Above the Line Leaders International teaches leaders how to leverage the six dimensions of action. We do this primarily through our Authentic Leadership through Action Series. This series is offered live through group workshops and online instruction.
At the core of the series is a practical framework for understanding the six fundamental dimensions of human action and how these dimensions can be skillfully implemented to achieve successful outcomes on a regular basis. This framework provides a common and reproducible approach, methodology, and language that directly builds leadership influence and acumen that sharpens the leadership lens. For more information go to .
There are three programs in the Authentic Leadership through Action Series. The first program is The second program is The third program is The first two programs, Leadership through Action & Influence and Leadership: Courage in Action, are made up of five courses each. Action Leadership in Strategy consists of two courses which are not offered online. Each course contains approximately four to six units. To move through the courses, doing all the homework assignments requested, will take about 3-4 hours per course. The courses are designed to build on each other. Participants are not allowed to skip courses. Course descriptions are below.
From completing routine tasks to launching and driving new initiatives to making sound decisions to solving the right problems the right way, every action we undertake has six fundamental dimensions. Outcomes are maximized when each of these six dimensions is recognized, understood, and is intentionally addressed.
The individual/cohort is introduced to and experiences a practical framework that integrates the six fundamental dimensions of all human action. When understood and intentionally directed, these six dimensions become powerful levers for driving alignment and outcomes,
Called The Action Wheel™, this framework serves as an intuitive lens to more clearly see through the people or leadership dimensions in our personal, professional, and organizational roles,
Awareness and attention to these dimensions assures that colleagues feel heard, understood, and most importantly, valued for their contributions. This module equips participants with a practical, intuitive framework for working adaptively with others.
Discover the keys to gain and sustain the interest, commitment, and engagement of all stakeholders. When a change, or any new action, is undertaken, getting everyone on board and committed is the critical success factor to long term success. Discover how the sequence in which we engage the six dimensions will either fuel us for success or will cause our actions to crash and burn.
Participants explore the background of the Action Wheel ™, discovering how theorists and practitioners have historically competed and collided with each other over what is most important to leadership,
Participants discover and experience an intuitive metaphor for fueling high-performing teams,
The Action Wheel ™ is used counter-clockwise to intentionally address each dimension of action.
Just as we each have physical defaults (right vs. left-handedness) we also each have hard-wired perspectives through which we approach our work. This foundational module will help participants, managers and leaders identify individual performance defaults; why we each enjoy some aspects of work more than others, why we prefer working with certain personality types over others, and why understanding these differences is important in building and sustaining an energized and engaging workplace. Participants will discover their own Performance Preference, and explore how the differences in others that may frustrate them today can not only be better understood, but can become the key to optimizing performance.
Participants discover their individual Performance Preferences,
Together, the cohort explores how differences can complement instead of conflict and can create a foundation for transparent and trusting collaboration.
Participants explore the difference between trust-based and fear-based influence. While both are often (knowingly or unknowingly) used by leaders to achieve short term results, over the long-term only trust-based influence builds a work force fueled by deep engagement and passion for their work.
Participants consider the different types of behaviors that emerge when leaders are ineffective with their action and influence skills, and understand their root causes,
Participants will learn trust-based influence skills that are necessary in order to engage and align others.
Dr. Hultgren and Mr. Bramer will walk through a number of real situations modeling a step-by-step application of the principles of this program,
This modeling will provide participants with on-going clarity about how a leader can utilize this material to bring about alignment around projects, staff meetings, and actions companies are trying to achieve.
Research reveals that over 80% of mission-critical problems have underlying adaptive (people/change-related) root causes. When we are overly focused on a problem's technical dimensions, we can completely miss the underlying root cause. If nothing changes within the people impacted by the issue, we are too often only addressing the problem's technical symptoms. Underlying, serious misalignments continue to undermine us.
Participants learn how to step back and note when misalignments are in play,
Once a misalignment is noted, participants learn how to name and frame the problem on the Action Wheel ™.
Once problems are framed, the Action Wheel ™ is used clockwise to uncover the root-cause issues.
