About This Practice
Leaders must be problem solvers; think creatively and build skills and knowledge to adapt to a constantly changing business environment. Each leader has unique strengths and weaknesses and must be able to use skills that are necessary for effective leadership.
Our leadership coaching will ask thought provoking questions to better understand your individual requirements for growth and development. Are past experiences preventing creative thinking around future growth? Do your meetings end with clear decisions and actions? Do you tend to look for problems rather than solutions? Do you tend to eliminate innovative ideas by flooding them with too many “facts”?
How We Can Help
Your individual needs as a leader are what we focus on. You’ll gain a confidential resource with which you may test new concepts, identify strategies to manage underperforming employees as well as develop a clear vision of your future.
Identifying Your Needs
Our leadership coaching program often starts with a 360-degree assessment of your performance. This provides us with a clear picture of how you see your performance as compared to how your peers and those reporting to you see it. From this assessment, we will develop a plan to help you close the gap between performance delivery and performance expectations. It will consider your current competencies as well as what additional competencies you may require to move forward as a leader.
Customized Solutions to Reach Your Goals
When training becomes necessary we will customize it for you. It will incorporate your unique needs as a leader as well as your organization’s requirements. Our training programs reflect the latest adult learning theories.
Getting Started
Contact us to discuss your requirements.
Success Stories
Improving Leadership Skills for a Retail Convenience Store Chain
This familiar 24-hour convenience store chain had never provided any training or coaching to their store managers. In smaller locations these managers often operated with only 1 or 2 employees so they became both a manager and an employee. The leadership team observed that most store managers operated more like employees/workers than store managers. They asked us to create and facilitate a custom leadership program for store managers that reflected their unique culture, structure and operating practices. This program helped their store managers understand their role and responsibilities and had a positive outcome for our client of increasing average sales per square footage in most stores.
How a Major Financial Institution Overcame Leadership Challenges
This major financial institution was experiencing a multitude of people problems that seemed to be affecting their ability to grow their business. Project teams had insufficient resources for critical initiatives, work teams were continually in “reaction mode”, line managers were stretched too thin and there was limited cross training due to workloads. We undertook a Situation Analysis with the management team to explore the current state and determine the core problems. We identified one of the core problems to be poor leadership skills. This led to the development of specific and custom coaching and training for all levels of management. Our program has helped them to improve their managerial skills and place people with the right skills in the right places at the right time.
Testimonials
This chain of convenience stores has worked with Business Improvement Architects (bia™) for over 10 years. bia™ has worked with the executive team on leadership and coaching, including a 360-degree feedback process. We have also worked with staff through major change initiatives brought about by integration of other organizations that Couche-Tard purchased as well as training on a new Performance Management System.
"Business Improvement Architects helped us to significantly reduce the impact of integrating employees between two diverse cultures into one organization. Previously we suffered a loss of staff and a slow amalgamation of processes. Their approach brought significant change in a relatively short span of time."
Infoway has a complex environment in which employees are hired for their expertise and experience to be a part of a high performing organization. Employees need to adapt to a very influential role for both internal and external clients. Infoway identified a number of leadership skills that were necessary for employees and hired Business Improvement Architects to pilot a 360 degree group program for them.
"Infoway's unique culture requires someone who can understand our business, our people and the dynamics that are unique to each department. Michael Stanleigh's approach to each requirement demonstrates professionalism and thoroughness as he evaluates before his recommendations. Michael is an exceptional listener and synthesizer and he delivers an end product that tackles the underlying issues that need to be addressed. His quality of service and dedication goes beyond the expected and he ensures success even at his own cost. The result of his services exceeded our expectation."
Facilitating leadership development through assessment, coaching, consulting and training, the Business Improvement Architect's (bia™) team worked with senior executive, mangers and staff to help them build leadership competencies. bia™ stayed with them throughout the process helping them to develop and implement their key strategies and implementation plan.
"Business Improvement Architects has been instrumental in helping us develop our leadership team. Through the implementation of their recommended processes and continuous guidance throughout, they have helped us build a team of successful leaders and together we have increased customer service, employee satisfaction metrics have increased and projects are implemented more efficiently. I recommend bia™ for their strategic perspective, on-going support and practical measurement tools."
Business Improvement Architects has been on faculty with the Gardener Centre of Memorial University since 2003 and continues to work with them to provide open-enrollment programs.
"Michael Stanleigh of Business Improvement Architects has been a contract trainer for the Gardiner Centre, (Previously Centre for Management Development) of Memorial University in both open-enrollment programs with diverse clients and for client-customized programs around specific client needs. We have used Michael and his associates on many occasions, and continue to contract with them because of their professionalism, the invariably high participant evaluations and most importantly because of repeat request from our clients for their services. Michael's evaluations have consistently been among our highest."
Business Improvement Architects has worked with retailer Hudson Bay Company for many years in the areas of Critical Thinking, Impact and Influence, Process Management and Project Management.
"We have worked with Business Improvement Architects on previous occasions and they have always exceeded our expectations. They have demonstrated excellent responsiveness and management of expectations (always got back to you with an answer). It has been a pleasure to work with bia™ overall"
The IT department faced a number of problems and issues not all that uncommon in large IT departments today. They needed a systematic way to approach and manage these concerns. Business Improvement Architects customized the staff training to apply actual situations being experienced by staff. The City of London began to see improvement within several months of the start of the training sessions.
"The training program designed by bia™ was well prepared and motivating and the facilitator was social, professional, intelligent and witty."
Business Improvement Architects (bia™) has worked in a variety of areas of the Ontario Public Service including several Ministries and Leadership Centers. Our work has covered a broad range of consulting and training assignments including: research on Benchmarking within a government environment, customer service training, coaching project managers and teams through major government initiatives, training the leadership in the areas of quality and project management and training staff on the skills of Kaizen (process management) and project management.
"Business Improvement Architect's facilitation and processes have effectively met our needs. The training has been engaging as well as practical and informative. We have found that our people are able to apply the learning to their workplace."
Nike wanted to create more teamwork and improve overall communication between staff in an effort to capitalize on ideas and suggestions that were always being raised but rarely captured. They brought in bia™ to train and coach staff on a Critical Thinking Process. This led to a number of new ideas being generated and implemented that improved the organizations bottom-line. As well, staff began to use the process on their own, almost immediately, in order improve their own decision-making process.
"The Critical Thinking Process helped the teams to be more strategic in their thinking and improved their overall decision-making and communication effectiveness. Michael's energy and passion contributed to the overall positive results. We now have a lot of solid decisions to review which will help Nike to continue to be innovative."
