Being good at the job is not the same as leading the people who do it.

The average leader doesn't get formal leadership training until around 42, roughly a decade after first taking charge of a team. Jack Zenger, Harvard Business Review.
The HLG Leadership Culture Assessment™ shows you how your people experience the leaders they report to, new or seasoned. Any observed leadership gaps are tied to published research on what it costs you. You get an actionable diagnosis, not an engagement survey.

Anonymous. No obligation.

Write your awesome label here.

THE GAP

You've probably seen it happen. Someone is good at their job. Sometimes really good. So they get promoted. After all, they've earned it. And then, something starts to feel off. Maybe their team seems a little tense, or communication slips. Somehow the person who was extremely competent as an individual contributor suddenly looks like they're losing their grip on their leadership role already.


Often, the organization does what good organizations do. It provides leadership training.


The training happens. Everyone leaves with good notes, and for a few weeks you can see it. Then the calendar fills back up. The habits that were already there are still there. By month six, most of it has quietly drained away. Their training resume improved. The way they lead drifted back.

60% of new managers fail within their first two years, according to research from CEB Global, now Gartner.

That's not the manager's fault. And it's not a sign you hired the wrong person.


Those managers don't struggle because they lack talent or stop caring. It's because the skills that made them great at their job are completely different from the skills it takes to lead people. Nobody ever showed them what those skills are, in a way that lasted past the week they learned them.

FOUNDED ON EXPERIENCE. VALIDATED BY RESEARCH.

I spent thirty years in leadership roles, most of it where leadership gaps carried serious consequences. I retired as a Police Captain and Division Commander, leading hundreds of complex operations. In that world, trust, clarity, and the decisions leaders make were never abstract. They shaped real outcomes.

I'm a graduate of the FBI National Academy, one of the most respected leadership programs in the world, and I hold a master's degree in Administrative Leadership from the University of Oklahoma.

For twenty-three years I was also a training executive. I rewrote more than sixty-five policies and SOPs and led my organization through a multi-year culture-change project culminating in state accreditation. Developing people and building systems that hold under pressure has been my actual work for decades.

I've also worked inside Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organizations, I'm the author of The Art of Trust and Influence, and I speak on leadership internationally. So I understand and empathize with the world and the challenges that you and your managers walk into every day.
Write your awesome label here.

Aaron Keith Hawkins

Founder and Lead Facilitator, Hawkins Leadership Group

THE FRAMEWORK

I've collaborated with hundreds of leaders from dozens of countries over the past few decades. One thing I noticed early on is that the leaders who were performing at their best and enjoying the process of leadership the most (including me) weren’t juggling thirty different concepts. We were doing a few things very well, over and over. The more I observed, the more the answer kept coming back to the same four things. So I built a framework around them - The Four Elements of Leadership™.

Earth
Earth
Connection
Before a team follows someone’s direction, they have to trust the person giving it.
Air
Air
Clarity
When expectations aren’t clear, people don’t stop working. They start guessing.
Fire
Fire
Self-Leadership
A team learns from how a leader behaves, not from what they say.
Water
Water
Consistency
A strong start isn’t the same as sustaining it. Every day, a leader’s actions either build trust or erode it.

Four. On purpose.

There’s real research behind that number. George Miller’s work back in 1956, and more recent neuroscience out of MIT, puts the working limit of human memory at about four things. A model with thirty-two competencies looks impressive on a slide. But if your managers can’t hold it in their head when the pressure is on, they can’t use it. Four is what a person can actually carry into a hard moment and act on.

There’s a similar pattern in the research on goals. A Harvard Business School paper called Goals Gone Wild shows what happens when people chase too many targets at once. Progress stalls across all of them. Focus on fewer, and the odds of real change go up.

So four isn’t a shortcut. It’s just how people actually learn and change.

WHERE TO BEGIN

You can't close a gap you can't see.

