Emerging Leaders
Program Strawman
Content
In this document, we use “PL” as the people leader of the participant in the program
Introduction
Our 3Qetc experience, supported by research from Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and broader leadership studies, shows that many emerging leaders are promoted for technical capability while underprepared for core leadership behaviours: communication, listening, self-awareness, feedback, delegation, and trust-building. We acknowledge that AI is changing and challenging leadership theories and processes, and we embrace and explore this in this program.
The strongest leadership programs are not built around content alone but around behavioural change over time. Our program combines:
- Organisational Diagnostic
- Self-Audits
- Practical workshops ( details page X)
- 1:1 Coaching
- Peer-to-peer learning through Check-ins
- Manager and Directs/Team Feedback
- Tools and Resources
- Individual development road map | sponsorship | prompted journaling
Emerging leaders develop fastest when formal learning is integrated with reflection, coaching, feedback and practical application in the flow of work. This is why successful leadership development is best designed as a structured journey rather than a one-off intervention.
We recognise that emerging leaders come from diverse social backgrounds, educational pathways and lived experiences, and therefore begin their leadership journey from very different starting points. For this reason, 3Qetc designs programs that combine education, structured reflection, and individual development planning – grounded in self-audit, feedback, and practical leadership application. Following diagnostic assessment and feedback, each participant builds a personalised development map aligned to their strengths, development priorities and leadership context, ensuring the program supports both individual growth and organisational capability.
This program is co-created to dovetail into your organisation's HR – DNA – your reporting systems. We start with a 3Qetc strawman program for potential ideas.
Participant commitment
- Receive formal education in Leadership ( 5 workshops)
- Partner with an executive coach
- Have a personal development plan
- Develop self-awareness
- Have access to a full set of resources – online and individual development manuals
- Complete all pre-work
- Attend all 5 workshops
- Attend all 5 1:1 Coaching sessions
- Complete reflective assignment
- Be allocated an internal sponsor ( optional- see appendix)
- Be provided with a Journal ( With reflective prompts)
- Creating a common language in leadership development
- Accelerating the Leadership growth and development of the participants
- Improving psychological safety in the workplace
- Improving well-being
- Improving corporate engagement
- Collecting insightful data on all the leaders’ individual and collective strengths and core capabilities, and their strategic ideas
- Improve performance
Partnership with Your Organisation
3Qetc will work closely with your HR and People Leaders to ensure the program aligns with existing talent, performance and development processes across the organisation. Individual participant development goals will be mapped to current role expectations, performance objectives and future growth pathways, ensuring that learning is practical, measurable and embedded within your existing people infrastructure.
This document is presented as a strawman framework – offering an initial set of ideas, workshops, tools, surveys and development approaches. The intention is to use this as a starting point for co-design to shape a program that reflects your priorities, culture, and leadership expectations.
A critical part of the program’s success is ensuring that each participant begins with an up-to-date job description, clear role scope and agreed business KPIs. The leadership development journey then builds on this foundation, linking personal growth and behavioural development directly to role effectiveness and future progression. This sits as a shared responsibility, with People Leaders playing an important role in maintaining role clarity and development alignment. We see this as the responsibility of the participants' people leader. This allows coaching goals, behavioural priorities, KPIs and development actions to dovetail with your internal performance, talent and career development frameworks
The program is designed for 100 participants identified as emerging leaders. In-person workshops will be delivered at your offices in cohorts of 25, creating a practical group size for reflection, discussion and application.
