We spoke with Don McVeigh, Adeption’s Chief Leadership Officer for Asia Pacific, about the power of harnessing leadership challenges as growth opportunities, current trends in leadership development, and his top advice for leaders.
An engineer’s path to leadership development
Don’s perspective on leadership development was shaped early in his career, while working on jet engines for a major New Zealand airline. A pivotal moment came when he was invited to take part in a Lean Six Sigma workshop.
“The experience sparked my passion for empowering others. It was a realization of my personal ‘why’ — helping people get a clearer understanding of what’s important, and solve problems they never thought they’d be able to solve.”
“When you look at methodologies like Lean Six Sigma, Agile, or Design Thinking, they all share common principles: being really in tune with what’s important, and then understanding what you’re already doing well, and what the challenges are”.
Resisting the urge to jump to solutions
Don stresses the importance of creating some space and taking time to fully understand problems before rushing to solutions. “As humans, our natural response is to jump to solution mode without slowing down and being in tune with what’s actually going on.
“When we take the time to do this, we can make informed, good choices about what will support us. That allows us to explore content, materials, and people who might help us”, he says.
“Adeption’s Be Conscious, Be Curious, Be Better (B3) methodology guides leaders through this process, helping them move from not knowing what to do, to narrowing down an immediate first step”.
Don recalls working with organizations in New Zealand’s health sector during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic.
“By introducing their leaders to this approach, it helped them to slow down and tune in with what was actually going on for them.
“They all had immense demands on their time and attention — yet many shared with us that creating the space was the most important decision they made. For some, it was awareness of needing to look inward and focus on themselves, that made the most difference. We can’t truly lead others until we’re able to be our best selves”.
The power of a common language and mindset
A key benefit of the B3 approach is enabling a shared language to develop within teams. “It becomes a habit and something people reference in the flow of their work,” says Don.
“So when leaders have a problem, rather than jumping to solution mode, they pause and slow down. The B3 framework provides a sequence of thinking steps that helps them both individually and in coaching others, to get to better outcomes”.
Don has seen growing demand for scalable leadership development in recent years.
“Organizations are increasingly looking beyond the C-Suite. For example, we recently introduced our B3 approach to an executive team in Asia Pacific, and they practiced it. Then we worked with their mid layer of leaders, and then their frontline leaders. It shifted the culture from a reactive mindset to being more aware, having informed conversations, and collaborating. It led to improved decision making and actions at the right level across the organization”.
Adeption’s AI-powered platform helps bring B3 into the flow of work, flexing to leaders’ needs and time constraints.
“By mirroring the same thinking journey, it enables people to engage in development when they have time, and make progress on their real challenges. And because our AI technology is closed-source, you get the benefit without the risk”.
Supporting people in a complex and chaotic environment
With people at all levels of organizations facing growing complexity, Don says this is being reflected in the leadership development market.
“What we’re seeing is organizations having a real need to support their staff at all levels. This goes beyond building competencies and specific growth areas. Instead, they’re needing to support their people with issues like burnout, and the anxiety that’s generated through uncertainty”.
He shares a recent example of a client that rolled out a resilience experience to 18O leaders across the organization. “Once you get to that scale, the conversations that happen within organizations mean people realize they’re not alone.
“At the same time, it’s a very individual experience, where leaders are focused on their own context and develop insights that help them through. It can be very different from the person beside them”, he says.
Leadership as a continuous development journey
“Growing as a leader isn’t a linear path,” Don reflects. “As leaders, we’re always going to try things that work, and things that don’t. You don’t need to be perfect. What’s important is being authentic, and always learning and growing.
Don shares that making time for reflection has been key to his own growth. “I do a daily check in and a deeper reflection at the end of each week. I consider how I’m showing up for my family, my organization and people, and how I’m investing in my own development.
“The key thing is I commit to an action then and there. I diarise it or make sure it happens the following week,” he says.
“What gives me the greatest sense of fulfilment is seeing others live their values and grow as humans. Supporting individuals and teams to be open to sharing their challenges, being vulnerable, taking action, and learning, that’s my reward”.
Curious to learn more about Adeption’s approach to leadership development? Reach out to Don directly by emailing donm@adeption.io