The HLG Leadership Culture Assessment™ is a free, anonymous read of how your people actually experience their direct leadership, scored across the four elements, with every gap tied to named research on what it is associated with costing organizations.
It is not an engagement survey. It is a diagnosis.

01

You send one internal link to your employees. HLG never asks for or receives a single employee name or email address.

02

Your employees anonymously answer sixteen brief questions about the leader they report to most directly. Takes 3 minutes. No names. No email addresses. Nothing that links an answer back to a person.

03

We prepare your bespoke report identifying the results across the four elements, tying any gaps to the research on what those gaps cost organizations like yours.

04

We walk through the findings with you in a short video/phone call. Your strengths, your priorities, and what the pattern is really telling you.

WHAT YOU RECEIVE

A clear, actionable read. Not a data dump.
View the full sample report
__________________________
Illustrative sample built on a fictional company. Your report reflects your own people.

The real goal of leadership development was never to have managers finish a program. It’s to have leaders whose teams do the right thing when no one is watching.

I learned this lesson most vividly during my fifteen years as a SWAT operator. In my early years, our team leader made it clear what our standards were, what our objectives were, and why they mattered. And there were days he wasn’t there. On many of those days we ran our longest, hardest training sessions. Not because someone made us. Because we understood the assignment, we agreed it mattered, and we were committed to it ourselves.

No matter the industry or profession, there's a big difference between a team that complies and a team that commits.

THE STANDARD

The below definition is what leadership looks like when it is fully embedded into the culture. It is the standard everything here is built to reach.

 

Leadership is a collection of actions that result in the understanding, agreement, and ongoing pursuit of an objective, regardless of the presence or absence of someone in a position of authority.

Please read that definition one more time, slowly. Because it clarifies the “holy grail” of leadership. Leadership isn’t a person in charge giving orders. Leadership is what happens after they leave the room. When understanding, agreement, and commitment live inside the team, the work standards hold whether the boss is there or not.

For your organization, it’s the difference between a team that needs constant managing and a team that manages itself. One drains your best leaders. The other frees them. Every stage below builds toward that, and the free assessment shows you how close you already are.

THE PATH

Leadership culture moves through stages. The first step is confirming which one you're currently in.

Leadership cultures do not "pass or fail". They tend to quietly evolve. The HLG Leadership Culture Assessment™ assessment shows you which stage your organization is operating in today, and what the next stage asks of you.

STAGE 1

Reactive

Leaders spend the day solving fires. Effort is high. Direction is improvised.

STAGE 2

Structured

Expectations and accountability exist, but they are inconsistent from one leader to the next.

STAGE 3

Aligned

Managers create clarity and trust consistently. People know what great work looks like.

STAGE 4

High-Trust Culture

Leadership holds without the leader in the room. Understanding, agreement, and pursuit of the objective continue whether or not someone in authority is present.

Measure  /  Understand  /  Strengthen  /  Measure again

WHAT CLOSES THE GAP

The Four Elements of Leadership is a full day, in person session for up to 30 managers. The four are Connection, Clarity, Self-Leadership, and Consistency. Four rather than a longer list, because most of us can only hold a few things in mind when the pressure is on.

About two hours of the day is traditional instruction. For the rest of it, your managers work through their own situations in small groups, rewrite real instructions they have given their teams, and confirm what they will do differently. Everyone leaves with a written commitment and a date attached to it. Within five business days you receive a summary of what surfaced across the room. No individuals are named, and the summary will share where the group is strongest, and where the biggest opportunities exist.

The day is led by Aaron Keith Hawkins, retired Police Captain and Division Commander, FBI National Academy graduate, and author of The Art of Trust and Influence.

A second day on Communication Skills is available as a follow on engagement once the first is delivered. It is most often the right next step when Clarity is where a management team scores lowest.

MOST PEOPLE START HERE

See what your people see.

Free, anonymous, and built to show you what may be quietly costing you, and what's working in your favor. The HLG Leadership Culture Assessment™ takes less than ten minutes of your peoples time.
Built on The Four Elements of Leadership™. No obligation.
Created with