Three Keys to Develop Leadership Skills - for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
Developing leadership skills is often an afterthought at small and medium-sized companies.
When companies start-up, and then launch into growth, there is little time to think about how the company will sustain itself long-term – survival is the immediate focus. Once things are humming along smoothly, many company founders begin to relax their control and would like to enjoy the fruits of their labor but then realize there are few other leaders in the organization because they haven’t thought to groom them.
Thus begins a period of attempting to promote leaders from within or hiring potential leaders from outside the organization; rarely does either approach work well. When potential leaders – who have not been groomed to ascend in the organization – are promoted, they often lack the full complement of skills needed to lead because the owner / founder has been filling the decision-making role(s) for so long. As a point of pride, rarely does a newly appointed leader admit they are in over their head or ask for more support from the owner / founder. Instead, these leaders often leave within the first year of their appointment.
When more fully capable leaders are brought in from outside the organization, they may find they are butting heads with the owner / founder because they are introducing new ways of working – informed from their external experience. Leaders brought in from outside the organization often fail faster than internal candidates, frequently leaving organizations in a matter of months. A 2019 study conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers found that successors to long-serving CEOs have short tenures and are often forced out of office. (Here is a recent example from AutoNation who replaced an “outsider” CEO after only four months.)
Every small or medium-sized business owner / founder should have a needlepoint sampler in their office that reads “The true mark of my success is to be able to walk away from this business and for it to continue to thrive.” Adopting that mindset early on enables future leaders to be brought up from within the organization. This is the best scenario because they have organizational knowledge and relationships with others in the organization.
If you hope to exit your business without having to sell or close it, here are three ways to ensure you build a capable leadership pipeline.
First, begin leadership development earlier rather than later. Think of youngsters who begin T-ball at age five. There is no telling who among them will be a star athlete come high school or who will go on to a college or professional career; but rarely will one begin softball / baseball as a high schooler and go on to great success. When the skills and responsibilities are taught early and practiced for a decade or more, it is more apparent who is capable of further success.
Second, include everyone in leadership development opportunities. Don’t presume to know who among your workers will be a future leader – assume everyone will be. This will ensure you are more egalitarian about leadership development and, in the long run, will help your organization the most. Central to this approach is ensuring that there is a mix of learners in every offering. For example, a course on feedback skills should include individuals from all departments and all levels within the organization. This comingling nurtures relationships among everyone in the organization (a key capability of a leader) and enables every one – in every role – to be capable of giving back to the organization. Continuing with the sports analogy, when every new player is nurtured with the assumption that they are capable of becoming a stellar athlete, some will demonstrate a natural talent or drive to move to the “senior-leader team,” but everyone on the team will have increased their capabilities.
As an example, consider Tom Brady’s career vs. Johnny Manziel’s. One was a ninth-round draft pick and the other a Heisman Trophy winner. One went on to a stellar career and one flamed out after two seasons in the NFL. Presuming who will be a leader is often a losing proposition – in sports and in business.
Finally, don’t make the development of leadership skills another “thing” people have to do. Integrate skills development with real-world responsibilities. For instance, if a department holds weekly meetings, rotate the responsibility for facilitating the meeting. Why must the leader of the meeting always be the manager? Everyone should be able to follow an agenda, keep conversations on-topic, summarize decisions, and make sure action items are claimed. This type of development ensures that when one does become a leader, they already possess the ability to manage a meeting. There are a myriad of other skills which can be developed in this way, without an onerous (and often contrived) training process.
In order to develop the skills of your organization’s future leaders, make a list of the ten skills you feel are critical to success, such as communication, an understanding of financials, customer service, etc., and identify ways to work the development of these skills into everyday work responsibilities. Assume everyone has the ability to lead, start early in people’s careers, and do formal training in mixed groups so that people can build relationships throughout the organization. These simple but important steps will help to ensure a ready and capable leadership pipeline for any organization.
Note: This article was previously published by Forbes.com.
Three Predictions for Workplace Training - Post Corona Virus
Across the world, the universe of the “workplace” has suffered a stunning blow in the last few months and many industries and companies will come back as a contracted version of their former selves. One department that is likely to take a hit is training and professional development. Here are my predictions for what T+D will look like in the coming few years.
