Sutherland Leadership Strategies

Sutherland Leadership Strategies provides the services listed below.
Click a specific service to learn more.

Executive Coaching

Executive coaching is a one-on-one process to help leaders acquire and demonstrate the insight, skills and behaviors they need to be successful.

Twenty years of experience in results-oriented coaching has proven that the SLS process works. SLS has experience coaching everyone from high potential leaders who need to understand what it means to be an executive, to C-level executives coping with broad, strategic, complex issues.

While each coaching program is highly customized in content, it is the process, outcomes and coaching expertise that are consistent and ensure the highest return on your investment. Coaching assures that leaders quickly acquire the skills and techniques necessary to get the results the organization demands.

Outcomes:

Newly promoted executives adjust to new roles faster
High potential leaders acquire executive skills
Broaden the skills of technical leaders
Acquiring new, complex skills fast
Preventing derailment of key people

Retirements, changing business conditions and the need to constantly reinvent strategy to spur growth means intense pressure to select, develop and promote the right people. While past performance evaluations can help with these decisions, the best predictor of future performance is:

Identifying the skills needed for future positions
Objective assessment of the style, abilities, knowledge, and skills needed for that position

SLS has more than twenty years of experience partnering with decision-makers to design the right assessment process that gives your organization the information you need to make better people decisions.

Outcomes:

Identify the next generation of leaders
Target development for high potentials
Pinpoint the strengths and vulnerabilities of key leaders for various positions
Build insight and skills in key leaders
Gain critical and objective information for talent discussions

Developing senior leaders to meet future business needs is a critical challenge for any company. Action learning-based development processes – which use real-life scenarios to teach new skills – provide leaders with the strategies to immediately apply new learning on the job.

SLS’ flagship program, Future Leader, first identifies the skills and knowledge the business will need in its key leaders in order to be successful, then develops those over the course of a year.

All SLS programs establish a close partnership with the sponsoring organization. They are based on the latest research on how adults learn best and what will ensure the best business results for the organization.

Other, shorter programs focus on ingraining coaching and development skills in the organization so that, every day, leaders can make sure they are developing people for top performance.

Outcomes:

Create the next generation of leaders
Accelerate the development of hi pots
Help leaders acquire skills quickly to support culture change & talent mgmt.
Build capability
Gain alignment on vision, knowledge and strategy

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Talent Management

The challenging external business environment becomes even more difficult when your company does not have the right people with the necessary skills in key positions. Companies often delay strategic talent discussions in lieu of dealing with the “hard” issues facing the business – until they realize that critical people are leaving, or the pipeline to fill important positions is meager.

SLS helps companies get ahead of this by working with you to design and implement a talent management process that fits your needs. The process starts with your business: What is in its future? What challenges are you facing? How will the business change over the next five to ten years? What kind of people do you need for your next key leadership roles?

Outcomes:

Have a systematic process for selecting, developing, promoting people that aligns with company strategies and future needs
Ensure fairness and objectivity
Maintain a pipeline of talent so that positions can be filled with the best candidates
Increase retention

Demographic changes have made the development and selection of the next C-level executives an urgent business priority. The best companies plan for these transitions at least two years in advance: identifying the internal candidate pool, creating development opportunities for people, assessing possible candidates to see who may be viable, providing coaching to accelerate development.

SLS has worked with numerous companies – public and private – and their Boards to develop and select the next generation of senior executives. Using a multi-faceted process that involves all key stakeholders, SLS ensures that the new senior leaders have the passion and the skills to deliver what your company needs, now and into the future.

Outcomes:

Identify critical success factors for the next CEO
Identify the right people to meet future business challenges
Ensure that the next senior leaders will provide the right culture and values, as well as results
Construct a senior team that works well together

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Executive Team Development

Senior executive teams are quite different than teams at other levels of the organization. Often the most senior team simply needs:

Alignment around key strategies and direction
An effective process for making enterprise and policy decisions
Enough trust and respect to cooperate, when necessary, and allow the other executives to do their jobs

SLS has over twenty years of experience helping top teams make the changes in their team process that allow the business to run more effectively. Because each company will require something different from its executive team, the SLS approach is highly customized and driven by current and future business challenges.

Outcomes:

Identify what the business needs from your executive team
Work through team issues that are disrupting business results
Resolve critical business problems
Gain alignment around vision, strategy, culture and key policies