Leadership frameworks
Define the mindsets, behaviours, and skills essential for success in your organisation within a leadership framework.
Is everyone on the same page about what it means to be a leader in your organisation?
If not, start here.
Why? Because inspiring or holding someone to a leadership standard that’s never been articulated is hard.
A leadership framework is your cornerstone for shaping and sustaining leadership effectiveness, informing how you identify, select, manage, develop, promote, reward, and exit leaders.
With each decision made in alignment with your framework, you strengthen your leadership culture.
This, in turn, creates an environment where these behaviours are naturally encouraged and reinforced.
Ready to establish the foundations for lasting behaviour change within your organisation? Let’s talk.
Lay the foundations for behaviour change
A leadership framework helps leaders change and maintain new behaviours in several ways:
Clarity
A leadership framework provides a clear definition of what great leadership looks like, giving leaders direction and a concrete understanding of what is expected of them.
Consistency
By establishing a common set of leadership standards, your framework ensures leaders are aligned in their approach, which helps maintain consistent behaviour across the organisation.
Feedback
Leaders can be assessed against your framework, receiving feedback that is directly tied to the defined expectations. This helps identify areas for improvement and track progress.
Development
A framework provides the blueprint for designing tailored programs, tools, and resources to develop specified leadership mindsets, capabilities, and behaviours. This targeted approach is more effective than generic training, resulting in more meaningful behaviour change.
Recognition
By linking rewards and recognition to the behaviours outlined in your framework, leaders are incentivised to adopt and maintain these.
How to define your leadership framework
Below are the four steps I recommend to define the leadership mindsets, behaviours, and skills that matter most within your specific context:
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The work kicks off with a desktop review of documents that provide insight into your organisation’s DNA, current state of play, and future direction. Examples include:
Purpose, vision, and mission statement
Organisational values
Business strategy
Brand positioning statement and style guide
People strategy and employee value proposition (EVP)
Performance, engagement, and talent data
Position descriptions for leadership roles
Current leadership program material.
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Next, stakeholders are engaged in co-design through 1:1 interviews with senior leaders and 1:4 listening sessions with a diverse cross-section of leaders (i.e., a mix by gender, tenure, location, business area, and role level).
This consultation not only informs an optimal solution but also helps to secure buy-in and ownership of the final framework, which greatly assists with implementation.
Plus, inviting leaders to contribute their perspectives is a great way to recognise top-performing leadership talent within your business.
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On completion of the discovery phase, outputs are themed and analysed to identify the critical leadership mindsets, behaviours, and skills to include in your framework.
The nature and number of these leadership capabilities are tested with you before we write a more detailed draft that weaves through best practice inputs, external insights, and creative use of your leaders’ tone of voice.
To ensure the framework resonates, emphasis is placed on using language from your leaders to describe what great leadership at your organisation looks like.
The draft also includes a visual ‘look and feel’ concept to test with you.
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Your draft leadership framework is then presented back to stakeholders in validation workshops for further testing and feedback, and to identify risks, enablers, and ideas for implementation.
Workshop outcomes are then used to finalise the leadership framework ready for handover and sign-off, along with a summary of implementation suggestions and recommended next steps.
Your co-design group can then be invited to launch and champion your leadership framework, contributing to future leadership development initiatives.
Case studies
Trusted by:
Endeavour Group
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ALH Hotels
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BWS
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Dan Murphy's
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Country Road Group
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TAC Transport Accident Commission
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Yarra Valley Water
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Swinburne University of Technology
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The University of Newcastle
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Medibank
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Dentsu
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KingSwim
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Endeavour Group • ALH Hotels • BWS • Dan Murphy's • Country Road Group • TAC Transport Accident Commission • Yarra Valley Water • Swinburne University of Technology • The University of Newcastle • Medibank • Dentsu • KingSwim •