Note: This article was originally published by Training Industry Magazine.
Prediction #1 virtual training will really take off – for 2 reasons
As a consultant who specialized in designing and delivering virtual training for about 15 years, it always amazed me when I encountered a client to whom it was all new; but I had one or two clients such as this each year. There are two important reasons why I predict virtual training will become more in demand than ever going forward. (Note: Virtual training is conducted live, with other participants and a facilitator, as opposed to distance learning or e-learning, which is really self-study,)
First, now that many companies have made the switch to work-from-home (WFH) they realize it’s not as impossible as they feared. One of our clients is a call center who finally started work-from-home options due to the virus. A call center customer service rep is definitely not a role that requires sitting with others in a central location – but the client was simply resistant to the idea of WFH. Now that they realize people can work from home, it’s not such a hard sell to get them to accept people learning from home as well.
The second reason virtual training will take off is because it is so affordable. Post-corona virus, those companies that are still in business are going to have to use their resources wisely. During the Great Recession I managed a new-hire on-boarding process for a client for five years. We onboarded approximately 300 people, in 10-12 groups, throughout the year, all virtually. Virtual training is convenient, affordable, and logistically a lot simpler.
There are also a number of reasons why virtual learning is a preferable methodology for adult learners, such as spaced learning and built-in time for reflection – but that is fodder for another article.
Prediction #2 companies will realize the value and necessity of cross-training
When I first became a consultant in the early 1990’s, one of the first projects I worked on was a cross-training project for a manufacturing firm in which everyone on the manufacturing floor was “upskilled” (to upskill means to teach a current employee additional skills) to be able to backfill at least two other positions.
The curriculum was designed to require them to learn five new topics in total, but the remaining three topics were allowed to be knowledge-based (such as understanding more about procurement or finance) as opposed to skill-based. The objective of the training was to have each employee paying the company back in multiple ways. For example, a machinist who had additional training in finance was more likely to complete routine maintenance knowing that the cost of maintenance vs. repair was enormous.
I thought the “multiple skills” idea was quite brilliant and have been amazed, over the course of my career, by how few companies do it. What is more prevalent in training – especially in the last twenty years – is training for depth, not breadth. If someone enters a company in a finance role, more than likely all their company sponsored training will be focused solely on finance. They will never be exposed to marketing or HR or operations. Through training, companies have kept employees in silos and by doing so they have hobbled their agility. Companies will be forced to lay off their over-abundance of marketers (for example) while simultaneously hiring salespeople because not one of those marketers was cross trained in sales.
This shuffling of people like pieces on a chess board has all sorts of negative ramifications, such as recruiting costs and a loss of company history / knowledge; but again, that is fodder for a different article.
Prediction #3 – subject-matter-experts will be more in demand as trainers than ever before
Having been a consultant for nearly thirty years, I have seen this pendulum swing back and forth a few times. First there are fully staffed, centralized training departments who run training like its own business with marketing and sales, delivery of a product / service, and requests for feedback. Then an economic shakeup swings the pendulum to focus on what is truly needed for individuals to learn and that is the transfer of business-critical knowledge from those who have it to those who do not. This often means direct contact between subject matter experts (SMEs) and newbies, eliminating the “middle-man” of the training department.
Training and development has always been seen as a cost-center (which it is not) and is always one of the last functions to be brought back online after an economic downturn. But a lack of a training department doesn’t stop the need for training such as new-hire onboarding or skill-specific training. In the coming years, companies will redeploy resources and the training will more than likely be done by individuals who are subject matter experts.
While using SMEs as trainers is a great cost-saving tactic, it doesn’t result in the best training outcomes. SMEs aren’t knowledgeable about the best ways to transmit content to learners (hint: lectures are not the way), and they tend to start at a much higher-level of capability than their audience because they forget what it was like to be new and unskilled. They have the “curse of knowledge,” as this 2017 TICE article explains. The best way to utilize SMEs as trainers could be an article - or a book - all its own.
As business returns to “normal,” companies will be altered in many ways. Underlying those changes will be the need for cost-savings and efficiencies which can be achieved, in the realm of training and development, through virtual training, cross-training, and using subject-matter-experts as the deliverers of training. The next decade will see a “bold new future” for training and professional development; will your organization be ready to adapt?
