The Arbinger Institute have earned their reputation as world leaders in mindset change having invested 27 years into researching and developing their approach.

Optimus OD are the only licensee of their IP in the UK and it has enabled us to support our clients to create genuinely transformational results for our clients and it sits at the heart of our approach in developing leaders who can create connected teams and a high performing organisation.

Essentially Arbinger have an approach that enables organisations to eliminate an all too common inward mindset that drives silo’s, blame, self interest and resistance to change and replaces it with what we call an Outward Mindset where leaders and their teams are invested in the success of others and look to develop collaborative relationships with aligned outcomes that serve the overall goals of the organisation.

We licence transformational mindset change IP from The Arbinger Institute and we use this to shift and when necessary transform the way your leaders, think, relate and connect with others.

The end result of this development are leaders who can role model and build collaborative relationships within and across functional boundaries. This approach creates what we call.

“Connected teams, connected functions and ultimately a connected organisation.”

The commercial and competitive benefits from this mindset can be significant.

We can deliver individual workshops or combine them to be a foundational part of a great leadership development programme.

Having worked with and developed 23 senior leadership teams, we have the IP, experience and confidence to respectfully highlight and challenge their thinking, planning and behaviour. We are not strategy experts instead we become the equivalent of your teams Chief Relationship Officer.

We have a unique IP that helps each senior leader to see in a different way—to see problems differently, conflicts differently, challenges differently, opportunities differently, each other differently.

Until someone begins to see differently, old problems remain.

Leadership teams we work with begin to break down silo’s between functions and move from setting antagonistic outcomes to ones that are aligned and jointly supported. Leaders and the whole team create a culture where it’s okay to say “I’m not sure what to do.” And from that place support and creativity generates ways forward that never seemed possible.

Many key organisational projects and transformation initiatives can get bogged down with all manner of people related issues including politics, internal resistance and conflicting objectives.

Leaders and key stakeholders quite rightly are keen to crack on with the design of a new finance system and will often default to developing new structures and processes. However they fail to recognise if the underlying prevailing mindset of those who will work in the new structure or initiative needs to change.

Using Arbinger's unique IP and 16 years of experience in facilitating key stakeholder meetings we have a proven, fast and robust approach to dismantling silo’s, historic baggage, self-interest and blame. Having removed the impediments to cooperative working, we will support the key stakeholder’s efforts to build aligned outcomes and ways of working that accelerate the projects success.

Optimus believe that the pace of working life and the demands placed on leaders and those that report to them have increased exponentially in the last 30 years.

However, there has been little done to enable employees to mentally and physically cope with this increase in pressure and challenge.There is now irrefutable proof that stressed out leaders and managers usually end up making poor decisions and behaving in ways that at best reduce employee engagement and at worst are considered bullies and invite conflict and serious HR issues. Essentially our ability to connect, build trusted relationships and collaborate with others will be undermined or defective if we have not developed our Ri or Resilience Intelligence.

We are not machines and yet we sometimes treat ourselves like we are. This workshop develops the employees ability to develop their Resilience Intelligence. Delegates will explore three key resilience development areas creating a highly practical plan for building their resilience in a way that works for them and their unique work and personal life.

6,000 leaders have attended our Vital Conversations workshop. This workshop not only develops their ability to engage in difficult conversations but shifts their approach to how they become facilitative leaders. This is a core leadership development competency that is crucial to an organisation having leaders/managers who can connect teams and collaborate across boundaries, by having the right conversations in the right way, at the right time

Optimus has huge experience in mediation and conflict resolution. We have turned around highly dysfunctional teams, mediated between senior leaders and repaired relationships between organisations and their key suppliers.

Our approach is not just to fix the relationship, but to create a shift in mindset on both sides of the table. With Arbingers unique IP and effective coaching we enable all parties to see and own how they have contributed to the challenged relationship. From that point we show both sides how to develop and sustain a much stronger beneficial relationship.

Our work in these applications has turned around key teams, enabled key executives to stay with an organisation and on some occasions saved millions of pounds.

We do not offer generalist executive coaching, however we have specialist executive coaching expertise in two areas:

Difficult Conversations

Sometimes a senior leader either needs to have a vital conversation and may wish to be coached around the preparation or  in how they will handle certain aspects of the conversation. There may also be times when a CEO or senior director is either conflict averse or at the other end of the spectrum leaves a wake of strained relationships behind them. OptimusOD have three executive coaches with 17 plus years of experience in supporting leaders around developing their difficult conversations capability including Alec Grimsley the author of Vital Conversations.

Deeper Mindset Change

Specific 1 to 1 Arbinger coaching  allows leaders to honestly assess day to day, the extent to which they are leading with an Outward Mindset. The coach will respectfully  challenge the leaders to identify where an inward mindset is creating strained relationships, competing objectives and resistance from other parts of the organisation or even within those they directly lead.