We’ve
chatted already about a few of our best practices of leadership development.
Today, let’s talk about your leader levels and your commitment to developing
all of them –another equally critical component of your leadership development
strategy.
Recall
that mature leadership development is based on an assessment of our six best
practices of leadership development (and implementation of these 6 promote
mature leadership development that drives business impact as defined in the Bersin & Associates Leadership Development
Maturity Model®):
1.
Maintain strong executive engagement;
2.
Define tailored leadership competencies;
3.
Align with business strategy;
4. Target all levels of leadership;
5.
Integrate with talent management; and,
6. Apply a targeted solution.
Crisis may be an overused word, but it’s, indeed, a fair
description of the state of leadership in today’s corporations across all parts
of the globe. At all levels, companies are short on the quantity and quality of
leaders they need.
CEOs are failing sooner leaving their companies scrambling –think
Lucent, GM, P&G, Xerox. Senior
leaders, when targeted for development, are often found attending the next face-to-face program at the nearest business school leaving a gap in their day jobs
not to mention a bigger gap, usually, in their development experience. Mid-level leaders have been a neglected bunch
for years except by a select few. First
line leaders and high-potentials have traditionally had more attention paid to
them than most of their leaders and direct reports but even so, their
development experiences aren’t always business-driven nor necessarily
created as a process.
So what are you doing about it?
Today, recovering from the
recession, global companies are realizing more and more that their leaders
represent their companies’ abilities to compete and thrive. As your top executives leave or retire, it is
those future leaders who must carry on your company’s legacy. As our 2011 high-impact leadership
development research shows, the highest impact companies are investing in
development of all their leaders…not just a select group of leaders or one
particular level of leader. The
commitment to development at all levels reminds me of a brief quote that I
recently read as documented by Frances
Hesselbein, leader of the former Peter F. Drucker
Foundation, and it goes something like this:
“My name is Troy. I
work in the mail room, and I like to think of myself as the heart of the
organization. Everything that comes into the organization comes through me.
Everything that goes out of the organization goes through me. I am the heart of
this organization!”
Troy’s words remind us of a staff member who understands
what it means to think like a leader—be a leader—no matter where you find
yourself in an organization. His words should shed light for you about the
importance of every person and every position in your organization.
Who’s involved? And how to fix it?
So how do you go about defining
leader levels and making choices about how best to develop them and execute at
every leader level?
To start, the top companies recognize that an adaptable
leadership pool is a competitive advantage, and focus their attention on
bringing out the best in all of their managers and leaders. High impact
companies acknowledge that in order to be most effective in driving your
organization’s business goals, as your leaders move up levels, they must expand
their focus in three critical capability areas: management, leadership and
business strategy. Consider the quote below from Ram Charan in his book titled The Leadership
Pipeline and refer to Bersin & Associates’ high-impact
leadership development research for a picture of how the management and leadership skills are allocated in the responsibilites of each leader level. All three skill sets -- management, leadeship, and business strategy -- are necessay, but the breakdown or percentage of time a leader spends in each category shift's throughout the leader's career as she or he is promoted into higher levels of leadership roles.
“There is little acknowledgment
that different levels of leadership exist, and that people need to make skill and value transitions at each level. Relatively few organizations
are thinking about the core competencies and experiences necessary to be
successful at each level. Few of them are considering the leadership development
needs of a first-time manager versus those of a functional manager."