Will a Robot Take My Job? Maybe.
Here’s How to Protect Yourself
In almost all professions there is a growing concern about AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics, how they will impact the workplace, and which jobs will be impacted, specifically.
In many areas of life we embrace AI and robotics, such as our smart-home devices, navigation devices, and robot vacuums; for the most part those devices have enhanced our lives, without taking jobs away (unless you were a professional map reader).
On the other hand, AI and robots are encroaching on and eliminating jobs in many industries such as banking (many banks now have video conferencing at ATM machines, which enables a teller to assist with more complex transactions and allows the bank to eliminate the brick and mortar location – and the employees), car sales (Carvana has been selling used cars from vending machines for six years), and the production of steel (over 100,000 jobs lost in the industry in the last 20 years, due to automation).
Many skilled and tenured employees are wondering: Will a robot take my job? And the answer is: Yes, quite possibly.
There is almost no telling where an AI technology can be used to supplant a skilled employee. While the most obvious jobs to be impacted are those that are transactional and repetitive (bank teller, fast food worker, cashier), more skilled professions can be impacted as well such as a surgeon or design engineer.
Human-Only Skills are Needed
According to the Future of Jobs Report published by the World Economic Forum, the “jobs of the future” will rely on critical behavioral skills (not technical skills) such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity.[i]
A more recent study published by IBM[ii], which surveyed over 5800 senior business leaders in 50 countries identified “ability to work effectively in a team environment” and “ability to communicate effectively in a business environment,” as two of the top five skills needed in business today.
What these studies show is that 21st-century work is about thinking and contributing, not just about doing and certainly not about following directions. More than having the right skills, future workers need to possess the right behaviors, and behaviors are not something corporate America teaches.
How to Protect Yourself
If you would like to protect yourself from robot-replacement you need to develop the types of behaviors listed above. Your function may be replaced, but you will not, because you will be making a uniquely human contribution to the organization. Here are 3 skills which will help you stay employable in the 21st century – and how you can demonstrate them.
Creativity
Most people think creativity refers to being able to conjure something up from nothing, like an artist or author. But in business, creativity means recognizing that there is no “right answer” to most dilemmas and the creative individual will look for multiple solutions before deciding up on the best one – not the right one. To develop creativity, be sure to not accept the first answer or solution that presents itself; use phrases like, “What else is possible?” “Let’s think about this and revisit it in a few days.” or “How can we break this?”
If you’d like a free 3-page guide to increasing creativity in the workplace, visit https://www.trainingdr.com/special-reports/ways-to-boost-creative-thinking/
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is ancillary to creativity; it is another way of ensuring that the first reasonable solution isn’t seized upon. One way to think more critically is to conduct research – who else has encountered the same type of issue? what do your customers think? can you test-drive the solution in some way? One of my favorite ways to think more critically is to answer the question “What could go wrong?” People are naturally inclined to think their ideas or solutions are sure-fire winners, but a critical thinker will look at the idea from all angles and consider how the outcome might not be ideal.
Ability to Work in a Team Environment
More and more, output is accomplished by teams. Even if you work remotely, from your home, it’s likely you are part of a team. Although young people have often participated on teams, being on a team is not the same as working as a team. And teaming is not a skill that is taught in corporate America. In order to be a successful team contributor you’ll need good listening, paraphrasing, and feedback skills. Asking for, and respecting, other people’s opinions is also critical; people feel more a part of a team when they feel they’ve been heard and considered, even if ultimately their input isn’t utilized.
Conclusion
Being able to stay ahead of the robots means being able to contribute those “uniquely human skills that cannot be done by machines,” says HR researcher and analyst, Josh Bersin. Computers can only manipulate and react to data, while humans have curiosity, perception, possibility, and communication on their side.
The future is not that far-off – think about how quickly smartphones have become a must-have device for almost everyone you know. The time to prepare yourself for your future job is now when you have the ability to plan your career success, rather than waiting to see if a robot will take your job or not.
