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Our Learning Philosophy

SGR’s Fourth Dimension Leadership Employee Development Model provides high performance leaders with a meaningful and results oriented approach to transforming their organizations.  This transformation is not achieved through dramatic new programs and initiatives.  It is only achieved through intentional and effective development today - not just of current leaders, but of the next generation of leaders, and the next generation after that, and the next generation after that.   Accordingly, development of future leaders by very definition must be long term in scope, perspective and strategy.

Status quo organizations attempt to “train” rather than “develop” leaders.  They tend to offer a variety of classes on leadership and management, each of which individually may provide good content, but are menu driven and disconnected from one another.   In a menu driven environment, employees are left to choose training classes which interest them, or occasionally their supervisor will send them to a particular class for remedial purposes.   Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions, menu driven training is by its very nature haphazard, ill focused, and often misses the mark on the leadership skills each individual and the collective team actually need to succeed.

More importantly - optional, menu driven training can actually nurture a culture of mediocrity.  The absence of a developmental approach to preparing future leaders means a significant portion of individuals who promote do so without the requisite leadership competencies that should have been developed at an earlier level. The higher an individual rises in the organization, the more resistant he or she becomes to “being trained”. Which means the higher the individual promotes, the more institutionalized the mediocrity becomes.

In these organizations, individuals tend to be promoted for their technical competence, but with little preparation to lead others at the higher level.  As a result, they rise to one level of responsibility beyond their leadership, continued 

competency and stagnate.  Technically capable and only one level beyond their leadership competency, they are not bad enough to fire.   But they are not good enough to promote again, so they end up as long term “stealth incompetents” - operationally functional but contributing to a culture of mediocrity due to an inability to lead.  The result? Institutionalized mediocrity... making authentic transformation virtually impossible to achieve.

Fourth Dimension Leadership recognizes that leaders can be developed – but that a coherent, planned and holistic building block approach must be utilized to achieve genuine leadership competency and effectiveness.  The underlying foundation for success of ALL employees is Relational Leadership (First Dimension), comprised of both Human Relations and Customer Service learning tracks.  Fourth Dimension Leadership starts by recognizing that all employees exercise some degree of leadership regardless of position.  Leadership at the front line is very different than leadership at the top, but using relational leadership skills to accomplish desired outcomes is still critical for maximum success. 

Once Relational Leadership competency is attained, an individual is ready to work on developing skills in Operational Leadership (Second Dimension), which provides learning tracks that focus on supervisory and managerial effectiveness.  In this Second Dimension, the individual progresses from managing relationship, to managing the performance of employees and operations.

Systems Leadership (Third Dimension) prepares leaders who have been responsible for managing daily operations to leaders who are responsible for creating an operational environment that facilitates excellent performance by shaping the culture and core values of the organization.  Trust Building and Systems Building tracks help develop leaders who are responsible for designing, implementing and ensuring the effective functioning of healthy systems that govern how all underlying operations are managed.  

Finally, Strategic Leadership (Fourth Dimension) focuses on producing leaders who transform the organization from what it is to what it aspires to become.  A long term and change oriented perspective is required to help an organization envision the future and develop a practical, achievable, and yet aggressive, strategy for shaping its destiny.   In each of the three predecessor leadership dimensions, primary emphasis is internally focused on executing with excellence, continuously improving current operations, and creating stable and healthy systems that ensure outstanding performance.  With Strategic Leadership, however, the primary leader still bears responsibility for all that is happening within their organization, but their allocation of time and personal attention shifts to become more strategically, and thus more externally, focused. 

The Fourth Dimension Leadership model intentionally begins developing future leaders when they first enter the organization. It is important to note that the next generation of leaders is already in the workplace with a different set of values, a different reaction to authority, and a different approach to work life in general.   As a result, development of this “leadership pipeline” is particularly critical as today’s 20-somethings rise through the organization.  The old model of “training leaders through osmosis” simply will not work in the new world.  Indeed, it never worked very well in the old world!

To create truly high performing organizations demands a holistic approach to employee development rather than the traditional approach of event based training.  SGR’s training is designed to help your employees become better overall employees rather than just “checking the box” like most traditional training programs.