Did you know that without transition support, most leaders fail in their first 2 years?
(Gallup)
It’s critical that your leaders are set up for success in their all-important first 120 days
Effective leadership transitions drive results.
Studies from Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Forbes show that structured transition support can double a leader's chances of success and:
90%
Greater likelihood their team will achieve 3-year performance goals
5%
On average they deliver 5% higher revenue and profit.
13%
Their teams can experience 13% lower attrition
Leaders that struggle through their transition can see:
20%
Higher disengagement or turn over
15%
Lower performance from their direct reports
The studies show that when factoring the impact on performance, profit and reduced turnover, the ROI from transition programs can be:
+1000%
In this program, your leader will:
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Gain clarity on their priorities.
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Develop strong communication, collaboration and trust with their team to shorten the time to high-performing under their new leadership.
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Create strong working relationships with the key stakeholders beyond their team so they can move quickly with support from those around them.
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Become clear about the team culture they want, the culture they inherited, and actions they need to take to close the gap.
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Receive 360 feedback in month 3 so they can see what needs adjusting early.
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Wrap it all up with a clear 180-day plan
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Be coached by an expert to set them up for success.
This is the way to set your leader up for success.
Best-practice approach with two parts:
Ignite Day Overview
A single day in the first month with 7 key activities guided by an expert facilitator and coach. This single day will accelerate your new leader’s relationships, insights and clarity by months.
Your What:
Explore and articulate your strategic priorities and leadership style(s) you need to prioritise.
Your Why:
Your goals, worries, legacy
Your Team
My Team Synergy (MTS) workshop - Styles, strengths, skills, gaps
Your Who:
Team and stakeholders - Team talent plan, identify other key people
Your Starting Point
We’ll send a Team Pulse Survey to your team
Your Mark
What mark do you want to make
Your Plan:
What are you going to do in the next 180 days
Time commitment: Two 90-minute sessions | One 3-hour session | Spread over 3 months
Powerful accountability coaching to support purposeful action, build relationships and develop awareness.
Propel Period
Month 2
Culture and Clarity
+ Team Pulse Results Review
+ Transition Coaching
+ Confirm Stakeholders to Invite to Session
Month 3
Progress and People
+ Cross-Functional Synergy (CFS) Session
+ Reflections and Insights from CFS Session
+ Transition Coaching
+ Select Stakeholders for 360 Feedback
Month 4
Awareness + Adjustment
+ 360 Feedback Debrief
+ Transition Coaching
+ 180-Day Plan Revisit
Your Ignite Day Detailed Agenda
7-Key Activities that are all about you and your success. It’s a confidential and supportive space where you can ask questions, reflect, dive deep, and gain the clarity and confidence needed to succeed in your new role.
Guided by an experienced facilitator and coach using world-class tools and an evidence-based approach, you’ll achieve breakthroughs and insights that set you on the right path. This process helps you shape your journey intentionally with clarity of vision and purpose. So that when you look back on this exciting and challenging chapter of your life, you’ll be proud of the story you have to tell, and the legacy you’ve left.
YOUR WHY
Your goals, worries, legacy.
START WITH YOUR AMBITIONS
As a leader, you want to make a lasting impact. This day is dedicated to helping you define your legacy, align your ambitions with the expectations of key stakeholders, and gain clarity on the outcomes that matter most. Together in this private and confidential activity, we’ll explore your goals, aspirations, and challenges, ensuring you have a clear plan to prioritise your efforts and drive meaningful results. By the end of the day, you’ll have the confidence, focus, and direction needed to turn your vision into reality.
Session outcomes:
+ Confidence that comes from clarity and purpose.
+ A sense of what’s most important to you.
+ By getting your worries on the table with your coach in private, you can move forward with strategies to give you more confidence.
"Start with the end in mind"
- Stephen Covey
YOUR WHAT
Explore and articulate your strategic priorities and leadership style(s) you need to prioritise
Research shows that the most effective leaders are those who can adapt their style to suit different situations. To succeed, you’ll need to consistently adjust and flex your approach based on the context.