Updated June 19 2020
According to The International Federation of Robotics, for every 10,000 workers, the following countries have robotics:
Singapore - 831
South Korea 774
Germany 338
US 217
Helping Small and Medium-sized Businesses to Prepare for the Next-Era of Leadership
Free 4-day Event
Every business - small to supersized - has changed significantly since the start of 2020.
Leadership teams are turned upside down.
Companies are being forced to downsize, right-size, and sometimes capsize.
Your company’s future depends on having strong a leadership plan in place as you adapt to the workforce that lies ahead.
We are here to help, with a series of leadership conversations. All FREE.
Meet with fellow business people, hear from experts with long tenures in developing organizational leaders, ask the questions you need answered.
Check out our roster of speakers
Patricia Carl
June 3 3:00 pm EST
Re-imagining / Redesigning Your Leadership Team
Patricia Carl has 20+ years’ experience in Human Resource leadership for both private and public companies, across multiple industries. As President of Highland Performance Solutions, she coaches and consults with executives in order to help them build high-performing teams.
Lee Eisenstaedt
June 10 3:00 pm EST
What Skills Are Needed in the Next 3 - 5 Years?
Lee has been the Chief Operating Officer of a number of top companies included 22 years with the SC Johnson family of companies in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Lee has authored four books, co-authored one, and is a frequent contributor to Forbes.com
Jeff Harmon
June 17 3:00 pm EST
The 5C Method to Create Sustainable and Scalable Leadership Development
Jeff Harmon has over 20 years of experience building relationships to equip and mobilize leaders to achieve their most important goals.
He helps company leaders to identify their strengths as well as the strengths of their team.
He is the author of “Become a Better Leader, 10 Minutes at a Time.”
Nanette Miner, Ed.D.
June 24 3:00 pm EST
Creating a Master Plan for Leadership Development
Dr. Nanette Miner founded The Training Doctor in 1991 to help organizations to grow and thrive by a developing worker capabilities. She is on a mission to help organizations to sustain their success through developing their future leaders from the moment they walk in the door.
It's Time for All Hands on Deck
Many companies are going to find themselves with a different leadership landscape when business is able to resume and employees are able to return to work.
In addition to the usual pressures of competition and the relentless pace of technology, I predict that many companies are going to experience a shift in their leadership roster either because the Boomers (and some GenX), who were close to retirement decided “enough is enough,” and choose not to come back to work after the Covid-19 crisis, or because organizations will have to greatly reduce their workforces as they come back online, and the easiest way to downsize and remain solvent is to not bring back the more experienced, higher-salaried personnel.
So what can an organization do to identify its future leaders and successfully return to profitability?
Identify Successors
If your organization faces the situation where senior leaders choose to retire, ask those individuals to identify their replacements. They will have the most knowledge regarding who on their team is capable of taking the reins. It’s a good idea to also ask the self-selected retiree if they would come back for three or four months to ease the transition.
If you are choosing to let the senior leader go, again, ask them who on their team would be most capable of stepping up. Also ask them for the top three to five priorities for their department, at this time. This will enable you to pass this knowledge on to the next leader and also allow you to keep track of the priorities yourself.
Begin Mentoring
The best-case-scenario would have been for your company to utilize mentoring already, but if that is not the case, begin a mentoring program immediately. You need a way to transmit institutional knowledge as well as business acumen from more seasoned workers to the younger ones, and the best way to do that is through personal relationships that can adapt immediately to changing pressures.
Circulate a Skills Assessment
Now is the time for all-hands-on-deck; trouble is, most organizations have become so silo’d that they don’t know what individuals are capable of doing (vs. what they are being paid to do, today). Start with a simple survey using Google forms or a subscription survey tool, if your company has one. You’ll want to be able to collect individual responses – not aggregate responses. Ask for name, email, phone number, department, current role (e.g. marketing / graphic designer), and the top 5 skills (fill in the blank) they use in their current role. THEN ask them for 5 additional skills they are capable of deploying. You may find your graphic designer is also great at copy editing or has experience in SEO. To really get the most from this assessment, also ask each individual what soft skills they excel at – because leadership capability is heavily dependent on soft-skills.
If your company comes back online with a reduced workforce, this assessment will enable you to move people around, if necessary, rather than simply eliminating a role based on its title.
