Leadership Best Practices
BEST PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING LEADERS
Ensuring leadership talent for the future is one of the top three things that “keep CEO’s up at night,” according to recent reports from leading consulting organizations. Your leaders are important to your organization, and so is their development. Building development systems that assure that you have a viable leadership pipeline is vital successful business.
What works in developing leaders? The following best practices are based on research conducted to benchmark the things that successful leadership programs had in common. More than 200 organizations, recommended for their excellent leadership development, were examined. Highly successful development programs shared these characteristics.
1. COMPETENCY-BASED
Best-practice leadership development programs rely on organizational competency models to define the skills, knowledge, and attributes that are needed for success in management and leadership roles. These models:
• Differentiate the importance and desired level of performance for each competency.
• Are widely disseminated and used developmentally to help plan for next assignments.
• Recognize leadership and management as a unique function.
• Map curriculum and learning resources to competencies.
2. BUSINESS-DRIVEN
Leading organizations are more likely to begin all development with a focus on the business. This focus includes not only learning about the business, but also providing opportunities to work on current business issues (real-time, action-learning projects) and share with business leaders from multiple organizational units.
3. INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT FOCUS
A major theme that emerged is the importance of highly individualized development plans. These plans, carefully constructed based on current capabilities and future goals, provide a roadmap for both courseware and for work assignments.
4. SELF KNOWLEDGE
McCready, in In Search of the Perfect Leader asserts, “If we want to become effective people, never mind effective leaders, we must first understand who we are. Self-awareness is not only a mirror; it’s a window. Each one of us sees the world filtered through our own lens or perspective, shaped by our genes, our environment, our experience.” Using a variety of assessment / feedback methodologies is an important aspect of the best leadership development processes.
5. MULTIPLE METHODOLOGIES
Even though classroom-based training and development is by far the most frequently-used single method for training, in many cases this is augmented by other learning processes, including special assignments, electronic learning, action learning projects, mentoring, and coaching.
6. LEADERS TEACHING LEADERS
One of the dominant trends among many leading organizations is significant involvement of senior leaders in developing other leaders. The level of involvement has evolved from welcoming participants and positioning management and leadership development as important to the business to leading or co-leading major elements of the course.
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Ensuring leadership talent for the future is one of the top three things that “keep CEO’s up at night,” according to recent reports from leading consulting organizations. Your leaders are important to your organization, and so is their development. Building development systems that assure that you have a viable leadership pipeline is vital successful business.
What works in developing leaders? The following best practices are based on research conducted to benchmark the things that successful leadership programs had in common. More than 200 organizations, recommended for their excellent leadership development, were examined. Highly successful development programs shared these characteristics.
1. COMPETENCY-BASED
Best-practice leadership development programs rely on organizational competency models to define the skills, knowledge, and attributes that are needed for success in management and leadership roles. These models:
• Differentiate the importance and desired level of performance for each competency.
• Are widely disseminated and used developmentally to help plan for next assignments.
• Recognize leadership and management as a unique function.
• Map curriculum and learning resources to competencies.
2. BUSINESS-DRIVEN
Leading organizations are more likely to begin all development with a focus on the business. This focus includes not only learning about the business, but also providing opportunities to work on current business issues (real-time, action-learning projects) and share with business leaders from multiple organizational units.
3. INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT FOCUS
A major theme that emerged is the importance of highly individualized development plans. These plans, carefully constructed based on current capabilities and future goals, provide a roadmap for both courseware and for work assignments.
4. SELF KNOWLEDGE
McCready, in In Search of the Perfect Leader asserts, “If we want to become effective people, never mind effective leaders, we must first understand who we are. Self-awareness is not only a mirror; it’s a window. Each one of us sees the world filtered through our own lens or perspective, shaped by our genes, our environment, our experience.” Using a variety of assessment / feedback methodologies is an important aspect of the best leadership development processes.
5. MULTIPLE METHODOLOGIES
Even though classroom-based training and development is by far the most frequently-used single method for training, in many cases this is augmented by other learning processes, including special assignments, electronic learning, action learning projects, mentoring, and coaching.
6. LEADERS TEACHING LEADERS
One of the dominant trends among many leading organizations is significant involvement of senior leaders in developing other leaders. The level of involvement has evolved from welcoming participants and positioning management and leadership development as important to the business to leading or co-leading major elements of the course.