Leadership and team development

Solving strategic challenges through the behaviour of leaders and their teams.

At &samhoud we believe the behaviour of leaders and their teams are the key to success to solve strategic challenges and create breakthrough performance.

We believe leaders are inseparable from the system in which they operate. Sustained success, therefore, cannot be achieved by any singular program. Why? We often see that leaders get inspired by following great MD programs and are motivated to apply this newly acquired insights and skills in their daily practice. But when they go back to the work floor they often fall back into old behavioural patterns

We have an unshakeable belief that solving strategic challenges requires a holistic approach defined by the mindset of leaders, the context of the organization, and the degree to which employees are empowered to make decisions and take ownership.

We inspire and connect leaders. We balance rationality and emotion. We see evidence-based management and the magic of creativity not as opposites, but as complementary vantage points to create energy for people to thrive. Creativity, experience, deep reflections and joy are essentials parts of our way of working.

Our core focus is twofold: develop the mindset of leaders, while guiding them in transforming their context to reach breakthrough performance.

We focus on deep awareness, the power of curiosity, learning in context, create energy for change and continuous feedback loops. We conceive the context in which a senior leader operates as the training grounds for leadership development. Every intervention is within, not outside of, the leader’s biotope.

In co-creation with our clients, we distill the key levers that need to be addressed to create lasting change. In doing so, we combine insights from competitive strategy, change management, behavioural science, and anthropology.

What we can help with

Developing leadership to successfully realise business goals Leading transformations Leading innovation and developing disruptive business models Leading hybrid organisations Sustainable behavioural change of leaders and their workforce (Top) team development/team leadership Board room coaching Cross functional collaboration

Developing leadership to successfully realise business goals

The goal is to sustainably change the behaviour of leaders in such a way that it contributes to the realisation of their business’ strategy. Whilst developing leaders, we simultaneously deal with the unique challenges and dilemmas that leaders face on the job, such as:

How do you set direction and empower people to take ownership for the desired outcomes?
How do you demonstrate empathy and maintain the highest performance standards without compromise?
How do you create an environment that enables talent to grow and encourages tough hiring/firing decisions when needed?
How do you create a long-term positive impact on society and deliver short-term bottom-line excellence?
How do you deliver candid feedback and create a climate in which people don’t shy away from speaking up?
How do you execute cross-silo collaboration and keep a laser sharp focus on performance and interests of your business unit?
How do you excel in work from anywhere of a hybrid organization while maintaining a high employee engagement and wellbeing?

This process yields leaders on a strategic level to ensure successful strategy execution and preparing the organisation to be futureproof.

Leading transformations

Leadership in times of transformation has different requirements than in times of “business as usual”. It demands actively and continuously setting direction and taking decisions while dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty. Leadership during times of transformation thus asks for vision, persuasiveness, empathy and confidence. It asks for winning the trust of employees and to get them on board. It often requires confronting conversations whilst inspiring and connecting people. Simultaneously one has to accept set-backs and make decisions that will inevitably result in resistance.

We equip leaders to successfully deal with these challenges.

The result: Leaders who are equipped to successfully lead during times of transformation.

Leading innovation and developing disruptive business models

Leadership that stimulates innovation and creativity in an online context as well as in an office setting.

Leaders can stimulate creativity and innovation by, initially, being aware of the threats and opportunities that hybrid working poses for creativity and innovation.

Important to realise is that stimulating innovation in an online context differs from stimulating it in an office setting. In our programs we offer leaders tools to which they can resort to spark innovation. We also offer insight into how they can facilitate for innovation.

Leading hybrid organisations

COVID-19 has taught us that working from home is technically possible and that cutting back on expensive office space is tempting to save cost. But deciding on the ideal office-to-home ratio contains much more than thinking about efficiency, cost, and the needs of individual employees. Just think of innovation or multidisciplinary collaboration.

How to design hybrid ways of working is a strategic decision that carefully needs to be considered on board level.

We help organisations with questions such as:

How can we create connection and engagement among personnel?
How can we develop the right e-culture?
How do we have to organise performance management in hybrid teams?
How do we improve resilience and flexibility?
How do we advance creativity and innovation in a hybrid organisation?

How do we ensure for psychological safety and vitality?

Sustainable behavioural change of leaders and their workforce

To ensure that leaders and employees engage in sustainable behaviour change, it is essential to take a holistic approach. Our approach targets both individual and collective development as well as the context and system in which people operate.

Initially, we perform a joint analysis that provides insights into the mechanisms that positively or negatively influence the desired and intended behaviour. Afterwards, we collectively decide what mechanisms to tackle via focused interventions to actively change the root causes of undesired behaviour. These interventions can target the formal business side as well as the informal, social side of a company.

This approach results in desired behaviour, demonstrated by leaders and employees. The behaviour is enduring because it takes place in a system that stimulates the desired behaviour.

(Top) team development/team leadership

Today’s world asks for agile and resilient organisations. The challenges are often too complex for individual leaders to solve. This is why strong collaboration in and between teams is needed. On top, the behaviour of the top is crucial to the success of the organizational change. That is why we pay a lot of attention to guiding effective top teams in transformations. The effect of your own management, the desired exemplary behaviour, team dynamics, making strategic decisions, the connection with the organization and the desired team composition are themes that can all be addressed. We make an impact through a combination of interventions: insight into each other’s own motives, in-depth discussions about (dis) functional behavioural patterns, individual coaching or experiencing each other’s leadership styles by conducting an orchestra together, for example. Always in function of the desired organizational changes based on a strong link between content and behaviour.

Our programs are always tailored to the needs of an organisation. We have developed our unique approach and make use of gamification and nudging.

We use insights from disciplines such as behavioural science, change management, studies of for example Patrick Lencioni on “High Performing Teams”, Bruce Tuckman on “Stages of group development”, Amy Edmondson on “Psychological Safety”, Erin Meyer on “Cross Cultural Collaboration” and Bert Hellinger on “Systemic work”.

This results in high performing top teams, which in turn results in a more resilient and agile organisation.

Board room coaching

Executive coaching is always tailored to strategic challenges a CEO is facing and their personal development needs.

Cross functional collaboration

The world has become more complex and has an impact on the organization we work in.

Collaboration and networks are key for sustainable success. In our programs we focus on topics like creating a shared purpose and ambitions; mutual gains; relationships built on trust and open communication; clear roles and responsibilities; effective decision making and achieving results.

Our programs are always tailored to the needs of an organisation. We have developed our unique approach for cross functional collaboration. On top, we make use of design thinking, gamification and nudging.

This results in strong cross-functional collaboration.