This article is admittedly practical and how-to. It does not venture into the best ways to have these conversations or the need for empathy and compassion at this time. It is purely focused on the organization as an entity.
Leadership Pipeline Assessment
If you’d like to assess what your organization’s current leadership pipeline looks like (and indicates for your future) click on the Leadership Pipeline Assessment, at the top of the screen, in the blue bar. It contains 13 questions and will only take about a minute to complete.
This is a Pivotal Time for L+D
This statement (in photo) is more true today than ever!
When operations return to "normal" companies are going to recognize that the silo'd training they've been delivering for decades has left them with a bunch of individuals with deep knowledge but little breadth.
Hopefully there will be a "reckoning" which will cause companies to embrace cross-training and cross-skilling so that the company is more agile in the future.
The after-effects of this coronavirus will be impactful on L+D.
#training #traininganddevelopment #futureproofing #trainingdr
Your Competitive Advantage
Not only are humans your only competitive advantage (in business) but you can't just bribe or steal them from some other company! To TRULY have an advantage, you must nurture them yourself.
One Critical Leadership Skill
Many young business people aspire to become future managersand leaders but there is often a lack of leadership development available until one is promoted to a leadershipposition. Of the myriad of skills that leaders need to master such as criticalthinking, problem solving, and working collaboratively with others, one skillcan be learned independent of a formal learning process. This skill is not onlyused daily, as a leader, but mastering it early in one’s career helps to mark oneas “leadership material.”
That is the skill of asking good questions.
If you aspire to leadership you’ll want to purposefullythink about (and practice) the way you ask questions. When most people ask aquestion they are asking for facts or details such as What happened next? Whatare my options? What would you like me to do? But a leader needs to gather critical insight through his / herquestions in order to make decisions that move the business forward. There arethree types of questions you can practice, this week, that will help you togather critical information and to be viewed as a thoughtful up-and-comingleader.
Open ended questions
Open ended questions require the other person to respondwith their thoughts or beliefs. it is a personal response rather than a factualone. A common mistake of new managers is to give an instruction or directionand then ask “Have you got that?” which only requires a short yes or noresponse and doesn’t help the manager to assess if the instructions really wereunderstood. If instead the manager were to ask “What are your thoughts onthat?” or “How can I help you with this assignment?” he / she then elicits moreinformation from the other person and learns if they are confident, concerned,or confused.
These kinds of questions can move the whole organizationforward by forestalling miscommunication and failed actions based onassumptions.
Clarifying questions
Too few individuals take the time to ensure that they trulyunderstand a speaker. I have always found that anytime I ask someone “Did youmeans this, or this?” what I hadoriginally assumed the answer to be was wrong. Clarifying questions are important for leadersto master because they can save an organization from disastrous results.
Example: Shelby, a salesperson for a media company, wasreviewing a proposal with her manager before presenting it to a new client. Atthe end of the conversation her manager said it would be OK to cut the cost ofthe proposal by 5-10%. Shelby asked, “Do you mean you want me to cut the costnow? Or to use that as a negotiation strategy?” Her manager replied, “I’m glad you clarified that! I mean to use it as anegotiation tactic, if you need to. Good luck!”
High gain questions
High gain questions are used rather rarely as they tend tostop a conversation while the respondent considers their response; however,high gain questions are the mark of a true leader in conversation. High gainquestions require the respondent(s) to apply critical thought beforeresponding.
Consider the difference between
What are the obstacles you foresee? (open ended) and
What are our two best options going forward? (high gain)
While the open ended question is good for gathering more information,the high gain question returns a carefully considered response.
Being able to utilize each of these types of questions – open ended, clarifying, and high gain – is a skill that can be practiced early in one’s career in preparation for moving into a leadership role.
Note: This article was originally published by Forbes.com
Succession Planning? Start Here.
Many organizations are facing an impending loss ofleadership as the last of the Boomers are getting ready to leave the workforce.With the start of a new decade upon us, now is the time to plan for the next generationof leaders. But where to start? If your company does not have a leadershipdevelopment program in place, or if you haven’t really given much thought to howyour company will make an orderly transfer of leadership responsibility, 2020is the year to focus on this critical planning.