Six Month program-strawman 100 participants
Program launch event 75-minute overview CEO – HR – 3Qetc – participants, and their people leaders | Context:- “The Why’ and “The How”: workshops +coaching +supervision + Resources (tools, surveys, frameworks, videos) (materials) Individual development plan, Self Audit and assessments, Internal & External journey, Governance and supervision. |
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Pre-work | All emerging leader participants do:
|
5 workshops | ( 2 hours each) See agenda ( TBD- examples included) 20-25 people per group |
Coaching | Individual 1:1 ( 5 sessions – 60 minutes each) to support learning- and road map development |
Check ins | Peer-to-peer sharing – hosted by 3Qetc - cross learnings |
Data insights | Data is aggregated and anonymous – reported back. ( experience has shown this has led to other initiatives, for example extra workshops on listening, goal setting and feedback) |
Après – Work | Participant reflective assignment |
Closing event | Feedback – what have we learned – what's next – resources - Data from assignment. 3m post program check-in. |
“Strawman” 6 months overview
Potential Cadence of program ( 6Months-100 participants)
Development workshops (1/2)
- Program: What is our 6m journey in your company context- Leadership styles / what leaders are being coached in
- Internal and External journey
- Introduction to strengths – “Self-awareness” (reports for individuals)
- Best version of self through a strength lens
- Understand blind spots
- What the data shows us ( 400 executives – the benchmark)
- How our company compares to the data
- High-performing teams
- What is our opportunity ( internal and external)
- Introduction to Tools and Frameworks and all resources
- RECAP
- The self-audit (Self-Awareness)
- Context of Workplace: The Challenge
- Stakeholder map exercise
- Leadership hygiene exercise
- Clear structure & Clarity of role
- KPI-development goals
- Motivation of self and others
- 1:1 meetings (cadence +structure)
- Team meetings (cadence + structure)
- RECAP
- 2-way feedback
- Delegation
- Accountability
- Celebrate success
- Language Style /communication
- Scaling – delegation and driving Accountability
- Well-being mental health / Burn out – responsibility as a leader (Intro to tool + refresher organisational EAP services
- Trust /share/vulnerability
Development workshops (2/2)
- RECAP
- Shared fears of leadership survey – the data
- My self-awareness
- My EQ – Self-regulation – self-compassion
- Psychological safety of my team – innovation, creativity, and performance
- Leadership hygiene
- Understanding Engagement
- Reflective Journaling
- RECAP
- Strategic thinking: where do I spend my time
- Succession planning
- Developing my team
- What's my style of leadership? Understand VUCA, leadership flexibility, where the environment is:
- Volatile
- Uncertain
- Complex
- Ambiguous
- Our shared learnings – the recap
- Our individual road maps of development
- Aggregated data from the assignment
On track v challenges
Details TBD
Proposed Next steps- The co-creation
1 | Evaluate the current strawman structure combination of workshops and coaching |
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2 | Evaluate content of workshops ( Your company lens- language, positioning, organisational goals, strategy and values) |
3 | Evaluate suggested tools, surveys, and frameworks |
4 | Evaluate end of program assignment |
5 | Evaluate time frames for deployment, workshops ,full cadence |
6 | Is it plausible that the participants, people leaders, could be expected to be involved in the following:- survey contribution feedback, coaching Questionnaire, triangulation coaching meeting, confirming appropriate JDs, roles and KPIs are up-to-date in your HR sites. |
7 | Create an internal Working group ( operational execution) and a Steering group (Governance ) |
8 | ADMIN – 3Qetc program manager, WG, SG, confidentiality agreements – Coachee/people-leader/Coach Manuals - printing/bound. Diary management, review Communication strategy ( templates to comms group) |
Participants assignment
Each participant will complete a reflective assignment:-
- Measures learning
- Captures reflection and behavioural shift
- Tests leadership maturity / future leadership readiness
30 Questions Total
3 Sections
Example: long-form questions – The design/context to be co-created with HR
The post-program assignment converts six months of development, including workshops, coaching, self-audit and reflection, into measurable organisational insight. It gives us three levels of data( see below) – allowing the organisation to evaluate not just attendance, but whether real development has occurred . For HR, this process is important because it creates a structured body of qualitative data that can inform talent conversations, succession planning, future program design, and broader organisational themes emerging from 100 developing leaders – including common strengths, blind spots, cultural barriers and readiness indicators
Individual reflection
Behavioural evidence
Strategic thinking
Participants' assignment: These need
short written answers (3–6 lines each).
Section 1 – Reflection on Self (10 Questions) This should test whether the participant has actually internalised the journey
1 | What have you learned about yourself as a leader that you did not fully understand six months ago? |
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2 | Which strength has become most important in your leadership during this program, and why? |
3 | Which blind spot became clearer to you during the program? |
4 | What leadership behaviour have you consciously changed in your day-to-day role? |
5 | Which conversation during the program (coaching, workshop, feedback or team interaction) had the greatest impact on your thinking? |
6 | What part of your self-audit was most confronting or surprising? |
7 | How has your confidence changed as a leader over the last six months? |
8 | Which fear of leadership do you now manage better than before? |
9 | What leadership habit still requires deliberate work? |
10 | What personal commitment will you carry forward beyond this program? |
Participants assignment These need
short written answers (3–6 lines each).
Section 2 – Leadership in Practice / Team Impact (10 Questions). This section tests applied leadership.