Different leadership styles are better suited to specific scenarios. In this activity we will consider your goals and the context you’re operating in, which leadership style will you need to consciously lean into most often?
Counselor
A thoughtful, compassionate measured leader, retaining talent and creating warmth,
Advisor
A meticulously planned, careful leader creating clarity and control through process and data.
Coach
An exciting, high-energy, people-oriented leader with ambitious big-picture visions.
Driver
An urgent, driven wartime leader with lofty ambitions and a strong sense of urgency, pushing through roadblocks.
Session outcomes:
+ Gaining clarity about the leadership style you need to demonstrate creates the mindset of intentional behaviour where you can thoughtfully respond rather than react - and set a constructive and consistent direction and tone from day one.
+ The opportunity to pre-think about situational leadership and how you’ll be purposeful to reach with different people and circumstances to have the most positive impact.
YOUR TEAM
Team Synergy (MTS) Workshop - Change the pace with a 2-hour REACH profiles debrief with your direct reports.
Accelerate your understanding of your team while equipping your leadership AI with key insights into their communication styles, intrinsic motivators, natural trust levels, and more.
This engaging and energising 2-hour workshop fosters a shared understanding and common language, enhancing collaboration, communication, and trust. The result? A team that works more effectively and achieves results faster.
The workshop is designed to be fun, enlightening, and relationship-building, helping you strengthen connections within your team while laying the groundwork for informed decision-making in your talent strategy (covered in the next session).
“As a new leader, you need to re-recruit your team, to your leadership “
- Ajit Kambil
Session outcomes:
+ At the foundation of EVERY relationship is communication. This session sets you and your team up for positive communication and collaboration.
+ You gain clarity about your team members’ different strengths and begin to gain clarity on delegation, development and role changes.
+ Your AI Co-pilot begins to collect powerful data so it can coach you in key leadership circumstance such as giving feedback and resolving conflict with insights about your team members that would otherwise take months or years of observation to learn.
YOUR WHO:
Team and Stakeholders - Team talent plan, identify other key people
You will succeed through people.
You’ll have the opportunity to reflect on your current talent, team structure, and roles, laying the foundation for plans to develop or make changes within your immediate team.
By combining your understanding of team members with insights from the Team Workshop and aligning them with your priorities, you’ll create a focused talent plan.
Next, you’ll identify 6-10 key stakeholders outside of your direct reports, including allies, enablers, and potential blockers. Together, we’ll develop strategies for building proactive and supportive relationships with these individuals.
This stakeholder list will also serve as a starting point for the upcoming Stakeholder Session and 360 feedback process in the months ahead.
Consider your relationship to various stakeholders, their needs, and potential impacts on your priorities.
Session outcomes:
+ Evaluate your confidence in each team member's capability to implement your vision
+ Reflect on the needs and aversions of key stakeholders.
+ Generate ideas for effective influence strategies
YOUR STARTING POINT
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker
Have you inherited a team with the right resources to excel - and a culture that inspires them to want to?
As a leader, you’ll have the opportunity to influence culture and enhance engagement. To ensure you prioritise effectively, we’ll conduct a REACH Team Pulse with your team. In your first Momentum Phase Coaching session, we’ll use the survey insights to baseline, benchmark, and analyse your team’s culture, identifying the quick wins that will drive the greatest impact.
Session outcomes:
+ Research shows that most leaders say culture is at the heart of any blockers to progress. Yet, they don’t have tools to gain understand what’s driving culture. This key activity will put you in the small percentage of leaders that has clarity by month two in the role.
YOUR MARK
What’s the story they will tell about your time as leader?
Before building your plan, we’ll take a moment to reflect. We began the day by exploring your goals, concerns, and the legacy you want to create. Together, we’ve analysed your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; considered the type of leader you aspire to be; prioritised your objectives; dived deep into your team dynamics; and developed a talent and stakeholder strategy.
Now, as you prepare to finalise your plan and determine your next steps, take one last moment to reflect: What mark will you make?
