The Practice of Leadership » Leadership Development

What is Your Organisations Leadership Strategy?

George Ambler — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:01:17 +0000

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I recently stumbled across an interesting article by William Pasmore in Forbes titled “You Need A Leadership Strategy Now” which got me thinking, especially his statement regarding change…

“Change is tough and always has been. Many executives aren’t good at leading change because they don’t understand the importance of making critical changes in how their companies are led, not just in how they operate.”

Leading in an environment characterised by constrained resources, an uncertain and unpredictable economic environment and increasing competition is extremely challenging as there is no clear direction, no clear answers and the risk of failure is high. In these times, when decision making is difficult and change has become the order of the day, having the right leadership team in place is of utmost importance. This is why having a robust leadership strategy is key.

You many be asking yourself, what exactly is a leadership strategy and how will is help in times likes these? William Pasmore describes a leadership strategy as follows..

“A leadership strategy makes explicit how many leaders you need, what kind, where, with what skills, and behaving in what fashion individually and collectively to achieve the total success you seek.”

According to William, developing your organisations leadership strategy requires that you answer the following four questions:

What are the drivers of our business?
What kind of leadership do we need?
How am I myself leading?
Who are our leaders?

Taking the time to think through the implications of your organisation’s strategy on the style of leadership you need is critical. However, as noted by William, in practice it’s rarely done! Take for example a change in an organisation’s structure, we may change the organisation’s structure to align more closely to strategy. However, over time we typically find that the change has made little to no difference, people are still behaving as they have always done and we’re no closer to achieving our goals. This is because we too quickly focus on changing how we operate, rather than focusing on changing how we lead! Instead of focusing exclusivly on changing how we operate, we also need to take time to think about how we are going to change the way we lead, so that people will behave differently, so that we achieve our strategy.

When planning to adopt a new strategy think through the four questions described previously. In addition, reflect on the following:

What style of leadership will be required to support your strategy?
How do we need to lead differently to implement the change required by the strategy?
Do we have the right leaders in place that can lead in this way?
If not what are we going to do about it?

Where do you place your best people?

George Ambler — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:30:19 +0000

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Jim Collins in his best selling book “Good to Great” discusses a powerful leadership principle…

“put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems”

Collins noted that:

“…failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.”

Often leaders are overwhelmed by problems and it’s tempting to keep the best people on the big problems, rather than your biggest opportunities. The result of this is that people who have time on their hands (usually because they are not getting much done) get assigned to teams working on the next big opportunities. A big mistake, opportunities never get realised and the organisation remains trapped in it’s current situation.

Where have you placed your best people?
What is their focus?
Should this change?

Leaders place people at the heart of their work

Leaders are not born, they’re made… leadership develops

George Ambler — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:42:08 +0000

Photo by plagal

There has been a debate for years about what makes a great leader. This debate is usually summarized into two schools of thought. The one school proposes that leaders are a select few people who are born with the unique set of skill and have rare leadership abilities. The other school of thought proposes that leaders are made, that is they learn, grow and develop into great leaders through the books they read, the people they associate with and from their experiences.

My take on this discussion is that I believe that leaders are made, and I am not the only one with this belief.

“…leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by any external means. Second . . . that no leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express himself freely and fully.” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

The truth is the most people have the potential to become effective leaders. The real issue is that leadership takes time to develop…

People need time to figure out what they’re passionate about
People need time to understand their personal vision and purpose
People need time to learn how to express who they
People need time to learn how to use their unique strengths and skills
People need time to learn how to express their purpose in their own unique way.

As the saying goes…. the fighter does not win in the ring… he is only recognised there! You see leadership is not something you’re born with, it cannot be taught, it cannot be copied… it’s learnt!

“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.” – Harold Geneen

Leaders learn through life experience, by making room in our lives for lots of trial and error…

“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” – Vince Lombardi

Leaders are made when they understanding their purpose, their strengths and have a deep passion to make a difference by living out who they are in the real world.

“Leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Leadership is not something mystical and ethereal that cannot be understood by ordinary people. Given the opportunity for feedback and practice, those with the desire and persistence to lead can substantially improve their abilities to do so.” – James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Perhaps this real issue is that…

… only a few of us pay the price necessary to become a leader?
… only a few people take the time to understand their unique vision and purpose?
… only a few people take the time to understand who they are?
… only a few people take the time to learn how to express themselves?

Leadership development is primarily about helping others discover themselves

George Ambler — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:27:11 +0000

Aviv Shahar has a great post on “Developing Leaders” stating that…

“The greatest leadership act in the world is growing and developing new leaders and then empowering and releasing them to lead.”

The development of leaders is of critical importance. The question is how? As discussed in Aviv’s post much of leadership development is focused on formulas, a leadership framework to guide a potential leaders thinking and actions. Leadership development programs usually focus on creating a leadership framework, in essence a map, which the leader uses to guide and inform their actions. The goal of these leadership maps are to get people to behaviour as a “leader”.

Aviv makes the following insightful observation concerning maps and leadership development programs…

“As a leader, maps can help you a lot, but you need something even more important than maps—You need your own compass. You need to know yourself and have the capacity to enter an unknown terrain that has not been mapped, where you draw the map as you walk the terrain. This is the nature of leadership. You find a path forward in a place you have not travelled before. ‘To lead is to take the next step, to go where you have never gone, to open a way forward into the unknown and the uncharted.’
The best and most impactful leadership programs help leaders find and develop their own compass, sense of vision and direction and offer tools to draw the map as you walk the terrain. In our leadership summits and retreats we take the view that you are unique. Your strengths and success formulas are unique. While all formulas and maps carry helpful teachings, the greater reward is in discovering yourself, and understanding your values, areas of passion, personal capabilities, learning inclinations, energy cycles, and your own way of creating and achieving success. Successful leaders first lead themselves.
The greatest leadership programs are those that help you lead yourself and then help you get on the path of developing leaders around you.”

The development of a personal compass is a critical part of a leaders development. Unless you can lead yourself first, you will not be effective in leading others.

Do you have your own compass?
Do you know who you are? Your weaknesses? Your Strengths?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Development, Purpose, Self, Strengths, Weaknesses, Management

Five Challenges that Accelerate Leadership Development

George Ambler — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:50:55 +0000

The high levels of change demand increased leadership capabilities and the requires organisation to focus on the development of future leaders. The Center for Creative Leadership has studies the development of leadership for the last 38 years and have identified five key challenges that have facilitate the effective development of leadership:

Challenge 1: Unfamiliar responsibilities. When you practice new skills and expand your knowledge base, you learn how to operate effectively when you are early in a learning curve.
Challenge 2: Creating change. When you lead change, you learn to operate in ambiguous situations, think strategically, make tough decisions and persevere in the face of adversity.
Challenge 3: Significant accountabilities. By expanding your role in terms of scope, scale, time pressure and accountability, you learn what it takes to be decisive, to work and learn at a fast pace and to have significant impact.
Challenge 4: Managing across boundaries. Assignments that require you to collaborate across functions and business units or to work with people over whom you have no authority will strengthen your ability to influence others.
Challenge 5: Dealing with diversity. By working with people of another culture, gender or background, you will be better prepared to adapt to different expectations and persuade people of different backgrounds to work together.

Organisation face an increasing leadership shortage, not having sufficient leaders to meet their organisations future needs. Given this leadership crunch the way organisations approach the development of leaders is critical.

Have you included these five challenges as key components of your leadership development programme?
Have you included these five challenges as part of your personal leadership development?