Below, I’ve outlined the first three steps in successionplanning. So as not to get overwhelmed, address them slowly over the next sixto twelve months and your organization will be ready to smoothly transfer thereins of leadership as the Boomers in your company begin to retire.
Step 1 - Consider who is next in line for leadership
The outcome of this step is to determine where you want toconcentrate your leadership development efforts in order to achieve the most ROI.Do you want to concentrate your efforts on those who have been with yourorganization the longest and therefore understand its inner workings andculture? Or do you want to concentrate on younger generations who are lookingfor professional development as a primaryperk of employment and who may be with your organization longer, as aresult?
To gain better insight, take a look at who you presently employand what generational cohort they belong to. Currently there are fourgenerations in the workforce, the Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials and Gen Z whoare just entering the workforce. It is logical to assume that Gen X, being thenext generation after the Boomers, would be next in line to lead in yourorganization, but there aren’tenough of them. In addition, in a recent study conducted by TheConference Board, of data collected from over 25,000 leaders acrossindustries, it was determined that Gen X have been stymied from moving up thecorporate ladder by Boomers who have stayed on the job longer than previousgenerations. What this means is that there are a number of generations in yourworkforce who have not been indoctrinated into leadership development orleadership roles.
Determining where to apply development efforts is a criticalfirst step in determining your company’s leadership pipeline.
Step 2 - Determine What Skills Your Future Leaders Need
Once you determine who you’ll want to develop (as anaside, I advocate developing everyone as if they were going to be afuture leader; a rising tide lifts all boats, after all) you’ll need to identifywhat skills they will need to support your organization in the future.
To accomplish this, there are three sources of data you’llwant to collect and consider:
1 Look at the jobdescriptions of each of your current leadership roles to determine what skills areidentified as necessary in today’s environment. This is just a baseline, as weknow that today’s business environment is accelerating and changing at a pacenever experienced before and what your organization needs today may not be whatit needs tomorrow. Be sure to identify leadership skills and behaviors, such asmanaging a team of five or fiscal responsibility, and not job tasks such asmonthly reporting. If possible, “read between the lines.” For instance the taskof “standardize procedures to improve efficiency” really means having theleadership abilities of analyzing, forecasting, and planning.
2 Pay attention to what industry experts and yourprofessional association are doing in the realm of the “future of work” andwhat is predicted for your industry. Some of the current concerns includeartificial intelligence and robotics, consumer pressures (suchas related to the environment), and changing buying habits – all of whichwill require your company to adapt. What do you need to start training yourfuture leaders for, today?
3 Hold one-on-one interviews and ask your current leaderswhat prepared them for the role they hold today. Most often you’ll learn thatformal development is not credited as much as mentorship, on the job learning,and a wide array of experiences. Theseinsights will help you to decide the best course of leadership development, foryour organization, going forward. For example, you could put four future-leaders through an off-site leadership development program or you might chooseto institute a job rotation program for everyone at your company. The twooptions might cost the same amount, but will return vastly different results. You’ll want to thoughtfully consider howpeople truly learn leadership in your organization.
Note: Be very concerned if the majority of responsesare, “I learned it at my previous job,” because that means you are doingnothing to develop leaders in your organization and are instead relying onother companies to develop them and hoping you can then hire them away. That“strategy” puts your company in a very precarious position; the topic ofanother article entirely.
Step 3 – Consider How You Will Develop Leadership Skills
Once you have identified the skills that should be developedin your future leaders, you’ll need to determine how to get them those skills. Creating a formalized leadership developmentprogram is a time consuming and arduous process – which is why most companiesforego it and instead cross their fingers and hope their future leaders will“appear” when needed.
Sending people out for leadership development can be cost-prohibitive and because of that, the number of individuals that get developed is generally far fewer than is needed by any organization. A smart option for most companies is to mete leadership development out to everyone, through easy-to-implement activities such as reading groups or lunch-and-learns, and on-the-job projects such as a multi-discipline initiative. Over time, small and consistent development opportunities will build the leadership skills your organization needs and alleviate succession planning concerns.
