Leadership Development

Leadership development is the formal and informal processes that prepare current and future leaders to excel in their roles. It includes building critical leadership skills, including decision-making, strategic thinking, network building, team management, innovation and more.

But effective leadership development goes well beyond training. It starts with assessing current leaders and high potential leadership candidates to assess their strengths and weaknesses so you can develop a targeted learning journey. Leadership development culminates in evaluations and metrics that help you understand the effectiveness of your programs and your leaders’ progress.

Leadership development drives performance. Organizations need to develop new leaders so they are prepared to advance strategic growth initiatives and flex with changing times. Particularly in times of disruption, organizations need to build leaders who are capable of making the right decisions that align with their business strategy.

Developing current and future leaders enables organizations to create and promote a change in culture that will support a more purpose-driven, sustainable and socially conscious organization that is committed to its people. When businesses develop the right culture, they enable their talent to implement their business strategy and achieve their desired results.

The first step is to assess your business strategy and leadership gaps in your current leadership team and future bench of leaders. Then create a program that is designed to fill those gaps and develop the skills that you need to execute your future strategy.

Here is a general framework to follow:

1. Identify shifts in your strategic roadmap. How is your company responding to the current environment? What shifts are planned in the future?

2. Clarify the demand for new skills. After you’ve identified how your organization is changing, define the new competencies that leaders will need to navigate the change. For example, you may need to cultivate skills such as agility, change management, cultural competence, communication and teamwork.

3. Establish the core. Despite the volume of change that many organizations are experiencing, there are still core leadership competencies that will always be necessary, such as vitality, authenticity, learning agility and self-awareness. Identify these core skills and include them in your list of developmental needs.

4. Build a design architecture. Enabling leaders to achieve their learning objectives starts by drawing a high-level map of accessible development experiences. Experiences should consist, at a minimum, of the following components:

• Insight: Help leaders understand what’s missing or what needs improvement through assessments and feedback.
• Motivation: Explain why leaders should invest the time and effort it takes to develop their successors.
• Skills: Plan how your leaders will absorb new skills, such as through rotational or stretch assignments, action learning, mentoring, relationships, assessments, exposure to more senior leaders and formal classroom training.
• Real-world practice: Decide how people will practice their new skills and competencies, such as through job experiences and on-the-job challenges.
• Accountability: Choose how you will give appropriate feedback and otherwise encourage leaders to internalize what they’ve learned and improve their performance.

5. Build the development program. Create or select the development experiences best aligned with each leader and their context. Ensure every element ties back to your core leadership principles and the development of the critical competencies that you’ve identified. Consider various types of learning, including virtual learning, action-learning projects, workplace-based, learning and just-in-time learning.

6. Implement the development program. Launch the program with assessments, feedback and coaching. Leverage the buy-in from senior leaders to motivate participants.

7. Feedback loop. Assess the effectiveness of your leadership development program. There are many ways to do this. For example, you can use post-session evaluations to gauge participant engagement and obtain suggestions for improvement, review participants’ development plans, survey your participants for their ideas, measure retention and promotion rates or compare performance ratings of participants.

Both senior executives and the HR team are instrumental in leadership development. It is critical that senior leaders support the organization’s leadership development initiatives, given the potential time, money and other resources that must be devoted to the initiatives for them to succeed.

The HR team often spearheads the creation, implementation and oversight of a leadership development strategy. They are typically the ones who make a business case to senior leaders and take responsibility for measuring the return on investment in leadership development.

Leadership team development is harder than ever because leaders are expected to do more — and to do more complex and paradoxical things — than ever. For instance, leaders are expected to be both visionary strategists and operational wizards at the same time. They must execute in the present and plan for the future. And they must answer to more stakeholders as they strike a balance between their seemingly competing priorities: employees, customers, shareholders, directors, society and more.

Good leaders have a strategy behind their leadership team development processes, including selection and engagement. Here are some basic steps to follow.

1. Identify what roles you need to perform while transforming your organization. Your leadership team needs different skills to execute your strategy and plan effectively for the future.
2. Choose team members with the skills and experience you need for now and the future. Look for high-performing individuals who have the leadership skills you need for the role. Use assessments to identify high potentials and their competency gaps. Then construct a learning journey to prepare them for their role and find candidates with complementary skill sets.
3. Develop leaders proactively, not reactively. With assessments, you’ll know in advance where your current leaders need to grow. If you focus on leadership development before problems arise, you’ll give them the greatest chance of success.
4. Train leaders in real-world contexts. On-the-job experience is the best teacher of new skills and competencies.