It doesn’t matter which of my clients I speak with, the one thing they each have in common is the need to grow and develop leadership capability throughout their organisation. With Leadership Development sitting as the number one spend in any organisation’s training budget, why are we all still struggling with this same, ongoing need. Is what we are doing in this space not working? How do we overcome the leadership deficit we are all challenged with?
Many might argue that this leadership deficit is a result of the ever-changing organisational structure, with more and more organisations moving to a flatter, more agile organisation. Which in turn calls for a larger number of individuals who are now expected to lead others without the formal reporting lines. Others will say that the future of work is calling for different skills from our leaders.
Now, most organisations are doing something in the leadership capability space. Be it programs to up-skill new managers, coaching for select senior leaders, or delivering module-based programs to all managers which are centred around select competencies they are trying to instil and embed throughout the organisation, such as Feedback and Coaching, Managing for Change etc. But even though you have a leadership development offering, the key questions you need to ask yourself is, are you seeing the impact and the return of investment from these offerings? How can you help get out your organisation out of their Leadership Deficit?
Here are my Top 10 Tips to Building a Leadership Development Program for your Organisation
1. Define what good leadership looks like in your organisation – many of my clients do this through developing a Leadership Competency framework, which in turn creates a common language around the expectations of leaders.
2. Identify 3 to 4 key goals you want to achieve through the Leadership Program – think about what impact do you want to deliver (for example, is it a healthier succession chart, improved engagement scores, retention of leaders?) and find ways to measure the success.
3. Don’t just focus on competence development alone, you need to factor in character development – cause great competence comes with great character. The best leaders are those who a temperament and personality that people enjoying being around.
4. Push leadership capability beyond just education – design leadership programs that provide leaders with education, experiences, exposure and evaluation (see image from Josh Bersin below).
5. Design with the customer in mind – in this case the customer is your employees. Don’t assume that as HR, you know what leaders need all the time. Find ways to get input from your employees and explore what they are not getting from their leaders.
6. Find ways to personalise a leader’s development experience – I do this through adopting a layered approach:
Organisational - what my organisation expects of me as a leader?
Team – what my current team need from me right now?
Individual – what I need to be the best leader I can be?
7. Use evaluation tools to help drive self-awareness amongst your leaders – be sure to choose the right tool that fits your organisation’s culture and try to stick to the one tool to help create a common language. Consider re-assessing leaders to measure their improvements and identify any new watch outs they need to work on.
8. Couple the program with coaching and/or mentoring – allow leaders to learn from others and focus in on their individual needs in a tailored and personalised way.
9. Get buy in and support from the top – ask your senior executive team, what risk do we face if we don’t improve leadership capability? Remember, if your organisation is not developing your leaders, then your leaders are not developing your people. What impact will this have to your business?
10. Start small and build it up – a lot of time HR want to deliver our projects to the business all wrapped up and complete with a big red bow, but by the time you do this, the risk of not developing your leaders has become reality. Consider an agile approach to leadership development. Pull together a cross-functional team, create the vision, build one piece, inspect, adapt and move onto the next, using the same approach.
If Leadership Capability is on your agenda for FY20, we’d love to help. We support clients with Leadership Development in a number of different ways, from developing your leadership strategy, to the design and delivery of your leadership program, or even working one on one with your leaders through executive coaching. Call us on +61 411 238 190 or email us at melissa@caterfly.com.au to find out more.
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