Once you have considered and acted upon these first three steps in succession planning, you’ll be well on your way to ensuring that your company has a leadership pipeline capable of continuing excellent work despite a rapidly changing business environment.
Note: This article was first published by Training Industry Magazine.
Don't be a Know-it-All
Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) has said: "being alearn-it-all is better than being a know-it-all."
Unfortunately, a lot of people truly do NOT know how tolearn.
In the 21st century, people are more reactionary than thoughtful, reasoned, and contemplative. This is a "tide" that will damage business' future viability, very, very soon.
Future-Proofing Your Organization
Very few organizations are doing anything to skill-up their younger workers in leadership skills. That's going to come back and bite them in the very near future.
The Learning Leader as Change Agent
Guest post contributed by
Holly Burkett
Managing change and cultural transformation is among the top challenges facing executives and the one area in which they’re most likely to partner with learning leaders and talent managers.
Today's Leadership Challenges
More than ever before, organizations need leaders who can anticipate and react to the nature and speed of change; act decisively without always having clear direction or certainty; navigate through complexity, chaos, and confusion; and maintain effectiveness despite constant surprises and a lack of predictability. Yet few business leaders rate themselves as "highly effective" at managing change, most work for an organization with no change strategy in place, and most have no designated person to lead change efforts.
Given these challenges, how can L&D help?
Leverage leadership development. Leadership development remains a key strategy for building change capability. Developing collective change capabilities across all levels has more impact than simply focusing upon mid or senior-level managers. Effective development methods include the combined use of self-reflection exercises, coaching, mentoring, stretch assignments, action learning, and simulations in which participants are placed in real-world scenarios and roles where they must lead change. Development approaches should be contextualized and customized to fit the capabilities required of specific change roles, including:
- changesponsors (those who lead change strategy)
- changemanagers (those who facilitate change in their operational areas)
- changeproject members (those who plan, design, and implement the change plan)
- changeagents (those who advocate for change efforts, make the changes relevant to theirneeds, and contribute to successful outcomes)
Developing collective change capabilities across all levels has
more impact than simply focusing upon mid or senior-level managers.
Keep in mind that change capability is about more than stand-alone, one-and-done leadership development programs, however. It is about nurturing change responsiveness and resiliency throughout an entire organization so that it is fully embedded within an organization’s culture and DNA.
Integrate change capabilities. Effectivedevelopment includes the integrated use of tools thatassess, develop, and reward change capabilities duringrecruiting, performance management, and career development, includingsuccession planning. Other enabling mechanisms like change networks,change academies, or communities of practice can help align change-readinessand responsiveness with employees’ daily work practices.
Manage change capacity. While change capability is a skill, ability, or mindset that can be developed or improved, change capacity relates to the ability of individuals and organizations to accommodate new change demands. Change fatigue is one of the biggest barriers to employees’ overall capacity to adopt or adapt to change. Change fatigue sets in when people feel pressured to make too many transitions at once or when change initiatives have been poorly thought through, rolled out too fast, or put in place without adequate preparation. An integrated, well-planned change strategy is meaningless if an organization lacks the capacity to execute it. In reality, capacity is finite; people can only do so much and there are only so many people to do the work.
As change agents, learning leaders must sensitize senior leaders to the risk of frenetic, disorganized change that goes beyond what individuals or teams can manage. Best practices include the use of a vetting process where proposed change projects are subjected to rigorous “war room” screenings by key stakeholders and then prioritized according to their importance to business strategy, financial impact, and the probability of success.
As change agents, learning leaders must sensitize senior leaders to the risk of frenetic,
disorganized change that goes beyond what individuals or teams can manage.
Final Thoughts. The pressures for change are real, change is here to stay, and organizations are looking to L&D for help in gaining the confidence and skills needed to navigate in a business climate of constant disruption. While the effort may seem daunting, we have a responsibility to step up and embrace our role as change agents with the goal of helping an organization transform itself for the better. This means positioning learning and performance initiatives within the context of broader change. It also means integrating the discipline of change management into our own mindsets and skill-sets so that we can leverage learning as a catalyst for innovation, change, and high performance.
