Far too many business leaders today fail to invest in one of the most critical aspects of successful leadership – their leaders of tomorrow.
Most business executives recognize the critical importance of leadership in building the long term success of their business. Yet, many executives fail to develop their managers of today into great leaders that will successfully drive and guide the future of the business tomorrow. Regardless of your business or industry, your ongoing success is ultimately determined by the hiring and development of your future leaders.
Do the leaders of your organization place a high value on providing leadership skills development for your organization’s future leaders? Zappos, Southwest Airlines, Deloitte and General Electric are all great examples of companies that take pride in selecting, developing and retaining strong leaders at every level of the organization. In fact, great companies know that developing future leaders gives them a steep advantage over competitors who are not focused on developing talent.
First of all, it’s important to distinguish the difference between management training and leadership skills development. Although the behaviors exhibited and skills needed for both managers and leaders may be identical, the outcomes of the respective training sessions are significantly different. Leadership skills development helps managers who are focused on numbers, revenues and outcomes learn how to build strong relationships where (regardless of a formal title) employees are motivated to follow them and deliver discretionary effort that goes above and beyond just doing a job.
According to the Association for Talent Development (formerly the Association of Training and Development), U.S. businesses spend more than $170 billion dollars on leadership-based curricula. Some would argue the leadership training business hasn’t been very effective, since we still have a plethora of managers in our businesses, but very few real leaders.
Part of the problem is that many leadership programs focus on training managers rather than developing leaders. This is an important distinction to make. You can train managers to follow processes, procedures and best practices. When the focus is on training, the goal is immediate learning and compliance. It is much more difficult, however, to train managers to build successful relationships where people are highly motivated, engaged and excited about following their leader. Development is a two-way, experiential process that takes time. Successful leadership development doesn’t generally produce the desired results in just one or two sessions.
What’s the solution? Stop trying to train leaders, and instead place the focus on developing leaders by coaching, mentoring, and providing opportunities to learn and practice their skills.
8 Strategies for Developing a Successful Leadership Development Program
Gain senior management support. Before your program can begin, senior leaders must see the value of a leadership development program. They need to believe that a leadership development program brings more long-term value to the organization than keeping managers at their desks, working on whatever operational tasks happens to have the most immediate need that day.
Transform your learning model from training to development. There are few leaders born with the ability to lead your team or business to success. Leadership needs to be learned. However, hiring an entertaining sage onstage is most likely not going to develop your future leaders. Research has shown that more than 70 percent of leadership development occurs through highly interactive simulation-type programs, mentoring, or informal, on-the-job training.
Define leadership competencies. It’s important to design a development program that is in alignment with your organization’s vision and values. Ultimately, this is what will drive the desired outcomes and success of your leadership initiative.
Develop a pilot program. Like leaders, great leadership programs are constantly being developed and improved. Programs need to be updated and tweaked to fit your future leaders in your respective business.
Start with your most senior leaders. It’s difficult to demonstrate the importance of a leadership development program if senior leaders don’t lead by example. Senior leaders need to attend the program and put the skills being developed into action. Employees believe what they actually see in the halls more than what they read in internal newsletters or information posted on the wall.
Measure results. Leadership development can be measured through Employee Engagement Surveys, Customer Loyalty Surveys and the number of successful internal leaders developed. When you measure the success of your program, tweaks can be made as necessary, and the benefits of the program itself become clear.
Provide executive coaching for leaders who struggle with building strong and effective relationships with their team members. In some cases, an Employee Engagement Survey will identify these leaders. In other cases, they can be identified by high turnover on a particular team or by consistent and numerous concerns shared with the Human Resources team.
Highlight leadership success stories. Recognize and promote leaders who have done an outstanding job at both producing extraordinary results and providing outstanding leadership in developing and building their team. When these types of leaders are recognized and promoted, it sends out a clear message that “what” you accomplish, and “how” you treat people in the organization are both critically important to your growth opportunities.
Great companies know that a formal title is irrelevant to great leadership, and expect all of their employees to play a leadership role. At the current pace of most businesses, it’s easy to focus on only the immediate needs and pay less attention to the long-term success and development of your business.
But when leadership development is made a priority, the benefits are numerous:
More managers have the skills to build relationships where people are motivated, engaged and willing to follow their leader
Increased engagement and motivation at all levels of the organization
Internal talent that is available for further growth, development and promotions
Higher retention of the most desired team members
More employees who love coming to work and more customers who love doing business with your organization
Increased productivity, performance and profitability
Companies committed to continuously developing their leaders are gaining a distinct competitive advantage. These companies have no shortage of high caliber talent wanting to work with them – employees who are excited about wowing your customers by producing high quality services or products. If your team or organization is not investing in your future leaders, start now. You’ll be amazed at how much talent there is to develop.
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