Ed Santana, MA, Psychotherapist

Leadership Expansion Projects: Become a Leader in Every Domain

Become a Leader in Every Domain

Leaders are defined not just by the positions they hold, but by the places in their lives where they lead.

A defining transition for executives is crossing the threshold into broader leadership roles. Expanding your management skills and profile into your community, industry, trade, and to other parts of your company is essential to growing your career and finding greater fulfillment.

Some important questions to consider:

Are there areas or interests where you want to expand your leadership role? Have you set the stage for the next level? What steps do you need to take now to begin to reach the 5-year plan?

Do you have the resources you need to lead in tough times too? What steps can you take now to be ready to face the toughest decisions of your career?

Interestingly, the most difficult times also provide the most important chances for evolving leaders. Given the challenges confronting the global economy today, opportunities for developing stronger leadership skills abound.

Individual & Organizational Typology: Delivering Greater Performance

“I have looked at the world from the standpoint of type for more than fifty years and have found the experience constantly rewarding.”—Isabel Myers

Among the best and most practical tools for understanding individual and group behavior is C.G. Jung’s model of psychological types. Jung’s theories are the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), used by more than 2 million people each year (including 89 of Fortune 100 companies).

The benefits of understanding personality dynamics can be profound. I have seen teams come together, organizations resolve major conflicts, and individuals thrive. It is a powerful means to consciously develop your own and other’s potential for growth. Donald Trump once said his success was in part to understanding personality types. He is not alone.

I remember standing in line at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport a few years ago listening to a team of law enforcement professionals as they returned from an off-site where they had taken the MBTI. They were sharing significant self-discoveries with great excitement—understanding for the first time why they work better with some people and not as well with others. They had developed greater consciousness about the lens they see the world through.

There are several tools like the MBTI, such as the Strong Interest Inventory, FIRO-B, Pearson-Marr Archetypal Indicator, and DISC. Each provides a valuable dimension for understanding yourself and others. The benefits to organizations are better teamwork, enhanced creativity, more collaboration, increased team and individual performance, and more effective conflict management skills.

For senior level teams, we provide:

• Individual testing, training, & facilitation.
• Pre-event online assessment & reporting.
• Expert advice and counsel on type dynamics, growth, change, and opportunities for success.
• Materials and handouts for further learning.
• Tailored and dynamic discussion and team coaching.
• Advanced personalized reports based on the assessments.
• Assist individuals in learning aspects of their type previously unknown.
• Work with leaders on unique strengths and areas for future growth and development.
• Support groups in understanding team dynamics and leadership strengths and challenges.

We also provide advanced group discussions and ongoing leadership work on the following topics:

• Emotional Intelligence & Type
• Stress & Type (including unconscious dynamics of behavior)
• Type and Managing Change
• Type and Communication (different styles of communicating needs and information)
• Type and Conflict
• Organizational Type Dynamics
• Archetypal Patterns
• Type and Teams
• Skills for Successful Leadership (Develop solid competency of individual challenges and strengths in leading teams)

Deep Thinking within Corporate Environments

Opening up to deeper thinking and greater imagination can pose great career rewards but equal risks in most corporate environments.

Does your organization have an underlying dynamic of desiring greater creativity but then rewarding those who play it safe? How are risk-taking and new ideas received? What is the value of promoting greater imagination? Here are a few thoughts from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge:

"Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, has received a lot of publicity recently for fostering "imagination breakthroughs" by encouraging managers to think deeply about innovations that will insure GE's longer-term success. He has vowed that he will protect those working on the breakthroughs from the "budget slashers" focused on short-term success. Questions that this effort raises include: (1) Why so much publicity? (2) Isn't "deep thinking" what leaders are paid to do? and (3) Why do these kinds of effort require so much protection?

"In their new book, Marketing Metaphoria, Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman suggest some answers to the questions. In decrying the lack of what they call "deep thinking" among managers and especially those responsible for marketing, they suggest some things that get in its way. Among them are: (1) reluctance to take risk, especially when short-term performance is at stake, (2) the fear of disruption resulting from "thinking differently and deeply," (3) the potential psychological cost of changing one's mind resulting from deep thinking, and (4) the lack of information providing deep insights on which to base deep thinking." HBR, Jim Heskett.

