Helping organizations strengthen and accelerate the development of their high-potential leaders.
Organizations invest significantly in identifying and developing their next generation of leaders.
The challenge isn't simply identifying high-potential talent.
It's helping those individuals develop the capabilities, behaviors, and experiences they'll need to succeed at the next level—and ensuring that development is aligned with what the organization actually needs from its future leaders.
That's where Upward Trajectory comes in.
Leadership Optimization is the discipline of helping organizations realize more value from their leadership investments through alignment, development, and reinforcement.
Our approach begins by understanding three things:
Their strengths, developmental blind spots, motivations, and aspirations.
Its definition of leadership success, culture, strategic priorities, and expectations.
The capabilities and experiences required to succeed at the next level.
When these three are aligned, leadership development becomes more focused, relevant, and actionable.
We begin with high-potential leaders because they represent an organization's future leadership capacity.
The Leadership Readiness Accelerator™ is designed to help organizations strengthen and accelerate their development by combining:
Individual assessment
Understand strengths, blind spots, leadership patterns, and aspirations.
360° perspective
Bring together feedback from the leader's manager, peers, and others who work closely with them.
Individualized development
Translate insights into a focused leadership development plan.
Real-world application
Turn development priorities into practical leadership behaviors and experiences.
Reinforcement
Engage the leader's manager and establish practices that sustain development beyond the coaching engagement.
We establish what leadership success looks like in your organization and what the leader's future role will require.
We develop a deeper understanding of the leader's strengths, aspirations, developmental blind spots, and leadership patterns.
Through the DNA Alignment Process™, we translate those insights into focused development priorities and practical leadership actions.
The leader practices new behaviors in real business situations, supported by coaching, reflection, and feedback.
We bring the manager into the development process and establish a roadmap for continued growth.
Greater leadership readiness.
Stronger leadership performance.
Greater organizational value.
The DNA Alignment Process is the individual development engine that powers Leadership Optimization.
It aligns:
THE LEADER
Strengths • Blind Spots • Motivations • Aspirations
THE ORGANIZATION
Leadership Success • Culture • Strategic Needs
THE FUTURE ROLE
Capabilities • Experiences • Expectations
The result: a development journey designed around the individual leader, the organization they lead in, and the leadership they are preparing to become.
If you're responsible for developing high-potential talent—or you're a business leader thinking about how to strengthen your organization's future leadership pipeline—I'd love to hear what you're working on.
Chris Woods
Founder, Upward Trajectory
Leadership Optimization™