What the problem is
In almost no organisation is it written down what exactly is expected of someone who runs a team, and yet people are assessed, promoted and reproached as if it were.
A person is promoted into a management post for how well they did their previous job, which is almost never the same work. They are rarely told what leading here means, which responsibilities are theirs now, or which behaviours will be looked at. They learn it by imitation, by trial and error, or they never learn it.
The result is a leadership that exists but cannot be discussed. Every manager invents their own, senior management misses a leadership it never defined, and training is bought off a catalogue, with content that answers no measured gap.
- Managing and leading get confusedThe post gives you power; authority is given to you by people. Someone with only the first gives orders; someone with the second gets the team moving without having to give any. They are two different things, and organisations usually name only the first.
- Expectations exist but are never statedEveryone has an idea of what a good boss should do, and nobody has written it down. They surface when they are breached, which is the worst possible moment to discover them.
- Assessment has nothing to compare againstWithout a written model, assessing leadership is having opinions about people. With one, it is checking a behaviour against a criterion agreed beforehand and known to everyone.
- Training runs ahead of diagnosisCourses are bought before anyone knows which competency is missing. People are trained in what the catalogue offers rather than in what the organisation needs, and afterwards nobody understands why it makes no difference.
The starting point
A leadership model cannot be bought ready-made. It is written with the people who will have to exercise it.
General leadership models exist and they are good, but they don't say what to do on a Tuesday in this organisation. A model works once the leadership team has argued out and closed three things: what leading means here, who gets called a leader and at which levels, and which key functions they have to exercise. None of the three can be taken as read.
The second condition is that the model be tested with the people who will have to live it. A model written by senior management alone describes the leadership it would like to have; tested with the whole body of managers, it describes the leadership it can demand.
What the model contains
There are three parts, and no consultant can supply any of the three on their own. What I bring is the method, the language and the facilitation; the content comes from the team.
- PART 1The definitionWhat leading means here, in one sentence that senior management signs. It looks like the trivial step and it is the one that takes the longest, because it forces a choice between ideas of command that until then had coexisted without ever touching.
- PART 2The scopeWho counts as a leader and at which levels. It determines who is inside the model, who gets assessed and who gets training. It almost always includes more people than the organisation used to call "management".
- PART 3The key functionsThe management responsibilities and the competencies that really matter here, each with its written definition. They are the criteria used afterwards to assess and to train.
The two lists that cross
The work on key functions starts from two inventories, and the model comes out of crossing them.
Management responsibilities
These are the management tasks the organisation entrusts to whoever runs a team: what they have to do, regardless of what they are like. They range from rolling out the strategy in their own area to defining what is expected of each post, giving their people feedback for improvement or representing the organisation to third parties. It is the part of leadership you can demand in a job description.
Competencies and associated values
These are the abilities and the attitudes that make it possible to exercise those responsibilities: how you have to be in order to do it. Some are technical and can be trained, such as planning, communication or negotiation; others are attitudes the organisation decides to reward or not, such as humility, institutional loyalty or tolerance of uncertainty. Each one arrives at the session with its definition written out, and it is that definition that gets argued over: two people who say they value "humility" are usually talking about two different things until somebody writes it down.
Not all of both lists go in. The work consists of choosing the few that really matter in this organisation and discarding the rest in writing, which is what turns an inventory into a model.
How the work runs
Three in-person sessions and an online assessment system, with analysis behind them. The sequence deliberately moves up and down: it starts and ends with senior management, and in the middle it passes through everyone who exercises leadership.
- Culture measurementThe first thing done in the session with the leadership team, before leadership is even mentioned. It reads the culture the organisation has and the one it would like to have, and that distance is the real brief the model will receive.
- Context and a common languageA short piece of teaching: leadership, power and authority; managing versus leading; what key functions and competencies are. It comes before any decision on purpose, because without a common language the discussion that follows gets tangled in the words instead of the criteria.
- Definition and scopeSame session. It closes what leading means in this organisation, who gets called a leader and at which levels. It comes out written and signed, not as a line in the minutes.
- Key functionsResponsibilities and competencies are crossed and the short set the organisation will demand and assess is chosen. What stays out is decided too, and that is half the work.
- Assessment criteriaHow it will be measured, on what scale and what is done afterwards with the result. Agreed before measuring, which is the only way the measurement won't be argued about once it arrives.
- Presenting the model to those who leadOnline assessment system, about twenty minutes. Before anything is asked, the model is shown: why the programme exists, what senior management agreed and what exactly each key function means.
- Individual assessmentEach person rates leadership in the organisation (in general terms, aimed at nobody in particular), assesses each key function, marks their own strengths and areas for improvement and proposes actions on them. In private, aggregated, and at no personal cost to anyone who answers frankly.
- Contrast sessionThe aggregated results are presented function by function, the individual reflections are shared, and a set of improvement proposals is agreed. Table format, in a single session, and it works with groups of up to a hundred leaders.
- Deployment plan and exit decisionsClosing session with senior management. Concrete actions come out of the measured gaps, and from there three possible exits: the plan for deploying the model, the design of the organisation's own training programme and, when the diagnosis calls for it, a redefinition of structures and responsibilities.
The three instruments
The three participation pieces run on a console of my own, which provides anonymity, speed and a real-time read of where the group is going. The substance is still the analysis and the argument between the people in the room.
