With countless training options on the market today, organizations are often left paralyzed by choice. Do you invest in an off-the-shelf solution or build a custom experience? Should you prioritize your high-potentials, new managers, or executive team? Without clarity, time and resources can be wasted on development efforts that don’t deliver meaningful results.
At The Metiss Group, we specialize in decoding this complexity. With decades of behavioral expertise and a proven model grounded in practical application, coaching, and self-discovery, we help organizations develop the right leaders in the right way. Our Leadership Academy™ offers tailored programs that align with your team’s current leadership maturity and your company’s strategic goals.
In this article, we’ll help you cut through the noise and identify where to begin—so you can confidently invest in leadership development that actually works.
Before you start shopping for options, consider who you are hoping to develop:
- High-potentials not yet in leadership but destined for it
- New or seasoned leaders with a need for today’s effective techniques
- Executives who are proven accomplished leaders who may need something at the next level
- Your Visionary/CEO and Integrator/Second-In-Command who need coaching/development to accelerate the synergy of their relationship
Developing High-Potentials: Laying the Groundwork for Future Leadership
For the sake of this article, let’s assume this is defined as people on your team who are great culture fits, great work ethic, strong accomplishments, admired at all levels of the organization, and while not yet leading others, the expectation is that probability is in their future.
As you can imagine from other training you've experienced or witnessed, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Think back to the time you took an Excel training course. You spent hours learning formulas, pivot tables, and shortcuts—but then didn’t actually need to use any of it right away. Fast forward six months, you’re back to square one, and don’t remember what you’ve learned.
That’s why leadership development, like any skill, has to be applied in real time—not filed away for later.
So while you’re waiting for the right opportunity into which you can promote one of these high potentials, you’re likely also giving them projects and expecting them to collaborate with others, if not unofficially lead a project.
The Emotional Intelligence Journey™ is ideal for these individuals. It will heighten their self-awareness, confidence, give them insight as to how they’re perceived by others, increase their stress tolerance and even improve their decision making.
The journey begins with an EQ 360 survey, gathering input from their boss, peers, direct reports, sometimes friends and family, as well as their own self-perception. The coaching then continues for 3-6 months depending on the program duration selected.
This is a fantastic foundation for further leadership development but can also enhance the emotional intelligence of a more senior leader who would appreciate the insight into the difference between how they intend to behave and how they are being perceived.
Empowering New Leaders: Building Confidence and Capability Early
For newer leaders or those who could use a refreshed approach in their leadership techniques, we recommend The Leadership Essential Playbook™. Designed for either a cohort of at least 10 leaders in person, or a virtual approach for individual leaders, each participant benefits from a self discovery kick-off, structured learning, practical application, and one-on-one coaching.
In this program, participants will learn 8 immediately effective techniques: Empowerment (delegating projects), Feedback, Development, One-on-ones, Job scorecards (delegating day-to-day tasks), Performance Evaluations, Goal Alignment, and Team Succession.
Elevating Executives: Aligning Strategy with Leadership Excellence
For executives who already demonstrate strong leadership skills or who have progressed through the other programs listed, The Strategic Leadership Alignment™ may be the ideal option. In this case, our behavior experts help the executive leadership team identify the most critical leadership practices necessary to achieve the specific goals of their strategic plan.
As an example, an organization who is in an aggressive growth mode, may require more innovation, excitement, and vision clarity from their leaders. Another organization which just achieved significant growth might need to slow the growth a little to put processes and systems in place to sustain the growth; that organization may require more structuring, control, and production.
Once the right leadership practices have been selected to ensure achievement of the strategic plan, each member of the executive team participates in a 360 degree survey of the current leadership habits they demonstrate; this allows them to create a personal development plan for employing those most likely to help them achieve the current strategic plan. It’s also not unusual for organizations to see the benefit in cascading this approach to other layers of leadership once the executive team is aligned.
Catalyzing Visionary-Integrator Synergy: Coaching the CEO and Second-in-Command
Finally, The Visionary-Integrator Catalyst™ is best for Visionaries with a brand new Integrator, or a Visionary and Integrator team who believe they’re capable of more and want to achieve that rocket fuel dimension and aren’t quite sure what’s missing or how to get there.
In the case of a Visionary seeking an Integrator, it’s a sure way to identify the right person in that right seat, and then propel this dynamic duo to extraordinary success – shortening the learning curve, and launching the team forward.
Sometimes we hear an organization running on EOS saw extraordinary benefits implementing EOS, but then seemed to plateau. It’s quite frequent because of the tune up needed by the Visionary and Integrator to get them more on the same page, avoid duplicating efforts, leveraging each others’ strengths, and communicating at a new level of success.
All programs in The Leadership Academy™ of The Metiss Group, benefit from our unique process based on the 70-20-10 model of learning where 10% of the time in development is spent with structured learning, 20% is in one-to-one coaching, and 70% of the time is practical application. Our programs all begin with self discovery to appreciate where we are when we embark on our leadership development journey so we can measure progress throughout the learning.
Remember, leadership development isn’t one size fits all anymore. Start by deciding who you're wanting to develop and what you need them to get out of the learning.
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