Increasing the Impact of Leadership Development

WWW.LEADERS-FOR-THE-WORLD.COM

TIM COBURN

INCREASING THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT

Increasing the Impact of Leadership Development

April, 2015

TIM COBURN

*Best Companies for Leadership. Hay Group, 2014

Increase the Impact? Here’s How In their constant search for improvement, corporate organisations question everything.

As a result, innovation in leadership development has (slowly) revealed the features that increase its impact on corporate performance.

Here they are:

LEADERS FOR THE WORLD

Copyright © Tim Coburn 2015 All Rights Reserved

Is it a Surprise? Despite the boom in social media, mobile and online learning, the best companies for leadership continue to rely on high-touch, face-to-face learning events as a key element of their integrated leadership development strategies.*

That’s how great companies like Unilever, IBM, Siemens and Toyota develop their leaders.

IN LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT

IMPACT BUSINESS

DRIVEN

GROUNDED IN REALITY

TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL

PROCESS NOT EVENT

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

TRUTH AND IMAGINATION

LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE

EXECUTIVE LED

ADAPTABLE AND SCALABLE

GIVE ME SKILLS I CAN USE

TALKING IS WORKING

REAL SIMULATION

MOTIVATED IN TEAMS

INCREASING THE IMPACT

OF HIGH TOUCH, FACE-

TO-FACE LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT



Like many other forms of improvement, leadership development is not instantaneous. It’s a progressive journey of insight, acceptance, experiment, encouragement and practice. It takes time.

The structure of leadership programmes should account for the whole journey to performance, not just the send-off.

Leadership programmes add more value when the rationale, objectives and content are defined and driven by current and future business priorities.

When designed to improve corporate performance - not just leadership capability - programmes are simply more relevant, more meaningful and more productive.

BUSINESS DRIVEN

GROUNDED IN REALITY

TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL

PROCESS NOT EVENT



Customer satisfaction, employee engagement and process performance measures are all great ways of grounding the need for better leadership in something more reliable than general opinion.

When programme participants are responsible for improving metrics like these, their engagement in learning is further motivated by their accountability, as well as their professional desire to do well.

When leadership teams commit to develop their effectiveness together, leadership programmes successfully accelerate the resolution of the difficult issues that hold their performance back.

Furthermore, team-based learning brings working relationships into the room, making it possible for mutual understanding, collaboration and collective intelligence to develop.

In experiential learning, leaders share perspectives, experience, opinions and ideas. They actively engage in constructing new knowledge for themselves, an ability they need for addressing the novel and complex nature of their jobs.

Learning like this is holistic, immersive and enthralling. It does not replace the need for expert input. It’s an enriching complement to it.

Improvements in human performance, especially our own, depend on what we imagine as much as what we already believe to be true.

Learning activities that require imagination, make-believe and even a touch of theatre, help leaders suspend a preference for ‘reliable truth’ that governs most work conversation. It lets more radical ideas take shape and feeds the urgent need for innovation.



Successful people do well because they acquire, practice and perfect skills that give them a performance advantage.

For this reason, leaders have a healthy appetite for practical skills that are quick to learn, easy to recall and natural to use. Good programmes give leaders practical skills they can start using right away.

Knowledge used to be in the ivory tower. Now, everything we know is online and at every employee’s fingertips.

In their everyday jobs, leaders need to learn and perform at the same time. But in the corporate world, we take the ability to learn for granted.

The discovery of learning power makes it possible for everyone to know how well they learn. Great programmes get leaders involved in improving it, too.


MOTIVATED IN TEAMS

REAL SIMULATION



EXECUTIVE LED

The achievement of learning outcomes is improved by the motivational effect of learning in groups.

First, group activities increase co-operative knowledge sharing as participants work together to achieve a common goal. Second, group activities increase competitive knowledge creation as participants work together to out-perform their rivals.

The best leadership programmes make good use of co-operative and competitive group dynamics.

Off-the-job learning offers time and space to explore, discover and practice new skills in an environment where it is safe to experiment.

Action learning projects that simulate the behavioural skills required in real leadership situations are a great way to rehearse and learn with much less risk.

Corporate performance calls for a consistent approach globally and sensitive adaptation, locally.

When it comes to leadership programmes, great companies don’t want ‘one size fits all’, but they do want ‘design once, use many times’. They want the advantage of solutions that are scalable and the impact of solutions that are always adapted to the particular needs of those taking part.

Developing leaders and improving the health of your leadership pipeline is an executive responsibility, supported by HR.

The best leadership programmes have executives setting expectations, influencing the design, contributing to delivery and leading by example.

That’s how leadership programmes make an impact.

TALKING IS WORKING

The medium of leadership is language, conversation and story. Effective leaders are skillful authors of what they say and how they talk.

Increasingly, the most effective leadership programmes develop the advantage of ‘leadership as authorship’ as well as the advantage of ‘leadership as action’.

INCREASING

THE IMPACT OF HIGH TOUCH,

FACE-TO-FACE LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT



That’s How That’s how leadership programmes make an impact.

Leaders for the World Leaders for the World provides executive and leader development solutions that address real issues and develop capability, at the same time

Working collaboratively, we deliver unique solutions for the specific challenges you need to resolve.

Tim Coburn

Leaders for the World is led by Tim Coburn, a leadership specialist with 30 years international experience in senior roles at the BBC, Motorola, Rolls-Royce, Kenya Airways, Syngenta and Serco. He works with executive credibility, unassuming authority and personal warmth.

For More Information If you’ve enjoyed these ideas and want to know more, please get in touch:

[email protected]

INCREASING

THE IMPACT OF HIGH TOUCH,

FACE-TO-FACE LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT

BUSINESS DRIVEN

GROUNDED IN REALITY

TEAM AND INDIVIDUAL

PROCESS NOT EVENT




EXECUTIVE LED



TALKING IS WORKING

REAL SIMULATION

MOTIVATED IN TEAMS

Increasing the Impact of Leadership Development

Leadership & Management

Transcript of Increasing the Impact of Leadership Development