Leadership development remains challenging in part because it spans across many talent management practices. And yet numerous recent studies – from i4CP to Hewitt to IBM – all indicate leadership development and pipeline to be the number one concern. Organizations that do leadership development consistently well create sophisticated development programs that are tailored for all leaders from frontline managers to the highest executives.
This blog posting is the second in a series (see the first, Emerging Leaders: Build vs. Buy) that will focus on a critical challenge: the need for organizations to focus on the development of emerging leaders. The first posting outlined the main points and argument in the new whitepaper from Taleo Research and DDI, Emerging Leaders: Build Versus Buy. Digging deeper, it is important for HR professionals who focus on leadership development to not focus solely on their organization’s highest levels, nor do so from the perspective of just one area of talent management, say succession planning or the learning function. Rather, you need to consider the connections between leadership development, and the development of emerging leaders in particular, and the following key talent management practice areas.
Recruiting. Naturally recruiting comes into play when acquiring top external leadership talent. But it is also a critical component of developing emerging leaders internally, because the quality and quantity of the pool of potential leaders is a function of recruiting the best employees in the first place. You can’t turn lead into gold. It is hard to know exactly where the future leaders will arise from, so hiring the best candidates for every position will help lead to the most high quality leaders being developed in the future.
Assessments. First as part of recruiting, and then when identifying high-potentials for further consideration, evaluating leadership capabilities both internally and externally plays an important role in developing emerging leaders.
Onboarding. When you make sure that all recruits are brought into the organization smoothly and effectively, you raise the percentage who will stay with the organization long enough to be considered for emerging leadership development opportunities.
Performance Management. Ongoing performance management, that looks beyond once-a-year performance reviews by promoting natural, constant conversations, enables organizations to make timely course corrections in their development of emerging leaders. (For more on this, see two recent related blog posts Five Considerations to Improve Performance Management in your Organization and Performance Appraisals: The Future is Now). As noted earlier, leadership development programs must be sophisticated, in both the approaches and tools involved. But this sophistication and complexity also requires flexibility to adjust the program as goals or needs change.
Talent Mobility. Providing ample movement and promotion opportunities across the enterprise is a key factor in enabling strong development of emerging leaders. According to the recent Taleo Research whitepaper UK Talent Mobility 2011, those companies that reported having excellent talent mobility technology were also strong in the quality of their leadership pipeline (76%). Further, those companies that were considered “strategic” according to the Taleo Talent Mobility Model were more likely to have higher profitability than their peers, report higher employee engagement rates, and indicated a higher quality of leadership pipeline.
Succession Planning. While succession planning has been a key consideration for leadership development, it must be expanded. To avoid future leadership gaps organizations should broaden their use of succession planning techniques to include any and all key positions – not just those at the top. Having robust talent profiles for all employees is a necessary condition of any such expansion.
Career Planning. Allowing employees to understand their leadership options and set development goals is a great way to increase retention and job satisfaction. And it is critical for them to step up into leadership, as indicated by results from DDI’s December 2010 Find the First Rung study of front line leaders which found:
- Only 28% said they were confident to lead within the first six months.
- Almost half described their first year as a leader as “stressful,” and 18% indicated it was “overwhelming."
- More than half said that they ultimately regretted taking the promotion.
Not surprisingly, our recent whitepaper Emerging Leaders: Build Versus Buy includes the lack of an agreed upon, written development plan as one of five key reasons that organizations fail to successfully develop frontline leaders.
Learning and Development. It is important that L&D professionals take an active role in leadership development and stress the need for it beyond the highest executive levels. Providing soft skills training that is tailored to the organization’s culture is a great way to build a pool of emerging leader candidates and high-potentials. Further, making sure that a robust LMS is available to manage and track all aspects of your numerous and concurrent leadership development programs is the only way to ensure a consistent experience as employees rise in the ranks of the organization over time.
Clearly, leadership development is a sophisticated endeavor. Having a strong approach in each of these areas is necessary to provide a consistent result. But that alone is not sufficient: don’t fall into the trap of considering each of the above in isolation, but rather as integrated aspects of your overall leadership development strategy. For example, consider an employee identified as having high potential: his or her goals and other performance management attributes should be regularly reviewed and adjusted; interesting and challenging opportunities provided via talent mobility in the organization; his or her place in succession planning regularly considered; and ample learning and development opportunities provided. Or consider the emerging leaders who are just joining the organization: assessments during the recruiting process should become a part of their individual talent profiles; they should be onboarded in a way that maximizes future retention; and then throughout their time with the organization, the other aspects — performance management, succession planning, learning and development and so on — should all be provided for in a consistent way.
In order to do all of this, simply having an integrated process and perspective on leadership development is not enough. You need enabling technology to match, and this is where an integrated talent management suite – one that covers all of the aspects described above — provides clear benefits for your sophisticated development programs for emerging leaders.
Watch for additional postings in this series as we will be diving into various aspects of this critical subject. See also our new whitepaper Emerging Leaders: Build Versus Buy, and our 2011 summer roadshow on The Leadership Gap.
