involve the people that will be doing the work. Develop robust and sharply focused plans. Make it clear what people are expected to do. Communicate them effectively. And think critically about the possible outcomes and allow time to analyze what the results have been to date and do you need to regive your plan? Do you need to change things to make sure it is effective and keep on track? Benjamin Franklin basically said by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail and this is actually critical in actually executing any vision. The next step in champion execution is actually feedback. So address problems as they arise. There's no journey from A to B that goes in a straight line within business. So address your problems as they occur and offer praise for good work and achievements. So tips here would be to create an open culture and have regular dialogue with your people. Focus on problems and not the people. So don't criticize and don't play the blame game. That's really, really critical. So focus on what the problem is not who's caused it or how it's been caused focus on the problems and deliver in solution and give praise but don't just give praise make sure it's genuine and make sure you keep up to date on process on progress, sorry. It's sometimes quite hard to provide frank feedback. We're aware that we may hurt someone's feelings or maybe even damage their confidence but as a leader you actually need to be prepared to go outside your comfort zone. So now we've looked at all the components of the VAE model so let's look how it comes together. This is basically the diagram that says it. So it's got three steps across the top which is crafting a vision, building alignment and champion execution. So there's three drivers for each step and then two behavioral continuator for each driver. So to put this in practice the work of leaders model was developed. Now this was developed by an organization called Integro which run the Everton Disc program. I'm not gonna spend much time on this I can follow up if anybody wants more information I'm happy to provide it but the work of leaders program just looks at this it's a team based workshop for executive teams and leadership teams and every individual gets an individual profile as well. So there is information available and I can actually send this out. I've got a one page summary of this program that I can get Sarah to send out with the follow up email. But it requires everybody to participate in a group forum and it provides a group profile and individual profiles and it's delivered in a series of modules over a full day. Just I'll outline some of the cornerstone principles. It looks at leadership going back to our very early slide as leadership is a one on many relationship. It's relevant for leaders at all levels within an organization. It considers what impacts or influences leadership at the individual level. So character, life experiences, cognitive abilities and maturity and it treats leadership as a collaborative process but recognizes that the journey to become an effective leader is very much a personal one. I'll just give you a couple of examples very quickly of what the information you get in this profile. So this is looking at an individual profile. So looking at the aspect on the, this was crafting a vision and looking at the exploration stage. So remaining open or seeking closure. So looking at this person they're probably slightly more open to staying open and keeping open but they're obviously very strong at prioritizing the big picture rather than the detail. So at a group level, excuse me, similar sort of thing but this is looking at the group collective results. So this group leadership group are very, very strong at prioritizing the big picture but then if you look at the next criteria they can be very, very matter of fact and not necessarily very good at encouraging the group. So that could actually cause problems in a group situation. So then it's, you do actually get suggestions for improving this. So just give an example, prioritizing the big picture. Out of this leadership group of nine people, eight of the nine scored very high on this and one scored in the medium category. So they're all very, very good at doing this and it gives you some ideas to focus on these strengths. So it enables you to think broadly about how all the pieces fit together and the strengths of this group are visualizing how a particular idea of direction might affect the future and they also can recognize when out of date systems are limiting the success of the group. So that's one aspect. The next one is being encouraging. Now, if this was the same group we've got six people out of the nine that score very low on the encouraging scale. Only one scores high. So building alignment could be a problem for this group and this is where it can actually cause problems and lack of morale in people if they're not building alignment and getting people on board with the ideas. So this is actually highlighted, the group results are highlighted in a chart in two ways. First as a graphical representation. So you can see this leadership group very good at exploring the vision. They're reasonably bold, 44% there and they're pretty good at testing their assumptions. They're good at building alignment through clarity but not very inspirational. And in terms of the execution, good at providing structure but not necessarily getting people on board by building momentum and getting the initiating action and possibly not that open to feedback. So two of the things here that this leadership group probably need to focus on or a couple of things here would be providing inspiration to the group. It's not just good enough to communicate it you need to actually inspire people as well and building the momentum. So that could be a problem in actually the execution stage. So you also get this in a different format. Looking at again a graded, I hope that's clear to everybody, the graded results. So you get that in a couple of formats. So plotted on the actual model itself. So just a couple of things on this. It is the model is actually, the benefits are it is executive or leadership team specific. It does look at how individual tendencies influence the effectiveness in specific leadership situation. It is actually based on best practice. It connects with real world demands of leadership teams and it can create powerful conversations and a clear path for action. So to summarize using the VAE framework helps leaders to understand their own leadership behaviors and how these impact on their effectiveness. It can stimulate fresh conversations and perspectives in the organization regardless of individual knowledge levels or experience. And it can help leaders to take action and empower them with personalized tips and strategies to improve their effectiveness individually and their effectiveness as part of the leadership group. So that basically is in summary and we'll send some more information through. So thank you for listening. Does anybody have any questions? No, we don't have any questions that have come through now but if anyone does have any for Tracy please feel free to type them into the chat box in the bottom left hand corner. We also have an exit survey on the right hand side of the page. So if you can please complete that to provide us with your feedback that would be greatly appreciated. I'd just like to hand it over to you Tracy just to wrap up while we wait for some questions to come through. Just in terms of if there were two main things that you'd want people to go away with today what would they really be? Just think about leadership within your own organization and how effective it is. I'm not sure who's in the situation to be a leader or who is part of the leadership team or who is supporting a leadership team but just think about that and look at the model and how you think it could impact your team. Your leadership team particularly but any team that leads within the organization and how this could be improved through using sort of a program such as this. I've run this through several executive teams and it actually always been very productively received and it gives people a language to talk about without being confrontational. So it actually does provide that language and communication channel within the team as well. Great and we do have a question from Gail which I think may be common in many organizations. You're always dealing with that negative person so it can be pretty tricky to feel empowered so do you have any ideas around dealing with negative employees? Yes, again this is about getting alignment and getting people on board. Sometimes it could be the leader that needs to provide more inspiration. Other times some people you're dealing with people and people are very tricky so you can't always, the old phrase is you can lead a horse to water but you can't always make them drink. You're never going to get all the people working in the same direction particularly in a large organization. You'll always get some people that descend to the ideas but all you can try to do is communicate clearly, listen to them. Most people if they feel they're being listened to start to buy into things and start to take ownership. The worst feeling of being disconnected is often when they feel that they're left in the dark and they don't know what's happening and that creates fear. So often negative people tend to be their main emotional driver is fear and it could be fear of the unknown, fear of what's going to happen, fear of the future. So if you can go through this process of the leadership team by building alignment and inspiring people to your direction and giving them clear guidelines and a clear action plan then you can actually with a lot of people overcome that negativity. But I do say a lot of people. You'll always get the ones that just enjoy being negative and that's human nature as well. Absolutely. That's pretty much all the questions now but if anyone does have any more questions when they leave the webinar sometimes some thoughts can start to stew a few hours later, please feel free to email us directly and we'll pass them on to Tracy. We will definitely include Tracy's details in the follow-up email so you can get in touch with her if you would like any further information on today's webinar or her about HR services. And thank you once again everyone for joining. I think it's been a very inspiring, might I say, session Tracy. And it's been great to have you all on board. So thank you once again and we look forward to seeing you at future webinars. Thanks everyone. Thank you.