Leading NOW

As businesses continue to evolve and become more diverse, organizations must embrace Inclusive leadership to drive high performance and create an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and have a sense of belonging. However, corporate management often lacks the skill sets and proper guidance to weave inclusivity into their organizational fabric for long-term business success.

This is where Leading NOW comes in to help.

A global leadership expert and advisor to organizations, Leading NOW is dedicated to defining the future of Inclusive leadership development. It drives cultural change for organizations by changing the mindsets and behavior of leaders to incorporate inclusivity in the workplace. Leading NOW empowers those already in leadership to transition into better leaders, while helping develop future leaders from the underrepresented talent pool.

“Individuals from the underrepresented subset have a distinct growth curve and mandate a different growth environment than the rest. Each subset, regarding race, gender, language, or societal standards, calls for different leadership training and guidance. We create a fertile ground for these leaders to grow by cultivating an Inclusive organizational culture and environment,” says Kelly Lockwood Primus, CEO at Leading NOW.

Leading NOW offers an Inclusive Leadership Behavior Assessment (ILBA) for the existing leaders to understand what impression they give out and what skillsets they should hone to be a more Inclusive leader.

From there, the company offers a program that works on those specific skills–everything on the range of leadership behaviors they need to help them become better at it. The program can be delivered live or virtually.

For existing leaders who are already people managers, there are workshops such as communication and listening, conflict management, interpersonal savvy, leading through change, managing complexity, and other competencies that help them become better leaders.There is also a workshop called Leadership Pitfalls and Potholes that exposes them to the issues impeding their growth, such as a lack of clear direction, inability to blend different personalities into a cohesive team, failure to develop the competencies of one's team, lack of awareness of the organization's culture, lack of actionable feedback, accountability, and micromanaging.

Similarly, for future leaders, Leading NOW has a Leadership Assessment to analyze how they appear as business people through inputs from people around them. It then customizes a leadership program based on these results, including everything from learning to think like a CEO, speak the language of business, and understanding how to receive strategic mentoring.

In its approach to Inclusive leadership development, Leading NOW's value propositions makes it a cut above the rest. The company is research-oriented and is committed to research around leadership, culture, and road blocks preventing underrepresented talent from reaching higher levels within organizations. It’s Center for Diversity &Inclusion and Gender Dynamics Institute bring together the greatest minds in DEI to share insights, and provide guidance to Leading NOW’s programs, and recommend newer solutions to help clients reach their Inclusive talent and culture goals.

In addition, as a global organization, Leading NOW has worked with clients across the world. Its approach to leadership is influenced by this global perspective, enabling it to be well ahead of its competitors.

“Our expert team is made up of business people who had high-level roles within corporations. We understand how businesses operate and that resonates well with our clients,” says Primus. “As a result, the processes we design for the leaders and the business to perform better are not theoretical, and can be easily implemented into their organizational setting.”

Leading NOW’s approach to leadership development is perfectly demonstrated through its client success stories. The CEO of a FinTech organization wanted to create an optimal workplace for his employees to feel more included while working in his organization. Leading NOW came in and conducted a corporate assessment to understand how employees felt about the organization, and customized separate programs for leadership and the entire employee population. These programs focused on Inclusive leadership behaviors and how to develop an environment of psychological safety. Over the course of the three year partnership, they were able to demonstrate a successful culture of leadership and equity. They also realized that to be more innovative and enhance the business's performance, the entire team had to be Inclusive and change how they interacted with each other and made those switches accordingly.

Leading NOW works with business leaders across the globe to drive cultural change for organizations large and small. Offering virtual and in-person training sessions, Leading NOW helps leaders perform better, develop underrepresented talent, and drive successful DEI initiatives to achieve business outcomes.