Leadership Development Services in Durham Region and the GTA
Gurley Leadership Solutions provides leadership development services to owners, executives and management teams in Ajax, Oshawa, Durham Region and across the Greater Toronto Area. Every engagement is built around your objectives and the numbers you use to measure them, and the sessions are facilitated personally by Malcolm Gurley, who brings 35+ years of senior executive experience and holds a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Two Core Leadership Development Services
Productivity Improvement
We work with you to determine the high impact areas of the business, set goals against them, systematically improve productivity, track the measurements and make sure the results hold. Common focus areas include growth in sales, cost reduction, quality issues, on-time performance, inventory turns, cash flow, departmental alignment and employee turnover.
Personal Leadership Improvement
This begins with a powerful personal assessment. From there we agree on the focus areas, develop motivation, put effective time and priority management in place, and track the results so the change is visible to the people around you.
Programs Licensed Through LMI Canada
Our programs are licensed through LMI Canada, the largest and most successful personal and organizational development company in the world. Six program areas are available: Selling Strategies, Personal Leadership, Leadership Development, Strategic Leadership, Motivational Leadership and Team Dynamics. They can be delivered on their own or combined into a longer development path for an entire leadership team. You can also learn more at lmicanada.ca.
How the Programs Are Delivered
These are not one-day seminars. Programs run over several weeks in spaced working sessions, so your leaders apply one discipline at a time to real situations at work and then report back on what changed. Between sessions the material is used on live problems — a stalled project, a difficult conversation, a missed deadline — which is why the new behaviour is still in place after the program ends.
Because the work is spaced rather than crammed, the time your team invests is normally recouped through improvements in work efficiencies and planned outcomes before the program is even finished.
Measurable Results, Not Just Training
Leadership development services should be judged on outcomes. Implementing the LMI process causes clients to achieve a minimum 10:1 return on investment. Real examples from client engagements include an ROI of well over 10:1 for a logistics and shipping company in Durham Region, an ROI above 20:1 for a cardiac centre in Mississauga, and an additional two million dollars in new sales for an automotive parts manufacturer in Scarborough. You can read more of these on our leadership results in the GTA page.
Funding for Ontario Employers
Many Ontario employers qualify for government training support toward leadership development services. In one recent client program, funding covered 83% of the program cost. We will walk you through what is currently available before you commit to anything.
Who These Services Are For
Our leadership development services fit owner-managed businesses and mid-sized organizations where the leadership team has outgrown the way it has always been managed. That includes manufacturers, logistics and distribution firms, healthcare organizations, professional services and start-ups that are scaling quickly. If your managers are technically strong but stretched thin, unengaged or misaligned with your vision for the business, that is exactly the gap these programs are built to close.
Getting Started
The first step is a short, no-obligation conversation about what you want the business and your leaders to look like twelve months from now. From there we recommend the leadership development services that fit, along with the measurements we will report against. Read the leadership development FAQs, see why clients choose Gurley Leadership Solutions, or arrange a 15-minute phone call to get started.
Where We Deliver Leadership Development Services
Our leadership development services are delivered on site at your workplace, in a neutral meeting room, or online — whichever option keeps the most of your people in the room. Clients are based across Ajax, Oshawa, Whitby, Pickering, Clarington and the rest of Durham Region, as well as Toronto, Markham, Scarborough and the wider Greater Toronto Area. Sessions are normally scheduled inside the working day, because the assignments between sessions are meant to be applied to real work rather than saved for a classroom.
Choosing Between the Two Programs
If your main frustration is that work takes too long, costs more than it should, or depends on one or two irreplaceable people, start with Productivity Improvement. If the frustration sits closer to people not owning their goals, avoiding decisions, or working around one another, start with Personal Leadership Improvement. Both leadership development services begin from the same diagnosis conversation, many clients eventually use both, and nothing is quoted until we agree which one belongs first.
Questions Employers Ask About These Leadership Development Services
How many people should take part? A program runs well with a single owner or senior manager, and equally well with an intact management team. Teams tend to move faster afterwards, simply because everyone finishes with the same vocabulary, the same goal format and the same scoreboard.
How long does a program run? Programs are spread across several weeks instead of being compressed into one long day. Habits change through repetition on the job, so each session introduces a small number of ideas and the following week is spent applying them.
What exactly gets measured? We agree at the start on the numbers that matter to you — lead time, cost per unit, capacity, turnover, revenue per employee — and review them as the program progresses. The LMI programs are designed to return a minimum of ten dollars for every dollar invested.
Is funding available? Many Ontario employers cover a substantial share of their training costs through provincial grant programs, and we will point you to the one that suits your situation before you commit to anything.
The Next Step
The simplest way to find out whether these leadership development services fit your situation is a short conversation. Call 416.669.7644 during business hours, or book a free fifteen-minute call and we will talk through what you are trying to improve. You can also review documented client outcomes on the Leadership Results in the GTA page, work through the FAQ, or see how the material is licensed on the LMI Canada page.