Accordingly, the most
impactful leadership development strategies include specific developmental
activities geared toward each level of leadership. These development opportunities should represent different combinations of
knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences which are required to effectively
manage and lead oneself, individual contributors, other managers, a department,
and a business unit. This table
summarizes some of the most critical progressive work of leaders by select
levels and the following tables suggests some effective development experiences for each leader level:
|
|
First Line Leader
|
Mid-Level Leader
|
Senior Leader
|
|
Management Skills
|
·
Establish credibility with employees and
leaders at all levels
·
Understand one’s own strengths and
opportunities
·
Identify the personal development shifts that
need to occur to transition from individual contributor to manager
|
·
Seek feedback from others on your own
performance
·
Identify personal leadership gaps and
strategies to overcome them
·
Build your own interpersonal skills/emotional
intelligence
·
Act with creativity and innovation
|
·
Challenge your own assumptions to broaden your
thinking
·
Embrace risk
·
Model appropriate management behaviors
|
|
Leadership Skills
|
·
Build employee engagement and commitment
·
Be accountable for developing your employees
·
Encourage learning
·
Manage performance problems
·
Communicate regularly
|
·
Provide focus and clarity that helps your
employees and managers set priorities and make effective decisions
·
Grow your direct reports leveraging coaching
regularly
·
Create high-value on-the-job learning
experiences for your employees and managers
·
Seek opportunities to build a sense of
ownership in your employees and managers
·
Demonstrate financial acumen
·
Demonstrate global acumen
·
Encourage innovative thinking in your direct
reports
|
·
Mobilize talent across the enterprise to best
meet the business needs of the organization
·
Assess, select, engage, develop future leaders
and critical non-leader positions
·
Champion innovation
·
Act with global intelligence
·
Leverage change as an opportunity to win
|
|
Business Strategy Skills
|
·
Create clear lines of sight for direct reports
linking their work to the business strategy of the enterprise
·
Understand the financial impacts on the
enterprise of the spend decisions that you make relevant to your own budget
|
·
Influence business strategy with more senior
leaders
·
Execute your business unit strategy by
leveraging the talents of others across the organization
·
Balance short term goals with long term
sustainability
·
Expect change and navigate it with agility
|
·
Demonstrate in-depth understanding of the
complexities of your business model and the external business climate
·
Anticipate the future and recommend product
and service solutions that have global appeal
·
Align strategy, structure, process and skills
·
Represent the organization to the Board and
other critical senior level stakeholders
|
Leadership development experiences that are specifically
tailored for each leader level require some purposeful design decisions. These experiences will be most effective when
the learning is oriented mostly towards exposure and experience and less towards
formal classroom activities and takes on the following elements:
|
Effective Development Experiences for a:
|
|
First Line Leader
|
Mid-Level Leader
|
Senior Leader
|
|
·
Reveal role expectations
·
Offer opportunities for practice in real or
simulated work environments
·
Provide role models and coaches
·
Embedded work tools and experiential learning
opportunities
|
·
Provide stretch development opportunities
shifting from a focus on skill-building to business and leadership challenges
·
Enable self-assessment opportunities so that
leaders can tune in to their talents and opportunities
·
Link leadership development experiences with
these leaders’ performance management, succession management and career
development goals
·
Involve executive leadership as much as
possible in leading the development opportunities
·
Offer coaching, coaching and more coaching
·
Ask these leaders to teach other leaders
·
Require them to participate in business-driven
action learning
|
·
Provide tailored learning experiences that
maximize challenge and qualified risk
·
Engage them in development opportunities that
push them outside of their comfort zone
·
Place them in learning opportunities that take
them beyond their current sphere of influence
·
Invite them to consider unorthodox ways of
thinking
·
Engage them in external social networking
opportunities
·
Partner them with an executive level coach
|
Focusing development opportunities on the right mix of
management, leadership and business strategy and implementing business-driven
tailored development experiences will ensure that your leaders – at all levels
– are prepared to meet the unique challenges of their roles and the unique
business goals of your organization. Leaders at each level represent a critical
link to the health and strength of your leadership pipeline. Moreover, the
business impact of committing to development of all leaders is shown in our
research to be 5 to 12 times what the business result would be without
effective leadership development for all leaders. Can you really afford to not
invest in the development of all of your leaders?
In what ways does
your leadership development strategy ensure that the particular needs of each
of your leader levels are being met?
Please write to me at barb.arth@bersin .com and share your thoughts.
Next time---my thoughts on the fifth best practice of leadership
development: integrate leadership development with other talent management
processes for the greatest business impact.