Focus of leadership development

Leadership development is as important as the business itself. Any compromise here is as good as compromising with tomorrow’s business. The most common symptoms such as lack of direction and commitment, shilly-shally in decision making and implementation, and a general feeling of “safety first” at the expense of creativity have their roots in the lack of inspirational leadership in the organization.

Identification of changes in the environment, interpreting the same to the people and clarifying the future direction, enthusing people to plan and work for the required change and inspiring people to higher levels of performance requires superhuman strength and power. This is not a one time affair either. It needs to be an on-going exercise at any given instance of time in an organization. There is no end to it. In the organizational context the event horizon keeps on changing and expanding, so what is needed is not a charismatic or transformational leadership once in a while, but a continuum in leadership which can make it happen day after day.

Focus of leadership development

This is where leadership development comes into forefront, to ensure a strong and continuous chain of leaders in an organization. The process of leadership development must be centered on:

• Future needs
• Implementation of strategic plan
• Core values
• Competencies
• Width & depth in the organization

Future needs

Leadership development is for meeting the challenges of the future and so it is very important that future business needs must be an integral part of leadership development. This can be achieved by involving high potential leaders across the organization in envisioning exercise, where “high potentials” are asked to develop a futuristic (5 – 10 years) and yet realistic business vision for the company and debate their assumptions and aspirations to arrive at a consensus. With present leaders challenging the basic assumptions and thinking of the “high potentials” and “high potentials” clarifying their point of view of the unfolding future based on the early trends of today will help the company in gaining clarity on rationale and challenge in the aspirations being set. Deliberations on strategic options and risks involved will go a long way in “high potentials” gaining understanding of how decisions under uncertainty in high impact areas are arrived at.

Implementation of strategic plan

"High potentials" involvement in teams and taskforces dealing with implementation barriers of strategy that the company is currently pursuing will help them in understanding of aspects such as organizational politics, people involvement, resistance to change, corrective actions in implementation and the evolution of strategy with progress in implementation. Also their involvement in company wide initiatives will open up a different facet of the organization, which will help them understand the implementation discipline and difficulties in the organization.

Core values & competencies

Now the question how this all important “high potentials” are identified in the company?

Performance is no doubt important but equally important are behaviours and competencies.

How positive a manager is with respect to values of the organization?

Does he sacrifice values for the sake of performance?

Do values show up from his behaviours with peers and subordinates?

These are some of questions that need to be answered before judging a manager as a “high potential” in the company. Encouraging budding leaders to participate in debates over mis alignment between organizational values and desirable levels of organizational performance and finding ways to uphold values anb\d yet reach the targets will influence their mindsets and improve budding leaders' commitment to organizational values. This is an important step in the development of leaders as it is through organizational values that leaders bind people together to realize the vision of the company.

It is not only today’s performance that should be the determining factor for identifying “high potential” but his ability to perform at high levels in future as well. This is where competencies come into play. Competence is a mix of attitude, skill and knowledge. Attitudes are built through core values programmes (awareness, training and implementation), behavioural norms in line with values of the company and various rewards and recognition programmes. Leadership competencies must be in place for assessing and developing individuals into dynamic leaders.

Leadership everywhere

Leadership development programmes must be deployed through out the organization so that each and every function has leaders at different levels, so that whole organization moves ahead at the same pace. Further, job rotation for “high potentials” is an important tool for acclimatizing them of different functions in the organization and the development is truly all round. Leadership everywhere must be the motto. Any gaps in depth and width of deployment of leadership development will show off as the dead weight that the company may have to carry in future.

In a nutshell, this all important process of leadership development must be focused on what is important for an individual to build the future of the organization. Done well, this will ensure that uncertain as it may, the future will be in safe and confident hands.

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