Transforming Leaders – Inside Out or Outside In | Ashok Thussu | Director and Co-Founder | LMI and Sandeep Nagpal | Master Licensee – South Asia | LMI

Good leaders are in short supply. So, the imperative to build great leaders from within an organisations becomes a huge imperative. Building means developing people to their potential. This clearly means transformation from what you are to what you can be.

Transformation happens when people change. Change old mindsets, Change how they Act all to produce results that prove that change has been successful. For true and lasting change, the first point of change is the mindset. This too is not enough unless you apply the new ideas and that too with persistence. The second point of change is to develop new habits. As Paul J Meyer, founder of Leadership Management International (LMI) said, ‘You cannot change a tyre unless you have a replacement tyre’. The analogy is precise; you cannot change a habit till you have formed a replacement habit. Change therefore is an INSIDE – OUT process.

Most organisations have L&D piloting their efforts to build their people to higher levels. Learning is one component and Development is another. Yet one sees a huge skew of investments made in one- or two-day Leadership development programs, these seldom produce desired results as they are working OUTSIDE – IN. They are not truly Development programs, just learning programs. The outside fed models, transactional learning end up supplying a lot of information and most participants do not apply or use the learning. It seldom becomes a part of what they do. A lot of time, money and effort gets wasted.

From an individual’s perspective there are barriers to change. These may arise from comfort zones, fears, lack of inner motivation, lack of know-how, and at most times inadequate mechanisms for creating the INSIDE – OUT change.

LMI has a time proven methodology that has helped change millions of people worldwide. The Facilitative Group coaching methodology and process was created over 60 years ago and remains intact because of its timeless principles that remain valid even today. LMI coaching far preceded many coaching approaches that have gained traction in the past decade. Its ability to deliver Measurable and Visible results as a product of mindset and behaviour change helps virtually all participants to be coached and facilitated to better than normal outcomes. Most other Coaching done may not be able to guarantee measurable results, LMI does! Other methodologies do help the inward look and do have good coaches, yet they cannot generate the impact that LMI group coaching produces as they lack part of the process which generates high focus.

LMI is in the space of helping organisations and people reach their potential. Here LMI is different from most approaches in use. A large part of current HR approaches are based on doing TNA and finding gaps, then curating transactional interventions to fill the gaps. Which is good but only addresses gaps and not true potential. Potential play happens when you give a boost in covering gaps as well as raising the good to better levels. When change is needed, it is to get people to enhance their competences beyond ALL the baselines. When they expand on areas where they are already good the arena of potential comes to play.

From poorer levels of competency in any area they must not only bridge up to good but actually go beyond that. When a competency is good, they must raise to very good. And from very good to mastery. Mediocrity never exposes the pathway to potential.

The other point to note is that competencies never operate in isolation. Multiple competencies when flowing together translate to capability and effectiveness.

Look at it from this perspective. Goal setting, Goal Planning and Goal execution are the core of every attainment. At work and in personal life. Execution in based on several other things, organised working, doing the right things, managing priorities, meeting deadlines, saying No to things and saying Yes to the right things, retaining balance, communicating well – listening, questioning, using empathy as a part of all what they do, working with and through people, delegating well, getting teams flowing, managing meetings, managing motivating others (and of course yourself) … You will notice that all these flow together.

Any missing element becomes a constraint. LMI is proud of its process and methodology in that it does all that we have mentioned, and at the same time producing Inside out change, building new replacement habits, the coaching process feeding urges within the participant that culminate from desire within. When all this happens the results change and we help the participant deliver results that often surprise themselves and their organisations. We do this consistently producing change that sustains as we have done for over 4 million people using our foundation leadership development program.

LMI is a Texas based organisation present in 90 countries and we are proud to represent LMI in South Asia as we continue to serve our clients and customers, touching lives and making a difference.