About the Leadership Consortium

The Leadership Consortium is Australia's foremost business-based leadership organisation.

We exist to give our members, and through them the wider Australian business community, the ultimate competitive edge - a leadership capability that is second to none.

The Consortium designs and delivers to members programs that focus sharply on the needs and challenges of contemporary business.

We do this through:

		development of innovative personal and professional programs for current and future leaders;
		presentations and seminars from the finest international speakers;
		involvement in the national debate on leadership;
		our faculty - the most experienced and highly-regarded role model leaders, consultants and executive coaches in Australia;
		networking opportunities that give members access to the best and brightest of Australia's contemporary business leaders.

What drives the Consortium
In both the commercial environment and in a wider societal sphere, performance, confidence and direction are intrinsically linked to the quality of leaders.

Success, for the society or business results from great leadership at all levels.

Five principles underpin the Leadership Consortium's activities:

		effective leadership is the key to superior performance in business;
		leadership can be observed at any level in an organisation or society. It is not only practised at the highest levels, it is around us always, in the way we think, react and interact;
		the basic capabilities of effective leaders include visioning and strategic thinking, leading and managing change and influencing and motivating others;
		leadership can be learned. People in organisations learn from experience, from their peers and from those they respect;
		leadership relies on connection and communication: linked people, ideas, perceptions and opportunities. As such, it is a journey more than a destination, a level of expertise rather than a set of rules.

Consortium origins
In 1992, a group of Australian organisations could sense the faint signals of change through the white noise of everyday business.

This group of four organisations founded the Leadership Consortium for the express purpose of improving the personal and professional capability of their leaders, so as to equip them to manage these emerging issues.

Today, the members of the Leadership Consortium are a vital mix of public companies, State and Federal Government agencies, and not-for-profit enterprises who, collectively, employ hundreds of thousands of people, and directly affect more than 15% of our nation's GDP.

Since 1992, the Leadership Consortium has designed and delivered workshops, seminars and information sessions to thousands of senior executives. We have produced dozens of influential reports, papers and presentations as well as significant published research. We have been involved in bringing to Australia the world's most highly-regarded leadership practitioners. Our officers, associates and alumni have contributed many speeches and articles that inform our national understanding of what constitutes outstanding leadership.

Leadership and Australia
People in Australia have a different approach to leadership compared to many nations. We certainly have a history of working well in teams, and in striving for, and achieving, success against the odds.

We tend not to follow blindly, and will challenge authority that is based on position rather than performance. We also take jobs on and get them done.

At one time, our high level of performance was mainly confined to the sporting arena. Today, Australians, more generally, have built an enviable international reputation for leadership and results. Australian coaches and trainers are now widely sought after to develop the athletes of other nations. Australian wines and winemakers make news wherever they go. Australian actors, technical and artistic professionals now have significant presence in Hollywood.

Australian CEOs and Senior Managers are heading up major multinational corporations.

The way we approach work and business resonates with people in other countries.

Our vision of ourselves has changed. We are now going out to the world, ready to step up to global challenges.

Future-proofing the organisation
The Leadership Consortium works with its members to 'future-proof' their organisations by developing the skills, flexibility and creative capacity to solve entrenched problems and to profit from emerging opportunities.

In the increasingly complex environment of contemporary globalised business, the only competitive edge of both societies and enterprises is leadership.

Attracting the right people, designing the right jobs, entering the right markets, forming the right alliances, focusing on the critical issues, developing the right products - all these are determined by the effectiveness of the organisation's leaders.

The Consortium's many programs and activities enable members to thrive in the fast-approaching future where complexity is the norm.

How we work for our members
Leadership Consortium programs deal with the concerns and interests of Australian businesses. They are designed collaboratively around the realities that business leaders face on a daily basis.

Consortium programs are different: they help members develop new ideas and approaches to business challenges. They are about actionable, business-focused results.

Programs employ a wide range of highly-developed adult learning approaches, including:

		residential workshops using experiential and action learning approaches;
		presentations from, and debate with, role model leaders from specific business sectors;
		site visits and immersive learning where participants see innovative models of leadership applied first-hand;
		one-on-one coaching with Australia's most experienced corporate coaches;
		innovative and practical learning methods such as simulations, hypotheticals, case studies, role plays.

Creating the networked executive
Contemporary business is about seeing the patterns and linkages, about making connections before others see them, and then taking action.

To do this, organisations need to be able to generate and share knowledge swiftly even when the business environment is chaotic and difficult to map or predict.

The Leadership Consortium links leaders to a wide variety of networks and knowledge nodes: top performing organisations, role model leaders, an extensive and healthy alumni network, connections with academia and research.

Our programs enable executives to convert their tacit, personal knowledge into explicit, networked knowledge that can be applied for business success.

Return on Investment
The Consortium's research demonstrates that people in Australia value working with leaders who are able to communicate a clear vision, capitalise on opportunities, have a strong coaching style, engage others in the decision making process, and demonstrate strong people management skills.

Leaders with these capabilities consistently create teams that are more committed to the organisation and most importantly, produce people eager to become leaders themselves.

The returns on investment for member organisations are:

		leadership development is aligned to business objectives;
		leaders build their capacity to learn and adapt to changes in the work environment;
		improved quality of strategic decision-making;
		better management of teams and team processes;
		faster responses to sudden shifts in the commercial environment.

It all adds up to stronger, more alert, more committed leaders operating with the improved skills and capabilities necessary to respond quickly and astutely, to the complex, shifting landscape that is contemporary business.

Then there are the spin-off benefits that are becoming more important every year: better governance and ethical decision making; better quality people who want to work in your enterprise; better risk management through the early identification of 'on the radar' issues; and greater recognition, in public and amongst business peers, that your organisation is committed to excellence in leadership, for itself and for the nation.

About Leadership Consortium programs
The people who come to Consortium programs are already skilled and experienced managers and leaders. Consortium programs push people to a higher level of performance - building the skills and capabilities for a successful business future.

All programs offered by the Leadership Consortium are underpinned by well-established principles on how people learn about being leaders:

		leaders learn from experience - practice, reflection, adaptation;
		leaders learn from each other - through peer-to-peer dialogue and networking;
		leaders exhibit a drive for lifelong learning;
		every individual learns in different ways and program design must support this;
		the act of learning is an act of personal transformation.

The program suite provides members and their executives with a wide variety of choice with reference to:

		level of the participant in the organisation;
		preferred learning approach;
		balance of functional and strategic experience;
		capacity to commit time to development activities.

Our programs are continually reviewed and updated through extensive research and evaluation - again, by members, for members - so as to ensure business needs remain top of the agenda.