Overview:
Battlefield Leadership’s primary goal is catalyzing changes in leadership behavior or practice over time for the improvement of individual leadership and organizational effectiveness.  Frequently the impact of a battlefield leadership training experience is so profound that participants (individual leaders and leadership teams) will want to further instill and leverage their insights gained on the battlefield within their organizations.  Battlefield Leadership works with clients in three areas of initiative to accomplish such objectives:

• Cascading the experience and key lessons down through successive levels of leadership or dispersing it throughout an organization in a consistent form
• Extending the experience and its benefits within a leadership team, an intact team, or a group of high-potential or individual leaders or succession candidates in a particular and focused direction
• Renewing the experience and the content at dependable and regular intervals over a period of time, often as part of a larger and more comprehensive development platform

Benefits:
The programs we offer for cascading, extending and renewing programs provide a number of advantages and benefits, including:

• Fully Customized – Our programs are typically fully customized to meet the individual leadership, cultural or branding objectives of a specific client company or organization
• Highly Cost-Effective – Using powerful technology and other effective modes of delivery, our programs can bring the experiences and leadership principles discovered during an onsite battlefield experience directly to larger group of leaders throughout an organization, but without the heavy expense or time investment associated with an off-site learning program
• Greater Depth and Sustainability – Our programs ensure that leaders at all levels and across all functions of an enterprise share a common frame of reference for the leadership principles and insights gained from an initial battlefield experience.  This benefit adds greater value and deeper sustainability to an organization’s ongoing commitment to leadership development

Below are more details about BLL’s approaches to leveraging the initial battlefield experience:

Cascading
Sharing insights in a consistent, comprehensive and compelling manner with successive levels, or transmitting outwardly to multiple audiences or teams within an organization is a formidable challenge for most leaders.  We have developed a powerful, classroom-based technology for effectively disseminating the key messages and lessons from our Gettysburg, Normandy, and Little Bighorn battlefield experiences, which closely replicates the experience on these historic battlegrounds.  (Please see the Classroom Experiences section of the website.)

The pivotal events and leadership figures in these epic battles, and the key leadership lessons connected to their decisions and actions on the field, are brought to life in a vivid, memorable way via a combination of video clips, PowerPoint slides, storytelling, case studies, group discussions and facilitated dialog.  Although nothing can 100 percent replace or replicate an onsite battlefield learning experience, participants in our cascading classroom programs retain vivid images of these exemplary leaders and the principles which governed their success or failure in the real-life drama of these legacy battles.  As these lessons from history are related to similar dynamics and situations found in the corporate arena, participants form powerful mental models of leadership effectiveness and ineffectiveness which can be applied directly to the challenging situations they confront in their daily roles as leaders in business.

Extending
Often, leaders or leadership teams will want to continue their leadership journeys using the battlefield metaphors as a central framework for a new or revised approach to leadership in their businesses.  Most often, they will want to build on the original battlefield experience by further exploring dimensions of leadership related to outcomes in that battle, and sometimes they will want to focus on specific aspects of leadership drawn from the original experience, and to do so through examining leaders and situations not studied in the initial experience.

We have developed case studies and program content for leaders and situations not normally examined in the initial battlefield programs so that these initial experiences can be explored in greater depth as a vehicle for sustaining leader development on a consistent platform in an integrated fashion within an organization or intact team over time.  Depending on the level or particular orientation of a leadership team, content can be selected and tailored to be more focused on the strategic, operational, or tactical roles leaders might assume to ensure effective execution.  Or, if the focus for a team needs to be on the role of leadership in effectively orchestrating resources, or in enabling closer coordination of activities across boundaries, or in ensuring collaboration and teamwork in an organization, then content can be more focused on these aspects of leadership related to the armies or units involved in the action and decisions of the initial battle studied.

Also, we have created follow-on programs for our leadership training experiences at Gettysburg and Normandy that examine new and different aspects of leadership and situations which are completely different from the initial battlefield programs.  (See Gettysburg II and Normandy II descriptions under Battlefield Programs section of website.)  Our Gettysburg II Leadership Experience visits wholly different sites on the battlefield than the initial Gettysburg Leadership Experience, and it examines leadership in the high command of the Union Army of the Potomac and in the mid-level command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.  This is in direct contrast to the opposite focus of the initial program.  Our Normandy II – Breakout and Entrapment Leadership Experience explores the second and third phases of the Battle of Normandy and focuses on the interaction in the German high command and on leadership’s role  in the orchestration and deployment of the land forces of the five Allied armies involved in the liberation of Normandy.

Renewing
Sustaining desired change in leadership behavior or practice within a team or an organization requires reinforcement and refocusing over time at dependable, regular intervals as part of an integrated strategy for ongoing development and improvement. 

Battlefield Leadership has extensive experience working in harmony with the Human Resources or Learning and Development teams in an organization to help plan and integrate appropriate initiatives deriving from the initial battlefield or classroom experience into the development platform over a prescribed period of time. 

In this capacity, we have provided various types of renewal programming for clients, typically involving multiple expository and experiential components -- at least one of which is directly drawn from the initial experience.  Usually, at least one new case study anchors a renewal experience.  Other renewal elements can include program components such as:

• Custom-Developed Case Studies -- Based on leaders from history not related to the initial battle experience
• Custom-Developed Experiential Modules and Exercises -- Explores the aspects or dimensions of leadership seen as relevant to the team’s development at a particular point in time
• Experiential Leadership Competency Exercises or Modules -- Focused on a particular leadership competency related to the organization’s internal leadership or competency model, including competencies like driving vision and execution, building trust and trustworthiness, standing in character and integrity, fostering a culture of initiative and accountability
• Custom-Developed Leadership Effectiveness Assessment Tools -- Links the key lessons and principles from the initial battlefield experience to the critical competencies and practices in an organization’s leadership model, which can then be used by the team as a mechanism for gathering input on individual effectiveness (and aggregate team effectiveness) based on those competencies and practices deemed most important for improvement
• Creation/Presentation of Leadership Effectiveness Models -- Describes the facets of leadership effectiveness such as decision-making, empowerment, effective delegation, and their relationship to the specific skill sets involved in each to be used as a shared framework for improved effectiveness in these areas by all team members 

With these in-depth and highly customized offerings, Battlefield Leadership becomes an adjunct of the internal development and training staff and usually takes an active role in delivering the content for the designated renewal events or sessions over time.