Our Distinctions

 

1. Our Value Proposition

The Villard Group provides highly customized leadership training that teaches specific leadership skill sets in the context of your current and future business goals, priorities and challenges.

Instead of stressing generic characteristics of effective leaders as most training organizations might, we focus on those that your organization needs in the immediate and near future. We do our homework. We tie in your tactical and strategic business leadership challenges. We call upon your most successful technical, business and sales people for question and answer sessions or fireside chats.

As a result, students listen and learn differently. The relevancy of the class rises. The transferability of learnings becomes immediate. People leave with a sense of empowerment and a clear vision of how they can improve, of how and where they can contribute and where they might channel their leadership abilities and ambitions in the future.

2. Our Simulations: "Hot and Humid"

The weather forecast for most live instruction and almost all e-learning classes is cold and dry. "Cold" … in that it doesn't get your intellectual juices flowing. It doesn't engage and challenge you. "Dry" … in that it typically seeks only to provide conceptual awareness … the transfer of information. You can sit back and just observe.

Our simulations, whether live in the classroom or via a virtual class, are "hot and humid." They wrap around you and pull you in. They become your business world with all the twists and turns that leadership challenges throw at you in real life. We make you sweat. We stretch you into making and implementing tough decisions that will change, not only how you look at things, but also how you behave in your own world.

A leadership simulation is not only effective for teaching leadership skill sets. It's also central to assessing leadership potential and affinity. No one knows for sure whether they'll like a leadership role, let alone be good at it. Not everyone can effectively lead others. It's not that it can't be learned or acquired. It's just that some people don't enjoy it. You can't pretend that you like it; there is no faking it. Our simulations show you that.

A simulation also provides consequence free exposure to what different leadership roles are like and whether they come naturally for you. Do you have good leadership instincts or do you make assumptions that will get in your way?

And, finally, our simulations provide powerful insights about the specific kind of leadership role each person is best suited for and the leadership challenges and skills needed for each promotion and assignment. Whether you are considering thought leadership, customer facing, people leading, or a combination of all three roles, the Villard Group experience will get you headed in the right direction.

3. How We Develop Leaders

Perhaps, the most overlooked responsibilities of the senior leadership team are the development, engagement and retention of intellectual capital.

Early retirements, unforeseen health events and unanticipated defections can undermine your leadership team. Without a well conceived and executed career development process, a focused leadership skills curriculum and a well thought out succession plan, your business can lose momentum and continuity when you can least afford it.

When you need leadership talent, you need it immediately. You can't wait for someone to "get ready" or conduct an external search to bring in an outsider who doesn't know your culture or your customers. You need to keep your leadership pipeline full and ready.

Successful talent management requires building leadership bench strength for both attrition and growth. It has at least five components: talent selection, leadership talent assessment, leadership development, employee engagement, and retention of valued employees or what we call top talent.

Across all components, the following high impact features make a huge difference: being included as part of a select group, frequent access to senior leaders with informal discussions that focus on current organization issues and face-to-face feedback with candid career planning discussions.

Whether your leadership responsibilities are line or staff, developing leadership talent is priority one.

4. Our Focus on Top Talent

Top talent, the top 15 percent, has always been indispensible to any organization's success. They typically out-produce their peers in quality results in the 2 to 5X range. Organizations will always need to develop these people and prepare them for greater responsibility. Your top talent knows what works. They have a system of competency that's effective in your business or industry.

They are also the most innovative and receptive to new ideas. Top talent is highly credible and influential with their peers, as well as the rank and file. The next tier of performers is always quick to adopt and internalize their business practices. If their leadership skills and competencies could be leveraged in a time effective and systematic way, it would raise the productivity of dozens of others. The Villard Group can do that for you.