Margaret Considine, CEOIn tandem with a rapidly changing, intersectional world of work and a globally scattered workforce, businesses need to develop invested leaders with multi-faceted skills to navigate the future workspace. Business leaders need to be equipped with the necessary skillsets to foster close, interdependent, egalitarian relationships with employees, and connect and engage fruitfully with customers, along with constantly staying abreast of the latest market trends. But in the face of a dearth of practical, hands-on knowledge of business leadership in the market, building future-ready leadership of a different mettle to handle the workplace of tomorrow is proving to be a real challenge for organizations.
This was the same predicament that Margaret Considine found herself in as a C-suite executive who had to spend a lot on executive training with mostly unsatisfactory results. This made her notice the glaring lack of a smarter, bite-sized pracademic approaches to real-world, ever-evolving executive education in the market for dynamic companies. With an aim to provide organizations with an opportunity to co-create leadership training solutions they need with an able executive leadership guidance provider, she founded the EQuita Group. Today, Margaret, an accomplished leadership trainer and bestselling author, serves as the CEO of EQuita with her years of experience in companywide training programs – from the C-suite to the warehouse floor.
EQuita is the much-needed leadership guide that brings in the relevant tactical knowledge to executive leadership training programs. Acting as a one-stop shop for executive leadership development and workplace management needs, the Dublin-based consultancy provides business training, commercial negotiation and mediation services. “We’re a solution enabler for businesses. We work with them on leadership strategy and implementation, and upskill their teams by sharpening, retraining and optimizing organic latent leadership talent,” says Margaret.
A People-Oriented Approach
With real-world workplace scenarios, business case studies, and psychometry tests, EQuita equips business managers and leaders with enhanced decision-making, influence mentoring, and negotiation skills. With a people-oriented approach, EQuita’s executive leadership development programs like ASPIRE and ASCEND help business leaders to develop different leadership styles, while ACTIVATE trains middle management in leadership and people skills. “Our programs up-skill people to broaden their horizons, stretch their minds, and build on disciplines and practices by developing a growth mindset,” states Margaret.
In the same vein, EQuita helps technical experts, who are often found to possess inadequate people skills that hinder achieving optimal communication with their teams. To this end, EQuita has developed a 16-point training program called PACE, accredited in 50 countries. PACE is short for People Achieving Continued Excellence, where P stands for people skills, A for achieving decision-making and negotiation skills, C for communication skills, and E for fast execution – that fosters better technical understanding and teamwork within the organization. The PACE program also serves as a valuable tool for developing a holistic business leadership style.
We’re a solution enabler for clients. We work with them on strategy, implementation and on upskilling their team by optimizing latent leadership talent
Taking Business Leadership to the Next Level
Almost all of EQuita’s high-performance leadership programs have been the outcomes of customized solutions built for clients, which were later transformed into commercial programs. For instance, the P.A.C.E. program is the result of EQuita helping Workday, a leader in HR solutions, to develop better people management skills, boost female leadership, and encourage female entrepreneurship within the organization. The ASPIRE and ASCEND programs have their origins in EQuita’s involvement with a construction group, where EQuita solved the company’s leadership succession issues post-retirement of the owners by training their executives to improve stakeholder management and streamline the reshuffling of the company management chain to accelerate the business.
As another example of maintaining high standards of consultation, EQuita retains the same go-to person for business mentorship for the entire duration of the executive training program, which helps organizations remain steady in their leadership development journey. For an Irish project management company with ten global offices, EQuita has been consistently handling the management development program for close to two decades. “The same people that started working on that program 17 years ago are still working and delivering on it, keeping it up-to-date and constantly refreshing it,” Margaret informs.
With highly qualified and driven staff, EQuita is able to deliver top-of-the-line leadership training to its long list of big-ticket clients that includes the likes of Phillip Morris, Sedgwick, Boston Scientific Enterprise, PM Group, Workday, and many more. As an Irish company, EQuita leverages the rich Celtic culture to incorporate Irish art, music, storytelling, and creativity into innovative business mentorship and executive training programs. A wholesome results-orientated approach to leadership and management is what makes EQuita stand apart in the market. This is reflected in EQuita’s boutique company culture, which embodies the agility and flexibility that it espouses in its leadership training programs. With extremely approachable company management, EQuita prioritizes quality of work over quantity of time spent and enables its employees to go location independent and invest in personal development too.
Keeping in mind the globalized, mobile workforce of the future, EQuita will be publicly launching its online platform with its executive education programs – previously available to its clients as a training portal for B2C and C2C businesses – across 50 countries. Furthermore, EQuita is planning to start an annual subscription model for businesses requiring executive education programs with full access to training modules and leadership content videos released on the platform. With a humanist approach, EQuita will stay committed to delivering unique mentorship programs and future-proofing business leadership. “We need to invest in people and also bring a sense of true humanity to the way businesses are led, and each company can do it in its own unique way by living their own values,” Margaret signs off.
Client Case Study:
Sedgewick Ireland
Ruth Leggett, CEO of Sedgewick Ireland - a leading global provider of technology-enabled risk, benefits and integrated business solutions operating in the financial and insurance sectors – recounts collaborating with EQuita Group on devising a bespoke executive leadership development program for building next-generation business leaders:
At Sedgewick Ireland, we wanted a tailor-made leadership program for our organization to transition our legacy executive team to advisory board-related roles. We partnered with EQuita to deal with succession planning and colleague development across the organization, specifically in relation to our executive team. To that end, Margaret and our team worked across the organizational level and came up with the Fit for Future program, a breakthrough global course in leadership development. Team leaders, team managers, and high potential individuals within our organization were brought into the program to assist them in developing skills as people managers and help individuals in their progression through their careers within the Sedgewick environment. The program focused on developing individuals on a one-to-one basis and exposing them to different types of thinking involving strategic thinking, growth and development, equipping them with varied approaches to the working world.
We’ve seen the development of a new generation of leaders over the last four to five years in Sedgewick Ireland since we engaged with EQuita. Margaret has been part of shaping this future in terms of incorporating the different ingredients that are required to operate as a successful leadership team. The Sedgewick Ireland team is very thankful for the work and effort she has put into developing the leadership team that we have in place today.
