By Mark Evenden at Developing People
You may have identified a number of people as high potentials in your organisation, but how do you develop them to ensure that they reach their full potential? It is certainly not appropriate in today’s organisational climate to simply leave them to it. Organisations need to continually change and develop and their high potentials will need to change, develop and ‘move with the times’ as well.
So what should your company do? The following is a guide to help you to develop your high potentials.
1. Make the development of your high potentials an issue for the Board. As the part of the strategy of the business, they needs be a clear plan to define the types of skills, behaviours and experiences its leaders will need in the future.
2. Be clear with your high potentials what it is they need to learn and don’t simply assume that they should work on their weaknesses. What is it that will add the greatest value to their performance and ultimately the organisation’s performance? Many leaders succeed because they maximise the impact of their inherent strengths.
3. Provide ‘on the job’ opportunities for your talent to flourish. Search for business improvement projects that need a leader, opportunities to undertake new roles or gain international experience. Experience shows that people will raise their performance to what is being requested of them. Take them outside of their comfort zone to find out what they are ‘really made of’.
4. Provide a range of options to support them to develop. This might be attending a leadership development programme or being given leadership coaching support. Coaching is a very powerful way to enable high potentials to develop quickly.
5. Provide networks both internally and externally. High potentials can benefit from shadowing leaders in their own or other organisations and learning from them how they use their skills and behaviours to inspire their staff.
Ultimately the long term success of your business resides with your high potentials. Surely, the development of these people is far too an important business issue to be left chance?
Showing posts with label leadership development programme. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership development programme. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
A Leadership Dilemma
Imagine the situation: Your organisation is currently struggling. Revenues are down, profits are down and if the current trend persists, the business may end up making a loss at the end of the year.
While putting the brakes on expenditure may be the only option the business has, depending on how this is approached can make a big difference to the motivation, commitment and engagement of managers and staff who have to implement it.
If you did not have to think too hard to imagine this situation, you may find it useful to read on...
Consider the following scenario:
Last year, your business invested in a leadership development programme for its middle and senior managers. The focus of the programme has been on developing the skills, capabilities and behaviours of the management cadre to lead and empower their staff more effectively to generate greater engagement and change the organisation’s culture.
The results of the programme have been tremendous. Key business measures have shown improvements and the culture of the organisation has changed to become more customer focused and proactive.
However, because of the economic climate the organisation has not been making the required profits and the leadership team decided to put an embargo on all unnecessary spend. The directors decided to take control over the purchasing of all “consumable” items such as stationary, printing inks etc and all managers have to get approval from a director before they can purchase anything.
What will be the impact of such an apparently ‘micromanagement’ approach? Managers will suddenly feel that they cannot be trusted to make the right decisions and staff become frustrated because they can’t get the tools they need to do their jobs properly.
The consequence of this is that in an instant all the good work that the organisation did in investing in the leadership development of their managers becomes undone. This is because the managers perceived a lack of congruence between what they had learned and were expected to do (i.e. develop trust, empower their staff etc) and the behaviour of the directors who are into command and control.
This issue is not about what the directors of the business were trying to achieve but how they went about it. Clearly action needs to be taken to control costs during difficult times, however by stripping managers of their decision making authority will simply alienate and demotivate them. So what advice can Developing People offer?
If businesses approach the engagement of managers in this way, trust and performance is more likely to be increased despite the economic difficulty. If you act now, managers will be primed and ready for when the economic pressures ease and the organisation returns to growth.
While putting the brakes on expenditure may be the only option the business has, depending on how this is approached can make a big difference to the motivation, commitment and engagement of managers and staff who have to implement it.
If you did not have to think too hard to imagine this situation, you may find it useful to read on...
Consider the following scenario:
Last year, your business invested in a leadership development programme for its middle and senior managers. The focus of the programme has been on developing the skills, capabilities and behaviours of the management cadre to lead and empower their staff more effectively to generate greater engagement and change the organisation’s culture.
The results of the programme have been tremendous. Key business measures have shown improvements and the culture of the organisation has changed to become more customer focused and proactive.
However, because of the economic climate the organisation has not been making the required profits and the leadership team decided to put an embargo on all unnecessary spend. The directors decided to take control over the purchasing of all “consumable” items such as stationary, printing inks etc and all managers have to get approval from a director before they can purchase anything.
What will be the impact of such an apparently ‘micromanagement’ approach? Managers will suddenly feel that they cannot be trusted to make the right decisions and staff become frustrated because they can’t get the tools they need to do their jobs properly.
The consequence of this is that in an instant all the good work that the organisation did in investing in the leadership development of their managers becomes undone. This is because the managers perceived a lack of congruence between what they had learned and were expected to do (i.e. develop trust, empower their staff etc) and the behaviour of the directors who are into command and control.
This issue is not about what the directors of the business were trying to achieve but how they went about it. Clearly action needs to be taken to control costs during difficult times, however by stripping managers of their decision making authority will simply alienate and demotivate them. So what advice can Developing People offer?
- Managers need to know what’s expected of them e.g. to reduce costs.
- Maintain your manager’s motivation and commitment with trust in their decision-making abilities.
- Set realistic targets and budgets so managers feel empowered to deliver the new targets and budgets without draconian measures that WILL reduce morale.
If businesses approach the engagement of managers in this way, trust and performance is more likely to be increased despite the economic difficulty. If you act now, managers will be primed and ready for when the economic pressures ease and the organisation returns to growth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