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
- Ghandi
YOUR 180-DAY PLAN
Transitioning from envisioning to actionable steps.
Reflecting on your priorities, team, stakeholder relationships, and the immediate actions needed for quick wins, we’ll identify the key foundations you need to start laying for your bigger-picture goals. Writing down your top priorities and using the talent analysis above, determine which tasks can be delegated to team members.
We’ll set these up for you in Teams or via the web, depending on your preference. If you use Teams, our plugin will allow you to track and update your progress seamlessly. If not, we’ll ensure you can access and manage your tasks online.
Propel Period
Time commitment: Two 90-minute sessions | One 3-hour session | Spread over 3 months
Powerful accountability coaching to support purposeful action, build relationships and develop awareness.
Session 1: Culture and Clarity
90 minutes | 2nd month in the role
+ 30 minutes: Team Pulse Check Results, Analysis, and Action Plan
On the Xcelerator Day, we initiated a Team Pulse Check. Over the past month, we’ve gathered world-class insights, including traffic-lit analysis, benchmarking, recommended actions, sentiment analysis, and key metrics such as intention to stay.
The results are presented in a clear, AI-driven format with logic-based recommendations, providing the new leader with a comprehensive view of team culture and actionable steps to create a positive impact.
+ 45 minutes: Coaching Based on Context and Challenges
Focused coaching tailored to the leader’s specific context and current challenges.
+ 15 minutes: Preparing for the Upcoming Stakeholder Session
Discussion on who to invite to the Stakeholder Session and how to position the invitation.
Next month, as part of the people strategy, it’s recommended to run a Stakeholder Session. This session fosters shared understanding, psychological safety, alignment, and trust between the new leader and key stakeholders, creating a results-oriented coalition.
Session 2: Progress and People
3 hours | 3rd month in the role
+ 2 hours: Cross-Functional Synergy (CFS)
A fun and interactive session with the new leader and strategically selected key stakeholders that builds trust, shared understanding and builds a mutually supportive group of key influencers together as a united cross-functional team.
Leveraging REACH profiles to build trust, synergy, and alignment between the leader and their key stakeholders. This session helps repair early missteps or bumps, fosters alignment, and removes roadblocks, creating vital alliances to achieve outcomes.
+ 45 minutes: Coaching Session
Focused coaching based on context, challenges, and insights from the Stakeholder Session. The session will emphasise accountability, progress, and strategies for overcoming blockers.
+ 15 minutes: Preparing for the Final Session
In the next and final session of the Xcelerator program, we’ll conduct a best-practice debrief of 360 feedback from the leader’s team and key stakeholders. During this 15-minute segment, we’ll decide who to include in the feedback process and set clear expectations.
Session 3: Awareness and Adjustment
90-minutes | 4th month in the role
+ 45 minutes: 360 Feedback Debrief
The coach will debrief the leader on their 360 feedback, focusing on what’s working well, potential derailers or blind spots, and purposeful steps to take.
+ 40 minutes: Coaching Based on Context and Challenges
With a particular focus on reviewing the 180-day plan written three months ago, the session will consider new insights and feedback, exploring any necessary adaptations at this point.
+ 5 minutes: Wrap-Up, Close, and Reflections
The Xcelerator transition support program including the 1-day Ignite launch event and then Propel Period truly sets leaders up for success.
Outcomes from the program:
Strengths
Gain clarity on your strengths and awareness of your gaps and tendencies. Extend this awareness to those of your new team and within the context of your organisation.
Strategy
In light of the strengths, gaps, risks, and opportunities in you, your team, and other surrounding contexts, develop your strategy and gain clarity on your priorities.
Stakeholders
People are your pathway to success. You’ll develop strategies around your closest stakeholders (current team), your peers, managers, and other key influencers - both allies and potential blockers - ensuring you have a plan and process to set yourself up for success.
You’ll achieve such a great outcome from this investment in your new leader. It’s no wonder that studies show that leader transition programs can achieve 1000% ROI.
Set your new leader up for success in their new role
The Leader Xcelerator equips new leaders with the tools, insights, and support needed to thrive.