Organizational Development That Works

Success comes from having a bold vision and discovering a broader range of possibilities to achieve that vision. Realizing these goals, however, begins with developing an organization that functions at a high level. The best business plan and most compelling vision won't produce any results without the right team and resources to back them up.

But having a high-performing team does not necessarily mean bringing in new players. The greatest and most rewarding leadership challenges come from transforming the current team and environment into something remarkable. Think of the movies about underdog sports teams who lost their fighting spirit but got a new coach or team member who inspired them to live into their full glory. Any organization can take on new life, and sometimes the greater the challenge the more rewarding the result.

Executives can develop the advanced leadership skills critical for building passionate, high-performing teams. Because every business faces unique challenges, we design tailored programs to support high performing business leaders.

Organizations can come to us for support with:
• Strategic planning
• Next level performance
• Underperforming teams
• Improve specific performance areas
• Change management and culture shifts
• Management and leadership development
• Low morale or productivity
• Corporate turnarounds
• Increase customer loyalty and service

Your Company’s True Potential: Global Responsibility and Community Impact

The highest performing organizations in the world know that success thrives by having a higher purpose and vision. We support companies like yours in reaching their highest potential by tapping into the greatest resources and capabilities at hand. Financial and business successes are greatest when accompanied with positive impact on communities, employees, and other stakeholders.

The most successful corporations in the world stand for a higher purpose.

We work with principled leaders who are deeply committed to their communities and employees, while producing greater longevity and prosperity for their companies. They have developed a broader definition of corporate success. They are fully engaged in the connection between business operations and the people they affect. In this new economy hallmarked by rapid and widespread information, leading executives are turning corporate outreach into global success.

Today, we are helping business leaders in taking the conversation of business to an entirely new level.

• Truly successful companies connect to a greater purpose in service to their communities.
• Leaders with open hearts and minds create more consciousness and connection with customers by broadening the underlying purpose and mission of their organizations.
• Business is becoming an integral community partner with important ideas, resources, manpower, and leadership to contribute.
• Interpersonal relationships between customers and companies are deepened by shared values and mutual trust.
• A strong and lasting commitment to sustainability provides vital new opportunities with emerging generations and new markets.
• By demonstrating commitment and infusing a sense of purpose into organizations, creativity permeates businesses and moves employees to reach for unseen opportunities.

How significant do you want your company’s impact to be?

Our programs will guide your business to new levels of global and community impact. When organizations stand for a higher purpose, promote an authentic cause, and inspire the people around them…miraculous relationships between customers, employees, suppliers, and communities bring unexpected opportunities.

The leader that strives to create a corporate environment and community filled with ideas, heart, and passion...is the leader that thrives spiritually as well as financially.

Branding with Depth and Powerful Metaphors

Understanding how metaphors, storytelling, and archetypes transcend the consciousness of consumers and form deeper connections with your products is essential for creating lasting, effective brands. Marketing today requires a more complex understanding and knowledge of personal and depth psychology.

Note this article from HBS, "Think of famous brands you know: Hallmark cards and Coca-Cola soft drinks, for example. What do these products have in common for consumers?

"An emotional meaning that taps into thoughts and feelings related to the positive aspects of transformation, according to Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman, authors of Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers (HBS Press, 2008). Transformation is just one metaphor that finds expression in products that satisfy deeply held consumer needs and desires. Other metaphors they notice include balance, journey, and connection.

"Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, and Lindsay Zaltman, managing director of Olson Zaltman Associates, a research and consulting firm, believe that deep insights from consumers are essential for brands that resonate. In this e-mail Q&A, they describe the thinking behind Marketing Metaphoria and how insights about deep metaphors can improve brand success.

"Deep metaphors are basic frames or orientations we have toward the world around us. They are "deep" because they are largely unconscious and universal. They are "metaphors" because they recast everything we think about, hear, say, and do. Because deep metaphors shape the way we engage the world, an understanding of them is necessary to explain why we think and act as we do." Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors, Martha Lagace, Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge.