Leadership and Governance

Effective leadership and governance in a rapidly changing global environment are more important than ever, and leaders face extraordinary pressures to mobilize their organizations to adapt to these changes and rapidly innovate.

Using our expertise in adaptive leadership, we support teams and individuals in leadership roles to maximize their effectiveness. We support the development of executive teams and boards so that they are poised to move away from the status quo, to manage conflict and complexity, motivate their teams, and ultimately lead vibrant and adaptable organizations. We also coach individual executives in developing their own leadership potential, resilience, and creativity, to be able to generate innovative options for action, mobilize others to learn, and transform structures, mindsets and behaviors.

Beyond top team and board development and executive coaching, we also conduct organization-wide leadership diagnostics and training programs, and are often called upon to facilitate retreats and multi-stakeholder meeting and conferences, all within the context of a holistic view of the client’s broader organizational and operational needs.

Clients include foundations, non-governmental organizations, multilaterals and private-sector companies.

Biotechnology R&D Company

Biotechnology R&D Company

In 2013, a major international research and development-based corporation with a focus primarily on agriculture and biotechnology (that requested anonymity), approached SEEK to work with their R&D leadership team.

The division's leadership team had recently been recomposed, and was made up of senior managers, each with the responsibility for driving research, technology and product development for specific business lines. Each of these groups pursued their respective projects on their own, together with the respective business units responsible for marketing and selling the products. The members of the team realized that they lacked a shared vision for collectively leading the company’s R&D activities.

SEEK began its work with a leadership retreat in 2014 during which the team aligned around a shared mission, joint responsibilities, and operating model. Since then, we have conducted annual leadership retreats with the team and have supported various forms of collective action to develop the R&D division. In 2015, we worked with the team on a nine month process to develop the first shared strategy for the corporate R&D function (this later expanded to SEEK supporting a corporation-wide strategic planning process and a subsequent global redesign of its organizational setup to ensure effective delivery of the strategy).

With this clear strategic alignment, our work with the leadership team then focused on taking their interpersonal effectiveness and collaboration to the next level. This involved an individual leadership diagnostic for all its members, followed by a retreat to examine and address resulting patterns in team dynamics. With this strong base, the team is now focusing on systematically developing the leadership capacity at the next level of the organization. This process was launched through a leadership summit also supported by SEEK.

SEEK worked with the leadership team to enhance its interpersonal effectiveness and collaboration