Participants learn how to move from perceived issues to real issues that need to be addressed,
Participants learn how to move counter-clockwise to solve the problems that were framed.
Participants explore the three innate needs of motivation and how they can set up a culture that encourages and supports intrinsic motivation. Participants go on to consider Bloom’s 2-sigma dilemma in learning and a strategy for achieving outcomes that more than double what is achieved through traditional training. The session concludes with the Adaptive Assessor, a process for identifying needs in people.
Participants learn the three innate needs for intrinsic motivation to occur,
The power of Bloom's 2 Sigma approach to learning,
Members consider the Adaptive Assessor for identifying relational needs in their people.
In today's environment, change is continuous. In this course we explore the nature of change itself and discover our own resistance and barriers. We learn the critical nature of dissatisfaction, either positive or negative, and how without it, efforts to change are dragged down by our anchors of culture, habits, and existing systems. A change formula is introduced that maps to the six dimensions of action.
Participants learn a powerful change process based on the Action Wheel ™,
Participants identify, revisit, and re-perceive past actions through this new lens.
Dr. Hultgren and Mr. Bramer will walk through a number of real scenarios modeling a step-by-step application of the principles of this program.
This modeling will provide participants with on-going clarity about how a leader can utilize the framing, motivation, and change material to bring about alignment with organizational personnel.
The dimensions of action have taught us that we live and breathe through six perspectives on action. Yet, there is a deeper application of these six dimensions that impacts the very manner that we view life. To get at these frameworks requires that we step back from the everyday engagement with life and tease out the lenses that organize and make sense of our life experiences. ATL Leaders has found metaphorical analyses as the most fruitful approach to this journey.
The sweeping generic metaphors do four things for students.
They provide a window into how they, and others, view the world around them. These metaphors become the lenses that describe the world in our most profound understanding of that work and they identify distortions of that world. In other words, a metaphor unites into one vision what is and what ought to be in life from each person's point of view,
By understanding metaphors students will be able to grasp how others view the world and how they can adapt to better communicate with them,
Thirdly, participants will be able to use these metaphors to understand how organizations and people grow and develop. Participants will be able to identify where their organization is in terms of its lifecycle,
Lastly students will be able to grasp what metaphor they like most and least, and which metaphor is currently controlling their life.
Course twelve highlights participant presentations. These presentations are based on what the participants learned across the three programs. Participants engage in real world issues, concerns, projects, and/or strategy work in their final presentation. It is expected that projects will be in all different stages of their life cycle. Participants will utilize an Action Wheel ™ presentation format to put together their presentations. Presentations will be conducted live and will engage with other participants moving through the final course of the Authentic Leadership through Action Series. The session concludes with a motivational video.
The ATL leadership approach dramatically expands awareness of how authentic leadership is achieved through action. At the core of this approach is a practical framework for understanding the six fundamental dimensions of human action and how these dimensions can be skillfully implemented to achieve successful outcomes on a regular basis. This framework provides a common and reproducible approach, methodology, and language that directly builds leadership influence and acumen that sharpens the leadership lens.
Our experience has shown us that in most organizations the biggest opportunity for development is to build and strengthen the Adaptive Skills of its people and leaders. We believe a deficiency in adaptive skills is directly correlated to effective leadership. Leaders and followers with adaptive deficiencies often:
Can have difficulty being open to the differing viewpoints, perspectives, and values of others.
May misjudge how others will respond or react in certain situations, resulting in negative outcomes.
Can have difficulty tailoring the approach to each person and situation to achieve the desired results.
May be uncomfortable taking on new challenges, outside areas of direct expertise.
Over time, these issues negatively impact morale, efficiency, and ultimately bottom line performance.
Our solution for building Adaptive Skills can be found in our Action Wheel ™. Every action we take has six fundamental dimensions From completing routine tasks to launching and driving new initiatives to making sound decisions and solving problems the right way, achieving successful outcomes requires that each of these six dimensions is addressed effectively. Instinctively, we are all aware of these six dimensions - individually, they are each familiar. Yet more often than not, these dimensions remain invisible, go unspoken, or are completely overlooked in our daily work. This leaves team members frustrated and ultimately, disengaged.
