TLC
The Importance of Community Building in Leadership Development

COVID-19, the climate crisis, conflict in Ukraine and in different parts of the world, and advanced computing technology have triggered unanticipated global changes. To operate in these critical times, management teams must be adept with the latest leadership skills to ensure maximum efficiency. That’s easier said than done, considering the adaptive changes being explored and implemented, which inevitably impact every organization’s culture and the workforce’s engagement, performance, and productivity.

This is where The TLC Solution offers unique approaches to emerging problems. Talent Leadership Change (TLC) is a robust community of associates who bring diverse knowledge, skill sets, and multiple perspectives that can bring about CHANGE for a firm in crisis. The TLC Solution takes a human systems perspective to organization development and human capital consulting. Its strong co-creative and coaching approach to capacity creation draws insight directly from stakeholders within and outside the client community. Rather than avoid or push back on disruptions, The TLC Solution is all about helping organizations ride the complex and chaotic waves organizations find themselves in.

What makes TLC unique is two-fold: First is the fusion of its capability in three Cs: consulting, coaching, and capacity creation with its 18-year on-ground experience in crafting and delivering health and wellbeing solutions to clients in the public, private and social sectors in the last 12 years. Second is the deep collaborative partnership it establishes and sustains with expert consultants and specialized firms, leveraging on the gig economy.

“More than competition, co-creation, and collaboration have been the source of our differentiated ways of engaging with clients. As an example of the fusion of our capabilities that have most beneficial, we’ve designed a much accelerated Leadership Development Program that involves holistic 360-degree profiling, executive and team coaching, facilitated check-ins between executive and sponsor, in-situ observations, and stakeholder interviews which provide optimal conditions for adaptability to clients,” says Susan Grace Rivera, Founder, and CEO of TLC.

The TLC First Friday Forum or TLCF3 is a signature community-building program that advocates wHEW - wHolistic Health and Well-being. Every first Friday of every month, TLC brings timely and relevant topics around body-heart-mind-spirit that inspire and engage participants, particularly leaders and HR professionals. Very different from typical ‘talking heads’ webinars, ‘safe space’ is co-created by adhering to simple rules that allow attendees to courageously find their voice and share direct experiences relating to the topic at hand. A major benefit of having a community is that interactions with clients become personal. Several of TLC’s F3 program participants find it remarkable that they could interact more openly in this forum than they could with colleagues at work or even family and friends.

Wholistic Health and Well-being, or wHEW is one of the most successful programs that clients have positively embraced. Its main pillars are its physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual components. TLC understands only too well that individuals bring their whole selves to work, and must learn to selfregulate to unleash strengths that add value while recognizing and addressing challenges. The integrated solution includes Individual health risk assessment and profiling, TLC’s signature ‘WELL coaching,’ mindfulness meditation training, webinars around topics most relevant to client priorities, nutrition counseling, and general fitness regimes like yoga sessions or qigong shibashi are part of wHEW implementation for overall development. All of these are delivered with expert healthcare professionals. Rivera adds though “such initiatives work only if and when leaders themselves model the way, and closely examine how external and internal variables within their control such as organization structure, job design, skills-building, workload, and culture do create conditions for their employees to thrive and flourish!”

The TLC community has over 500 registered members, of which 10% comprise active consultants, coaches, and capacity creators. These collaborators and co-creators are thoroughly vetted and trained in the TLC way, with an engaged and engaging relationship kept central to the partnership. A practice that sustains the daily living of 5-i values-in-practice is the frequent CUCI Convo or Catch-up and Check-in Conversations. It is about showing up with integrity, and working intimately with clients and stakeholders that the TLC Teams jointly arrive at actionable insights that impact process, results, and outcomes. The last ‘I’ - innovation - is sourced from the community. Eighty percent (80%) of TLC’s clients are referred by satisfied ones, and more than half are repeat clients. “Collaborative partnership and supportive coexistence in a community are the most crucial discipline organizations need to learn to survive in the face of constant and disruptive change,” as Rivera sums it up.

Rivera aims to establish an interdependent ecosystem where people are recognized as the ultimate source of ‘renewable energy’ for organizations big and small. Every client TLC works with is a unique ecosystem, with distinct strengths and challenges, yet all their issues are addressed in the same effective, authentic, and insightful manner. The bottom line is ‘quality of relationship.’ This adaptive and integral approach to relationships guarantees sustainable outcomes that can lead to positive social, cultural, political, and economic influence on society. TLC seeks to develop adaptive, skillful, and wise leaders by “co-creating one world, well and whole.”