Developing leaders is a means to an end.

It should be part of a strategy for developing an organisation and will have an impact beyond the learning activity that is chosen.

If you are contemplating creating an initiative to develop the leadership skills of your managers first ask:

• Why are we doing this?
• What do we expect to gain?
• How will we measure our success?
• What other initiatives can this complement?
• What else can we achieve for our organisation as a spin off from this initiative?

Here are some possible answers to the last question:

Employee Engagement

Disengaged employees don’t care. They turn up, do the minimum necessary, maximise the number of days they can take off, look forward to Friday and turn up only for the money. The problem comes when your competitor’s employees become engaged and as a result bring energy, initiative enthusiasm and commitment to their work. Employee engagement is a product of the quality of leadership. You can download a case study on Employee Engagement by by clicking here.

Succession Planning

Preparing the next generation of managers is about planning ahead and preparing those potential new leaders. Doing so will produce better leadership performance from the outset and prevent bad leadership habits developing. An important aspect of any leadership development strategy must be to prepare the leaders of the future.

You can download a case study on succession planning by clicking here.

Managing Change

Change is a constant part of any leader’s environment and resistance to change is a natural human reaction that is frequently made worse by the way change is introduced. If team members resist change: good initiatives fail, competitors gain advantage, stress levels increase for all concerned and opportunity to motivate has been missed.

Knowing how to introduce change and manage the process of change so that team resistance is reduced or removed is an essential leadership skill. Without it performance will always be second best. A remarkably effective way of enhancing leadership skills and delivering a successful change initiative is to build a leadership development initiative around a specific change exercise.

Performance Management

It is the responsibility of leader to do more than plan for success. They must make sure that the wheels turn to put those plans into action, constantly and to a high standard, and make the planned goals a reality. This is Performance Management in a nutshell. It provides an invaluable measurement of the quality of leadership and hence the quality of a leadership development initiative. You can download a case study on Performance Management by clicking here.

Vision and Values

When Values are adopted (accompanied by an appropriate Vision) then an organisation takes hold of its culture and consciously moulds it into something designed for success. But many organisations struggle to adopt the behavioural models and standards that will help them truly move forward and this impacts directly on their ability to manage change and performance and to gain employee engagement. Leadership is the route to moving vision and values from theory into reality. You can download a case study on ‘Rescuing Vision and Values' by by clicking here.