A leader’s task is delivering results
effectively, more so in the current challenging business
environment.
Developing your high potential middle and senior level
leadership team, however, can be an arduous task. More
often than not, while the process for assessing and
selecting (promotion or external hire) a new leader is
robust, it is the leadership development process that
fails to deliver.
The fallout of an ineffective, disengaged, and
non-aligned leader can be multiply debilitating:
- Lack of a positive culture and work climate
- Poor business results
- No coherent, innovative and exciting ideas to
develop business
- Disengaged and disoriented team
- Poor employee satisfaction
- High attrition rates
- Unhappy and disloyal customers
Most leadership development programs fail to deliver
results:
1. Most leaders, frontline / middle / senior,
throughout their career get multiple training inputs
a) These training inputs are, usually, provided by
multiple training partners
b) It, hence, becomes difficult for the organisation
to plan, build upon, and build logical connects between
various inputs
2. Some of these inputs, hence, get used from an
expensive “stamp” perspective, with little or no follow
through on workplace transfer of learning
a) Organisations send their top leadership for
learning “jaunts” to expensive courses, which create a
lot of fun and goodwill, but little else
3. Most trainings do not utilise the best domain
knowledge available – of leaders within the organisation,
as coaches and mentors during the training program
4. No singular training program which develops
holistic leaders, with a balance between understanding
self and others, and building capability for leadership
tasks
So, how do you develop your leaders?
Typically, most organisations get into a piecemeal
approach to leadership development - using either an SDP
(self development program based on internal assessment
or a more commonly using a collective count of ticks on
an excel file listing of competencies) linked standalone
workshops on topics like “Strategic Thinking,” “Change
Management,” “Coaching and Mentoring,” “Decision
Making,” etc., or, if they have a lot of money to spend,
then it is by sponsoring of a select lot of leaders to
the expensive MBA institutes’ “Executive Development
Programs.”
Is there a more effective way to develop leaders, in a
holistic way, and within a manageable budget?
Usually, a lot of SDP / EDP workshops, on a calendar and
compartmentalised framing, try and address one or more
of the above competencies and, hence, fail miserably to
develop and instead end up as a “good but difficult to
implement” learning. These interventions fail to address
the basic underlying tenet – development must begin from
understanding the core!
So what is at the core of leadership development, and
how does one build from it?
One of the ways to that, is to look at leadership
development as a mix of three critical Triads:
Aligning self and the team to the organisation
culture – the potion of vision, mission and values;
understanding self and others – the behaviour types;
Living the Values; setting personal aspirations and
goals
o We call this the Triad of “Personal Mastery” or
“Lead Self”
Understanding, managing and building team member
capabilities; Building and executing developmental
plans; Inspiring, setting aspirations and involving;
Creating a high performance climate; Working as a team
o We call this the Triad of “Team Mastery” or “Lead
Team”
Understanding the changing landscape and building
strategy; Achieving business success by innovating and
collaborating with external partners; Delivering
customer delight; Execution excellence – the art of
getting things done
o We call this the Triad of “Business Mastery” or
“Lead Business”
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-260"
title="Developing holistic leaders" src="http://www.odalternatives.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/holistic_leaders.jpg"
alt="" width="273" height="327" />
Given the above segmentation of the competencies, let us
now try to define the principles of an effective
leadership development program:
1. Any holistic leadership development, whether for
first time leaders or for existing leaders with
different exposures, must address the above Triads if it
is to deliver consistent results. Ideally, it should
move from
Personal mastery Team mastery Business mastery, or
Lead Self Lead Team Lead Business
2. The training inputs must result in a practical,
time-bound action plan, to allow from workplace
implementation of the learning.
3. The measures or the program outcomes must reflect
in changes to the leadership profile (various
instruments that can give a 360o), to the organisation
culture (again, multiple culture mapping tools exist),
and finally to the organisation or business performance
measures. These measures could be
a. Reduced attrition
b. Implementation of innovative work practices
c. Customer satisfaction scores
d. Impact on financial parameters, like
i. Cost efficiencies
ii. Revenues etc.
4. Most importantly, the leadership program must be
specific and customised to the organisation’s needs and
its DNA
ODA – Lead@Work® – The Leadership Development Program
At ODA, we believe, Leadership, succinctly defined, is
the ability, and the will, to lead people to a common
purpose. It is the leaders’ ability to empower, coach,
motivate, inspire, influence, leverage synergy, and
transform that creates the sustainable source of
differentiation for the organisation. It is the leaders’
task to articulate and establish a compelling vision and
mission, build a climate that enables innovation and
superior performance, display superior foresight and
decision making, and empower and develop future leaders.
Our leadership development program is based on a belief
that “leadership is everyone’s business”. It’s about the
practices leaders use to transform values into actions,
visions into realities, obstacles into innovations,
separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards.
It’s about a climate in which people turn challenging
opportunities into remarkable successes. These leaders
become the source of inspiration and possibility, and
they show conviction in every action that they take – in
true sense, they become “transformational leaders”.
They create an energy field, ignite the minds of
followers, and build teams and organisations for a
lifetime and beyond.
How does it work?
Lead@Work® can be run as an 8 to 12 month engaged
program, including the following:
1. A baseline profiling on leadership, using a 360o
assessment
2. A set of three 3 days training program, dealing
with one Triad at a time – and working with assessment,
feedback, insights, intense discussions and critical
learnings in each if these Triads
3. Learning to Action through on-the-job workplace
projects between the workshops, using supervisor as a
coach
4. An online library of learning support material,
with a rich database of tools, e-learning models and
reference links
5. An online and onsite coaching support - executive
coaching to support identified leaders who need
additional support
The above model is completely customised for the
organisation – it builds upon the Core Values &
Competencies, and weaves them into the learning
framework.
As an integrated leadership development model, it
incorporates functional and behavioural inputs, within
an academic framework. It draws upon the benefits of an
EDP program, by an MBA institute, and also, from the
experiential learning provided by training organisations,
and builds a robust holistic development framework
obviating the need for standalone workshops for
leadership development.
This program effectively connects and links various
stakeholders like supervisors, mentors and external
coaches into the participants learning cycle. It, also,
incorporates various teaching / learning / facilitation
methodologies in one single intervention like
assessments, online learning, classroom learning,
outbound experiential learning and action learning using
workplace projects. This integrated leadership
development model give participants an opportunity to
integrate themselves and grow as holistic human beings
showing a balance between self, others and tasks. This
program also gives detailed feedback on individual’s
development path and potential, to allow for succession
planning.
To know more about the Lead@Work®, and to work with us
to build an effective, customised leadership development
program for your organisation, please get in touch with
us on contactus@odalternatives.com.
- Rajat Rakheja