About the Author
Holly Burkett, PhD, SPHR is principal of Evaluation Works, a performance consultancy in Davis, CA. For over 20 years, she’s helped diverse public and private sector clients develop resilient learning and performance capabilities that create high engagement and operational excellence. Author of the award-winning book “Learning for the Long Run: 7 Practices for Sustaining a Resilient Learning Organization,” she is a sought-after speaker, coach, and workshop facilitator. Learn more at: http://hollyburkett.com/
Do your people work in silos?
One of the greatest detriments to businesses being able to function at a high level is our insistence on keeping people in silos. Start in marketing? Stay in marketing. Start in finance? Stay in finance. We need to prepare EVERYONE to lead. Right now. We have limited time remaining.
No More One-and-Done Classes
If you are ONLY holding training classes, you aren't really getting at how learning works...
Wise words from Anne Frank
Challenge for today: Ask "why" at least three times. Open up the possibilities. Don't accept the status quo. Look for what's next.
Your Most Skilled Leaders Are Leaving
For decades, companies have been able to hire leaders away from other companies; but with the Boomers leaving corporate America at a rate of 6,000 people a day... that's all about to change.
Is your company prepared? Who is in your leadership pipeline?
Can One Employee Take Your Company Down?
Your company is doing great work. It is creating jobs where they didn't exist before... you are contributing to the betterment of society... have you considered whether or not one employee could bring that all to a screeching halt?
Since February of 2017, with the recording of Travis Kalanick's (former CEO of Uber) poor behavior as he berated an Uber driver, displayed all across America, there have been frequent episodes of bad behavior demonstrated by numerous corporate leaders. In just the last month we've seen:
Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork was forced to step down after the filing of the company's pre-IPO paperwork shone a light on suspect financial dealings which ultimately benefitted Mr. Neumann to the tune of millions of dollars. The IPO was withdrawn, the company has laid off over 4000 employees, and its estimated value dropped 40 billion in the blink of an eye. See more here.
The Houston Astros baseball team fired their assistant General Manager for verbally attacking 3 female reporters after a pennant win in October. In addition to a social media onslaught faulting the organization and how it handled the incident (initially accusing one reporter of fabricating the incident and then taking 3 days to admit to it and holding the AGM accountable), the team will be fined by Major League Baseball, and the way that the incident was handled is now inviting scrutiny of the company's culture, which will result in further public relations embarrassment and could see the departure of many others in leadership positions in the organization. This incident, and the stress it caused the whole organization, may have just cost the team the 2019 World Series. See more here.
The CEO of McDonald's resigned this past week, saying this: "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on." The values of the company? The values, that as CEO, he was most-responsible for upholding? See more here.
Now, you might argue that these are people in positions of power and it is often the case that with power comes the belief that you are above "following the rules." But a leader is also responsible for the "unwritten rule" that he or she sets the acceptable behaviors and culture of an organization through their example.
When Does It Start?
We cannot assume that only those in the "higher echelon" are behaving badly (and costing their companies money as well as reputation). Think of the myriad of "little" ethical violations that occur in companies daily: taking home office supplies, failing to report a breakdown in product or process because "it's not my job," refusing to cooperate with another department or colleague, giving a customer favorable terms over other customers, the list could go on and on. At what point does a "little" ethical violation bloom into something that is egregious and damaging to your company financially or reputationally?
These types of incidents are precisely the reason why The Training Doctor created its Leadership From Day One development approach. By developing leadership behaviors such as ethics, decision making, and self-management early in one's career, incidents like these should not occur down the line. If all of your employees are immersed in a culture that supports the good of all (the company, its employees and customers), you'll make a bigger impact on the world and sleep better at night.
Are you at risk?
As a business owner, do you presume that your employees are behaving ethically? Do you know your organization's culpability from actions committed by your employees? Especially your senior/leader employees who have more of a "platform" to do harm to the company?
It is never, never too soon to start developing leadership characteristics in your workforce. Don't wait until you've already promoted someone to a leadership role to start to foster the skills they need to lead themselves as well as others; it is harder to rewire behavior than it is to develop it from the start. When you start leadership development early in your employee's careers, it becomes an ingrained and reflexive behavior as they move up through the ranks.
Go to our contact us page if you'd like help establishing a leadership development program that starts with everybody. Today.