The Action Wheel ™ organizes the fundamental dimensions of all human action into an intuitive, practical, and reproducibleleadership lens. Practitioners learn to see and leverage the dimensions of action to drive initiatives forward while positively influencing and aligning stakeholders.
The program described within this proposal has been proven to dramatically expand awareness, deeply connect and unify participants, and directly build adaptive skills and leadership capacity. At the core of the program, as noted above, is our practical framework for understanding the fundamental dimensions of human performance. This framework provides a common and reproducible approach, methodology, and language that directly builds leadership influence and acumen that sharpens the leadership lens. The program has been used and shared for more than 20 years with leaders and team members. Programs have been customized and tailored for clients such as:
In all these environments the leadership approach we utilize has dramatically expanded competence and confidence in leadership skills and deepened personal relationships with other cohort members. Our participants often report that the program is profoundly transformational in their personal, professional, and organizational roles.
At its core, The Action Wheel ™ is based on the simple reality that everything we do is a blend of Task, Process, and People. Each of us from highest level leader to individual contributor finds themselves executing tasks, working on or within processes, and interacting with other people throughout the day. Execution, Management, and Leadership have evolved over time as the disciplines that study and improve how we work in each of these domains.
When we are executing, we are focusing on the task at hand. We understand what needs to get done, we have the right training and skills to complete the task, and we are equipped with the tools, technologies, and procedures to accomplish our tasks. Execution is always tightly coupled to the task at hand. Specific tools, software, technical and functional competencies are continuously developed to equip the executer.
Management is the domain of designing, measuring, predicting, and improving processes. From financial budgets to EMS protocol development, management seeks to create more efficient and effective processes. When we are in management mode, we need to adopt a process, or planning perspective. Are we on track? What's the budget? What tasks and activities do we need to plan? Management work requires a different perspective, different tools, and a different approach than task-oriented, execution work. Yet management skills are well-defined and learnable and, with practice, managers develop a strong management lens.
Leadership is the domain of people. Leadership work requires its own perspective. Leadership work asks us to be able to authentically see the people dimension of each situation. Are we in alignment? How is the energy and enthusiasm? Are the goals clear, and supported? Does each person believe in what we are doing? Do we build common ground before launching new initiatives? Are team members vested? Are we taking profound responsibility for our areas of ownership? When the answer to any of these is no, do we notice it? Do we understand how to address it? Do we address it, or ignore it?
In our experience, of the three kinds of work, leadership skills are the least understood, practiced, or valued. Ironically, of the three domains, only leadership transcends industry, functional, and/or technical areas. Leadership or people skills, are 100% portable and are relevant to everything we do in our personal, professional, and organizational roles.
We've found that every complex problem has adaptive challenges underlying its technical components.
Addressing the adaptive challenges requires different tools, a fresh perspective, innovative approaches, different expectations, and new competencies. We believe that building these adaptive skills and developing a new lens to understand and solve complex issues is a critical competency for everyone.
Technical approaches usually don't work well when it comes to effectively collaborating with and influencing others. Complicating things further, an approach that works well with one person's style may strongly conflict with another person's preferences. Working well with others, driving and sustaining change, and solving complex adaptive problems requires a foundation of strong Adaptive Skills. Developing and strengthening Adaptive Skills raises awareness of the differences among people and situations. It builds competence in how well we work with others, and enhances the effectiveness of all our interactions. It's also the foundation for effective leadership.
The Action Wheel ™ organizes the fundamental dimensions of all human action into an intuitive and practical leadership lens.Practitioners learn, experience, and apply the wheel in their daily personal, professional, and organizational roles in three foundational ways:
There are six, and only six fundamental dimensions to all human action. Never any more, never any less.
AND:
A leader's success depends on their ability to leverage these fundamentals.
High performance is enabled when these six dimensions are addressed in sequence.
The leader's role is to guide the team through this sequence.
Every misalignment is rooted in one of the six dimensions of human action.
A key responsibility of leaders is to continuously and proactively drive alignment.