How Important is Leadership Development?
Leadership is the critical factor in developing positive workplaces where employees are engaged, productive and deliver excellent outcomes for customers and stakeholders.
The research demonstrates that highly effective leadership is the crucial factor that separates poor performers from successful high performing organisations.
Well-developed leaders are effective leaders who understand and navigate the complex challenges businesses face today. They possess the right people skills to be able to set and communicate a compelling vision that moves people towards action.
Leadership development is a critical strategy to attract and retain high calibre talent. If an organisation does not develop an influential leadership culture, it cannot create a workplace that will attract and retain the best talent.
Investing in developing leadership capability is critical in attracting high calibre talent that can create ongoing sustainable business success.
The significant leadership challenge is to create work environments which encourage employees to contribute extra discretionary effort that sets your organisation apart from your competitors.
Effective leadership drives employee engagement, which in turn drives organisational performance. Leadership development is not an option; it is a business imperative.
What are the goals of Leadership Development?
The critical goals of leadership development are summarised as follows.
This list is not exclusive but covers the key areas of development: –
- Building leaders ability to become reflective practitioners. Developing a leader’s capability to think critically about their responses to others and situations which gives rise to more creative and effective ways of operating
- Growing leaders who can demonstrate high levels of integrity to generate trust in a way that people rally around a shared mission and vision to deliver for customers and stakeholders
- Leadership development is focused on developing the actual leader as a person, not cramming leaders’ heads full of new facts or models. Therefore, the focus of leadership development is working on developing the self as a leader.
- Leveraging all the resources leaders have access to, including people, technology, capital, and intellectual property to create success for the organisation. Knowing when to ask for help and leverage the skills of others
How effective is Leadership Development?
This is a big question; many leadership development programs fail. They fail because they neglect to base themselves on research. They are not structured in a way that embeds new ways of behaving and operating. Many leadership development programs are more about ‘training’ than they are development.
Leadership development is more about what leaders do differently, rather than acquiring more information, what they know.
Our Programs are Supported by Four Pillars of Researched Success
Pillar One – The focus is on developing the leader rather than the oversupply of new information and content
Pillar Two – Connection to the real world of work. Our leadership development programs connect to the leader’s real job. Real work issues become part of the working solution.
Pillar Three – Systems approach and support – Leadership development does not occur in isolation of others. Stakeholders will become integral partners of the leader’s growth journey and future support network.
Pillar Four– Time and ongoing support. Real, lasting change does not occur overnight. Programs need to be long enough to achieve the goals of the program. Time invested is determined to meet the needs of participants. We leave you with internal structures in place after the program finishes, ensuring leader growth continues. You become self-sufficient as we focus on building your internal capacity to develop your leadership.
Our Approach to Leadership Development
Our approach to leadership development comes from an evidence-based practice perspective, with a focus on real work issues.
We apply coaching psychology research in an easy to understand and practical way to help leaders move themselves and their people forward.
We equip the leaders we coach with coaching capability to move them forward and their entire team forward.
We are called Coaching Leadership because our key output is self-aware leaders who can coach and get the most from their people. We do not hand you fish; we help you make your fishing rod.
We help build leadership teams who can leverage the potential of their people. Simply put, we are informed and guided by scientific research but take a realistic view to practice.
