What would I change about leadership? Development!
I am asked regularly – based on my experiences as a senior leader, an Executive Coach, and a Non-Executive Director – if I could change one thing about leadership in organisations what would it be? My answer would be to make continuous leadership development a requirement for anyone who is a leader within an organisation. Whenever someone is promoted internally or is hired externally into a leadership role there should be immediate and ongoing professional development to set them up for success.
Why do I consider this to be the most important change which could be made? Numerous studies show that the quality of leaders inside an organisation determines the employee experience, underpinning morale, engagement, productivity and retention. In turn, the employee experience is a key driver of the customer experience – engaged and happy staff are much more likely to find ways to meet customer needs to the mutual benefit of the customer and the organisation. Happy staff = happy customers: a virtuous circle when leaders get it right; a vicious circle when they do not.
Yet often organisations leave leaders to ‘pick it up as they go along’ rather than making it a priority to give leaders the development support they need to be the best they can be. To me this makes no sense. We train individuals in technical skills so why would we not train individuals in leadership skills, starting with core skills and building as their leadership roles evolve? Some might argue that ‘leaders are born not made’; I would contest – based on my experiences – that no matter how ‘natural’ a leader is, everyone can be a better leader with the right development opportunities.
Some of the cynics amongst you might be thinking “Well Irene would say this wouldn’t she, as leadership development is what pays her bills?” But I would advocate a broad menu of development interventions to take account of different factors: individuals’ learning preferences (eg do they like to read, prefer videos or podcasts – there are countless excellent leadership books/ videos/ podcasts which could be provided); the organisational context (eg there is a group of new leaders joining at the same time – the onboarding programme could include leadership training for this particular group to ensure consistent fundamentals); specific problem areas (eg employee feedback suggests that difficult conversations are not handled well – a programme on this standalone topic can be created). Of course, coaching should also be on this menu as it complements all of these interventions, is tailored to the individual and is proven to provide lasting behavioural change. There are so many options to educate, inspire and develop leaders – let’s use them!
What are the core leadership skills? You’ll have to wait for my next LI piece for my thoughts on that: watch this space……