Leadership Development – Getting it right
Leadership development is one of the most popular learning and development topics within the training industry and has been for some time. Leadership development can be a hard area to address if employees recognise the need instead of the leaders themselves. After all telling a senior figure in any organisation that they need further development can be pretty career limiting.
Having said this, leadership development needs to be an ongoing exercise, as leaders play an active and vital role in any organisations’ future success. The methods and theory of leadership has evolved over the years and the number of options available to organisations is constantly increasing.
Learning and development is no longer restricted to the teacher-pupil style format and because of this, the levels of complexity when designing development programmes has also increased. The main reason for this increase in complexity is the realisation that a ‘one-size fits all’ approach does not work. The development of leaders depends greatly on our own personalities, our experiences, the client organisation, the context we are working in at the time. All of these aspects are important to integrate and deal with effectively within the development programme for it to be a success.
A good leadership development programme needs to have the right balance of leadership development sessions and supporting activities for all delegates. This gives the delegates the new knowledge they need and an environment in which to practice, which helps transfer the learning to the workplace.
Another aspect that needs consideration is which delivery option is best for your leadership development project. The style of delivery is very important as this helps to set the tone for the development programme. A leadership development programme can be delivered in many ways and some options that are available include a completely bespoke programme, designed completely around the organisations’ needs, a ready-to-run programme, an experiential event or a development award.
Over the past couple of years experiential events and development awards, like the ILM, have become popular methods for developing leaders. The reason for this growing popularity is because experiential events remove all classroom boundaries and allows the delegates’ natural leadership style to be seen and not the one they create.
A development award enables an organisation to get their leadership programme recognised by an accredited body in the field, which can add extra credibility to the programme. There is no right or wrong delivery option as all have different positive aspects.
The key to selecting the best method is by evaluating the delivery option and course content against the proposed leadership development project’s critical success factors. The key though to any leadership development should be its ability to create a new sense of purpose in the delegates that drives performance improvement that is tangible.
Trying to evaluate a person’s improvement in leadership is tough. Why, because so many other factors influence the changes. In my experience most senior people in organisations aren’t so worried about a scientific evaluation to prove the development works. What they want is some clear indication that things are moving in the right direction and that this can be attributed to changes in leadership approach.
When designing any leadership development programme, you should always focus on what you expect the outcomes to be and identify realistic ways in which you can measure the outcomes. An example of this would be improvements in your employee survey results for leadership perceptions or improvements in absence and labour turnover that can be linked to changes in leadership style.
Also, don’t underestimate the power of tools such as competency frameworks, psychometrics and 360 feedback for increasing self awareness. After all, you cannot change what you do not know needs changing!