- Organisational cultureWith the leadership team, opening the first session. Four types of organisation (clan, innovative, results-oriented and hierarchical) rated across six dimensions: dominant characteristics, leadership, people management, cohesion, strategic emphasis and criteria for success. A hundred points are shared out in each dimension and the exercise is answered twice, for today's culture and for the desired one.
- Leadership modelWith the leadership team, in session. It captures how the group completes "leading here means…", who they think should be called a leader and which levels they recognise, and it has them vote on the responsibilities and the competencies along two axes: which matter most and which are exercised worst today. Out of that come the definition, the scope and the key functions.
- Leadership assessmentFor the wider group, as an assessment survey. It inherits the definition, the scope and the key functions the committee agreed, shows them before asking anything and measures each one on two separate scales: how developed it is and how much it matters.
Why culture comes before leadership. The model is not written in a vacuum: it is written to take the organisation from where it is to where it wants to be. If senior management declares it wants a more innovative culture and today's reading comes out markedly hierarchical, that gap is the brief, and the key functions chosen afterwards have to serve it. Measuring it costs twenty minutes at the start of the first session, and it prevents writing a leadership model that is perfectly correct and perfectly foreign to what the organisation needs.
Why two things are measured and not one. Measuring only the level of development produces a list of weaknesses with no order of priority, and the organisation ends up training in whatever scores worst even when it is irrelevant. Measuring importance as well brings out the only question that helps you decide: which competencies are both critical and weak. That crossing, and not the ranking of low scores, is what orders the training programme.
What the programme produces
- The complete modelDefinition, scope and key functions with their definitions and their assessment criteria. It is the document that stops "leadership" being a word for speeches and turns it into an agreement you can quote.
- The assessment documentHow each key function is exercised today, where the gaps lie between what matters and what is developed, and the set of proposals the group agreed in the contrast session.
- The action plan and its three exitsWhat is done with all of the above: the plan for deploying the model (actions with the teams, objectives, routines), the design of the organisation's own training programme for current and future leaders, and the redefinition of structures and responsibilities when the diagnosis demands it.
What makes it different
The organisation writes the model
I don't bring a leadership model and adapt it. I bring the method so the team writes its own. A model you are handed is followed for as long as it is remembered; one you agreed to is defended.
The teaching comes before the decision
The first session opens with the concepts, and the leadership team argues over them, debates them and qualifies them until they are its own. Arguing about whether more leadership is needed without having separated power from authority first is a conversation that goes nowhere.
What is developed and what matters are both measured
Separately, on two scales. That is what makes it possible to train in what is needed instead of training in whatever scores low.
The whole group tests what senior management wrote
The model is not published and left at that: it is put to the people who have to exercise it, in a session where it can be argued with. If it doesn't survive that room, it was never going to survive the following year.
A contrast session with room for the whole group
The assessment and the contrast have been run with groups of up to a hundred leaders without splitting them up. And the level of agreement reached is surprising: once people have rated in private and then see the aggregated data in front of them, consensus on what is failing arrives far earlier than senior management expected.
Decisions come out of the assessment
A leadership diagnosis with nothing behind it produces awareness of a problem and no tool for solving it. Here the assessment leads into the deployment plan, into the design of a training programme and, if the diagnosis calls for it, into touching the structures.
The assessment is genuinely anonymous
Individual, aggregated and with no trail back to people. It is the condition for someone to admit in writing that they don't know how to give feedback, which is exactly the data you need.
Who it works for
- Industry and corporationsWhen the workforce has grown or been reorganised and middle managers are running teams without anyone having written down what is expected of them.
- Universities and R&D centresWhen academic authority, administrative hierarchy and technical responsibility live side by side, and none of the three is clear about what falls to it in managing people.
- Public administrationWhen posts are filled by procedure and the ability to run teams is part of neither what is required nor what is developed.
- Organisations with professional managersHealth, education or technical services, where you manage professionals who know more than their boss about their own subject and leadership cannot lean on expert knowledge.
Where it has been deployed
- Universidad Pública de NavarraFrom the insideWhere the method was built, running the institution's management between 2016 and 2025.
- Universitat de les Illes BalearsComplete modelDefinition, scope and key functions with the management team, assessment of the whole body of leaders and design of the training programme.
- Universidad del País VascoComplete programmeDefinition of the leadership model and work with the leadership and management teams.
How to commission it
What your organisation puts in
- The leadership team, twiceAt the start to define the model and at the end to decide the deployment. Without senior management in the room there is nobody to sign the model.
- The whole body of people who leadEveryone the scope identifies as a leader, for the individual assessment and for the contrast session. The format holds up to a hundred people at once, in a single session.
- A willingness to publish the modelA model that is not communicated changes no behaviour. If the organisation is not prepared to say out loud what it expects of its managers, the programme is pointless.
- Recognised time, not added timeThe sessions are few and bounded, but they have to be in the diary as work and not as a favour.
- Accepting that the assessment may sting a littleThe aggregated results usually contain some key function senior management took to be settled. That is the value of the exercise, not an accident.
How it is closed
The scope and the terms are set in an initial conversation, based on the size of the body of leaders, the number of sessions and whether support is needed afterwards to put the training programme in place. Each engagement is quoted on that basis.