11 | What is one example of where you led differently with your team during the program? |
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12 | How has your approach to feedback changed? |
13 | What have you learned about delegation that you did not fully appreciate before? |
14 | How do you now think about accountability differently? |
15 | How has your listening changed in practice? |
16 | What has changed in the quality of your 1:1 conversations? |
17 | How would your team describe the biggest change in your leadership? |
18 | What have you learned about psychological safety in your team? |
19 | What remains difficult when leading others? |
20 | What team practice have you improved that you believe has the most impact on performance? |
Participants assignment These need
short written answers (3–6 lines each).
Section 3 – Strategic Reflection (10 Questions)
21 | What do you believe your organisation most needs from leaders over the next 2 years? |
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22 | What strategic challenge do you believe leaders at your level need to understand better? |
23 | Where do you believe organisational priorities are hardest to translate into team action? |
24 | What capability in your team will matter most for future success? |
25 | How do you think technology, data and AI will change leadership expectations in your role? |
26 | What does good leadership above you look like now compared to six months ago? |
27 | What cultural behaviour do you believe organisations most need to strengthen? |
28 | How should leaders think differently when balancing performance and wellbeing? |
29 | What do you believe future leadership requires that traditional management did not? |
30 | If promoted again, what would you now do differently in your first 90 days? |
Appendix
i | Sponsorship |
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ii | ICE (Internal journey & Context & External Journey). LEADERSHIP MODEL |
iii | 3Qetc Tools, surveys and Frameworks |
iv | Co-branded resource example – survey, video |
v | The full self-Audit |
vi | Our Data & insights |
vii | Data analytics ( example of 400 executives – blind spots high-performing teams) |
Sponsor of participant ( optional)
The concept of a sponsor to be explored, noting overlap with supporting people leader- For discussion
A sponsor in this emerging leadership program would actively champion selected participants by connecting their development outcomes to visible organisational opportunities – for example recommending them for stretch assignments, strategic exposure, or future talent pathways based on the program’s data, coaching progress, and demonstrated behavioural growth.
They also help translate the program into organisational credibility by reviewing aggregated insights, supporting leadership visibility with HR and senior executives, and ensuring emerging leaders are noticed beyond the classroom as future talent rather than just program participants
A sponsor helps you advance inside the organisation by using their influence.
- Recommends you for promotion
- Puts your name forward for high-visibility work
- Defends your potential in talent discussions
- Introduces you to influential stakeholders
- Gives you access to strategic forums
- “She should lead this.”
- “He’s ready for broader scope.”
- “I trust this person on this initiative.”
Sponsors directly affect:
- Role progression
- Visibility
- Succession opportunities
- Executive exposure
- Champions development
I.C.E. Internal journey & Context &
External Journey Leadership model
Context
- Organisation’s strategy, Vision, purpose “The Why”
- Organisational Culture & Values
- Leadership Hygiene
- On-boarding
- Development – Training
- Collaboration & Innovation
- Internal & External Stakeholder Management
- VUCA environment
- Customers & Clients
- Growth & Performance
- Technology
- Data insights - AI
3Qetc Tools Surveys & Frameworks
**External Strategic partners Langley (Capffinity)
Resources example – Stakeholder wheel co-branded
Introducing Alison Irons ( AI Avatar) from the company development team explaining the stakeholder map exercise ( 3 minutes). (On 3Qetc website – under resources) ( Edit company – to your company name, scripts in videos can edited for your company narrative).
The Full Self-audit
Strengths Survey- High performing teams –
Blind spots- 400 executives (Benchmark)
CAPPFINITY online strengths test. 60 strengths across four domains ( realised and unrealised strengths, Learned behaviours and weaknesses) and split 60 strengths also across five families :
- Communicating
- Being
- Motivating
- Relating
- Thinking
- 9 Organisations
- 400 Executives
- CEOs, GMs , MDs , Leaders,
- 61% male. 39% female
- Observations in the communication family, listening , feedback and counterpoint are extremely poor.
- Implications on the performance of leadership and high-performing teams
- Constructive work to be done on communication, language, and two-way feedback culture
- Work to be done on self-awareness of leaders
% of Particpants with Listening in top 10 and 20 listed strengths
% of Particpants with Feedback in top 10 and 20 listed strengths
% of Participants with Counterpoint in 10 and 20 listed strengths
% of Participants with Curiosity in top 10 and 20 listed strengths