Leadership Development
Becoming a leader is a development process - for you as an individual, for your team and for the organisation which wants you to incorporate certain values and guarantee outcomes.
Within the last 30 years I witnessed diverse approaches to leadership development - searching and assessing candidates, training and supporting them on- and off-site, with and without their team(s) as well as defining competency profiles and career paths. The effectiveness of all such initiatives and programs is very much relying on the perceived company culture and trustworthiness of both, Senior Management and HR.
Sometimes the regional or national culture plays a role, too.
The more these elements align with the purpose and vision of the company, the more the training part allows a coherent and sensemaking development of the people who lead, hence increase the effectiveness in business. Again, leaders make the weather.
Mastering the triangle of leading Yourself, Others and developing the Organisation - globally and locally, as a line manager or expert, in projects, matrix organisations, simply x-functional or within agile teams across the organisation.
You (need to) decide what kind of leadership you want. And tolerate.
Success factors for effective leadership development
The leadership development needs to fit to your business, to your specific business situation and to your organisational maturity level and company culture - the culture you experience, not primarily the culture you want or need to live as business enabler.
This can be on the job, including PEER coaching and/ or shadowing elements or hybrid - a combination of online self-study, remote collaboration and off-site trainings. The sky is the limit - and your resources are leading.
Let me share four elements which are key to sustainbale success in every format you may chose or decide to co-create.
Strategic alignment
Purpose driven
Make sure you align content, time and the specific social set up of your leadership development initiative to your company's purpose and vision.
Guiding questions:
What do you want your leaders to become?
How do you define their role - in functions, projects, regions and within your hierarchy?
What is the set of values you want them to incorporate?
Effective leadership development focuses on roles and responsibilites and goes hand in hand with the development of the organisation.
Board Assignment
Role modelling
Leadership is infectious - you get what leaders see and experience.
Guiding questions:
How do you operate and lead yourself as a board member, entrepreneur?
What are the challenges leaders need to face in their various roles?
How do you support and grow leaders outside a training experience?
You cannot expect leaders to behave differently from what you role model as Board - as individuals and as a team. You set the tone including your trust in the people you chose and support to lead.
You cannot delegate leadership development.
Peer Group
Building bridges
The power of cross-functional cooperation is key to an agile organisation. Again leaders make the weather, not ranks.
Guiding questions:
How can a leadership development program encourage and normalize the interaction across functions?
What else do you create for leaders to connect naturally with their relevant peers?
How broad is your understanding of leadership?
x-collaboration amongst leaders is crucial for their teams - either to follow them or to respect them for building relevant bridges.
Dialogues
Shared understanding
No internal or external professional can substitute the direct communication amongst leaders across hierarchies and functions.
Guiding questions:
How fluid is the communication across the hierarchy in your organisation?
Do you support (un) conscious silo thinking?
Is your understanding of communication reduced to information?
x-Dialogues enable a shared understanding of business, strategy, organisation and practical leadership - thus effective cooperation.
Some of my experiences
Initial experience in each field of business and live creates impact on the sense of quality, effectiveness and how you felt in your specific role, also as a leader. Therefore I want to share my first endeavors in supporting leaders in their development.
Automotive industry
I started co-creating and leading leadership development programs as an internal Consultant at Daimler - training new international Junior Leaders at Mercedes-Benz within 3 modules over a period of one year - open set up, very much group dynamic oriented and focused on self-organisation and the reflection of action.
No scheduled teaching and quite similar to my own training as an international Junior Leader at Mercedes-Benz.
Transportation
Followed by a first leadership development program as an independant consultant at Bombardier (Building Effectiveness) - supporting international Senior Executives over four, then two modules due to cost cutting, and: 6 days were equally effective as 16 days, and less exhausting for both, the faculty and the leaders. If you chose the right things.
This program included valuable site visits, local evening activities and top management dialogues across Europe. I was leading the program in tandem mode with internal representives, first from HR, later together with international leaders with substantial global experience and joy in leading across cultures.
In each group we were facing a cultural diversity of sometimes more than 10 nationalities, representing various businesses, functions and regions. Culture clash was part of the program and it happened without explicit initiation. But with - again - reflection in action and lessons learned, from the specific incident to experienced patterns in real business life.
Energy
The happiest and maybe most moving intercultural moment was probably within a Senior Leadership Development program at EON (Building intercultural Effectiveness for European Seniors) at a cooking event in Italy when the local site manager was playing guitar and the leaders and us, the German-British trainer tandem were cooking under the strict guidance of original 'mamas' in the cantine at Milano. Experiencing business culture also at local ceremonial acts creates bonds over decades and first hand experience in intercultural leadership styles.
CONCLUSION
What I learned across all further programs - EON focusing on intercultural cooperation (Building intercultral Effectiveness for Senior leaders, and then also offered as module within the international Junior Management program), Wolford focusing on cultural development and skills (a combined approach of Culture and leadership development, starting with the board), AXA Investment (Leadership 2012, built on strategic skills co-created by tma, Transnational Management Associates) or Daimler (Global Leadership),
it is of course the competencies of the faculty, their attitude and creativity in co-designing a specific format, but ALSO the set of certain ingredients which contributed in each of those programs to sustainable success.
Strategic Alignment. Board Assignment. Cross-hierachical Dialogues. Cross-functional Peer Interaction and Support.
International Cooperation Consulting
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