Leadership Development

AM Strategy
PM Activity
Leadership Development - Strategy

Leadership in Organisations edited by Professor John Storey , OU Business School (2004) identifies:

A cluster of five, core enduring themes of leadership

Industry/organisational Context

Development Methods
(and Evaluation) Perceived Leadership Need

Behavioural Requirements

Capabilities
Industry/Organisational Context

 Economic climate
 Industry sector
 Cross cultural implications
Perceived Leadership Need

 Key stakeholders
 Leaders perpetuating the myth
 Emulation
Behavioural Requirements and Capabilities (1)

 Various ‘flavours’ of required leadership behaviours, depending on the

theorist:

 Meta-Capabilities of Leadership
– John Storey (2004) (OU)
 Essentialist Leadership
– Bennis and Thomas (2002) (Harvard)
 Incipient Leadership Model
– Fullan (2001)
 Learning Leadership
– Boal and Hooijberg (2000)
Behavioural Requirements and Capabilities (2)

 Meta-capabilities of Leadership, John Storey (2004)

Big Picture
Sensemaking

Ability to
Inter-Organisational
Deliver Change
Representation
Behavioural Requirements and Capabilities (3)

 Essentialist Leadership, Bennis & Thomas (2002)

 Summary:
 The essence of leadership is to be ‘discovered’ within the attributes of exceptional
individuals found to be occupying leader positions.
 One of the most reliable indicators and predicators of ‘true leadership’ is an individual’s
ability to find meaning in negative situations and learn from trying experiences.
 Four leadership crucibles:
• The ability to engage others in a shared meaning
• A distinctive and compelling voice
• A sense of integrity
• Adaptive capacity
(an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all of its
attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before)
Behavioural Requirements and Capabilities (4)

 Incipient Leadership Model, Fullan (2001)

– Embedded learning
– Devolved leadership in teams
– Learning as a product of conflict, experimentation and false
starts

 Learning Leadership, Boal and Hooijberg (2000)

– The capacity to learn
– The capacity to change
– Managerial wisdom
The Merging Leader/Manager Agenda?

 “WE ALL KNOW THAT MANAGERS WHO DON’T

LEAD ARE BORING, DISPIRITING, WELL,
LEADERS WHO DON’T MANAGE ARE DISTANT,
DISCONNECTED.”

 “LEADERS ENGAGE OTHERS BY ENGAGING

THEMSELVES: COMMIT TO THEIR INDUSTRY,
THEIR COMPANY, THEIR JOB.

Henry Mintzberg – Enough Leadership, Harvard

Business Review, November 2004
Discussion Exercise 1
 What methods do your organisations use to describe required
leadership capabilities, and to what extent do these descriptions
reflect latest theoretical thinking?

 How well do your organisations factor in business / stakeholder

considerations when describing required leadership
capabilities?

 How do your organisations identify the current capabilities and

development requirements of your leaders? How effective are
these methods?
Discussion Exercise 1 - Flipcharts
 Group One:
 Core list of competencies which are great on paper however perhaps not so in practice.
 Organisational values translated into competency models - however models can be limiting/too generic.
 If you can ensure revenues or obtain clients or projects you are rewarded with a leadership role regardless of your leadership
capabilities.
 If you can claim that you are self aware -(admit your own deficiencies) sometimes this is enough to move you into a leadership
role although you do nothing to work on these deficiencies.
 Leaders are sometimes chosen for a specific job ie merger or acquisition due to the necessity of this skill at a particular moment
in time for an organisation to develop and/or survive.

 Group Two:
 Wanadoo appear to have effective methods for leadership development as highlighted in our last session on Talent Management.
 IBM have different career paths including promotion for technical expertise without the need to lead people – are known as
technical architects who are regarded as key leaders within their specific field of expertise.
 Informal ways of assessing leadership by tapping into the grapevine; also the "suck it and see" approach - hoping that leaders will
emerge.
 Staff surveys gauge what the followers of leaders think.

 Group Three:
 Stakeholders - are they the right ones? are their contributions weighted? is it an issue of stakeholder confidence,
gravitas/influence?
 Do we need all managers to be leaders?
 Do we need technical experts as leaders?
 Characteristics of leaders: self awareness, trust, risk taking,
 communication, non complaint, reluctance to learn from others (?), charismatic.
Leadership Development - Activity

BEST PRACTICE IN BUSINESS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

 BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND – CLEAR OBJECTIVES, WHAT IS IT

THAT YOU WANT YOUR LEADERS TO DO, WHAT SKILLS THEY
WILL NEED, ESTABLISH CLEAR COMPETENCES

 BUSINESS STRATEGY MUST BE THE BASIS OF LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT

 EVALUATION – THE END RESULT SHOULD BE IMPROVED

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE SUCCESSFUL LEADERSHIP?

 ENSURE THE EXECUTIVE LEVEL AND POTENTIAL LEADERS

WITHIN THE ORGANISATION HAVE COMPLETE BUY IN, INVOLVE
AT INCEPTION

 ENSURE THAT THE DEVELOPMENT METHODS USED ARE

APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR BUSINESS AND NOT JUST FLAVOUR
OF THE MONTH!

 ENSURE THAT YOU LOOK AT THE LEADERSHIP PIPELINE AND

THEREFORE LOOK AT TARGET POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
CONTENT
The Leadership Pipeline

Best Practice for Building v Buying

By: Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel

 The Leadership Pipeline

Passage
Passage
Six
Five

Passage
Four Passage
Three

Passage
Two Passage
One
Assumptions
 Future potential is based on
– accumulated skills and experiences,
– ability to learn new skills and
– willingness to tackle bigger, more complex work assignments
 Successful leaders
– add appropriate skills as they move up the leadership
hierarchy
– spend their time on different things as they as they transition
and
– change their perspective about what is important (new work
values) as they move up the leadership ladder
First Leadership Passage
 Skills:  Time •Work values:
Planning work, applications: Making others
assigning work, Making time for productive
motivating, planning &
coaching, and helping others
measuring the perform
work of others effectively
Second Leadership Passage

 Skills:  Time •Work values:

Selecting people applications: Empowering first-
for managerial Deploying line managers
roles, assigning resources
managerial work, among
identifying managers,
resistance to managing the
managerial work, boundaries that
coaching them, separate units
and measuring that report
their progress as directly
managers
 Third Leadership Passage
 Skills:  Time applications: •Work values:
Functional strategic Managing upward Valuing work that
thinking, and horizontally, is unfamiliar
communicating with developing
networks that reach
a multiple layer across functions,
group, balancing participating in
team play and cross-functional
competition for business team
resources with other meetings, and
functions, learning about
understanding the functional areas for
business model which they have
never been resp.
Fourth Leadership Passage
 Skills: Business  Time •Work values:
strategic thinking, applications: Valuing all
managing cost Building a functions
and revenue, business appropriately
balancing short- strategy and (especially staff
term profitability integrating functions)
with long-term functional work
planning,
assembling a
strong team,
connecting all the
dots (managing
the complexity)
 Fifth Leadership Passage
 Skills: Holistic thinking,  Time Work values:
managing cost & applications: Valuing all
revenue & capital Spending time functions
allocation, assessing with functional appropriately
bus. managers, their
teams and their managers
cultures, managing
stakeholders (industry,
community, government,
etc.), monitoring
compliance with
corporate values and
policies, and portfolio
strategy management
Sixth Leadership Passage
 Skills:  Time •Work values:
Visionary thinking, applications: Valuing slow,
ability to sense Diagnosing evolutionary
external shifts and
whether the results, valuing
proactively the advice
respond, organisation
offered by
converting is performing
learning into boards
at full
practice, potential,
identifying best
ideas and managing
translating them three or four
into tools and key
programs objectives
Methods of Leadership Development

 Workshop Based:
– Learning about leadership and understanding organisations
– Self analysis, team analysis and exploration of leadership
styles
– Experiential learning and stimulation
– Strategy events and business schools

 Based ‘on the job’:

– Mentoring and executive coaching
– 360 feedback and performance management
– Secondments and projects
– Experience!
Frequency of Leadership Development

 Work Foundation Survey – 221 organisations – 2003

 25% of CEOs and Board Members had received leadership

development

 50% of Junior Managers had received leadership development

How Effective are Leadership Development Methods?
(Bailey and Butcher, Cranfield University: international survey – 271 execs - 2002)

 Method Frequently Used % High Value %

Internal business projects 47 73

In company development programmes 45 53

Internal coaching/mentoring 45 69

Business school development programme 27 57

External coaching/mentoring 25 71

Observation of business leaders 15 44

External business projects 13 46

Discussion Exercise 2
 What are we doing well in developing our leaders?

 What are we doing less well?

 What three methods or experiences have most

shaped your own leadership development? Capture
and rank these as a group.

 How could we improve the evaluation of the impact of

our leadership development activity?
Discussion Exercise 2 - Flipcharts
 What are we doing well in developing our leaders?
 On the agenda
 Happening at all levels
 Experiential learning; learn by doing
 Psychometrics
 Coaching
 Not ‘one size fits all (shades of grey – not black and white)

 What three methods or experiences have most shaped your own leadership development? Capture and rank these as a
group.
 Personal crisis**
 Access my intuition and my spiritual awakening**
 Mentors **
 My biggest f…..up
 360 degree feedback and PDP
 Action learning set
 Reflection
 Secondment/shadowing
 Investing in Excellence - programme

 How could we improve the evaluation of the impact of our leadership development activity?
 Establish in advance what the client wants to measure – manage client expectations
 Dialogue – face-to-face
 Evaluating throughout the programme – modular course
 360 degree feedback pre and post the course – including self
 Employee/other internal sureys
 Recognising interdependencies
 Going through objective setting and evaluation has a benefit in itself