BCA

By Andrea Zintz

The idea of having a succession plan is often associated with company  ownership, but it really applies throughout any organization. When leaders move  on-retiring, getting promoted or choosing to take their talents elsewhere-it can  leave a significant void that can be problematic right away and for the long  term.

Developing leaders from within is one of the best things you can do to  ensure you don’t end up with a leadership deficiency.

A number of best practices exist with regard to internal leadership  development, and they all have one thing in common: buy-in from the top is a  critical component for success. In addition to saying the right things regarding  the importance of “bench strength” and education/training, top leaders must  continually espouse developing leaders as something that’s a highly regarded  company value.

With that thought in mind, let’s take a look at three best practices that can  be used to develop leaders within an organization:

Have a formal executive development program in place. This can be  outsourced or run internally, and ideally it will be tiered, offering different  tracks for senior managers, mid-level managers, supervisors, and even those who  aspire to join the management ranks. With advances in online learning, leaders  can tap into programs from wherever they’re located.

It’s best to supplement  classroom training-which alone can end up being rather weak-with on-the-job  experience in the form of stretch assignments and team projects that accelerate  the learning process. However, collaboration and on-the-job reinforcement must  remain a necessary component.

Employees need to be able to put concepts and  ideas they’ve been learning to work, and they’ll benefit from receiving coaching  and feedback along the way.

Encourage leaders to teach. Education comes in many forms; it can be as  simple as having a discussion at a staff meeting about the work implications of  an assigned article or case study. When leaders take the time to share their  knowledge, what results can be quite powerful. Serving as a mentor or coach can  ramp things up even more, since that provides line-of-sight support and a place  to go with questions, and it may result in career-building opportunities for the  person being taken under a leader’s wing.

Pay attention to the makeup of your leadership team. The need for diversity  aside, it’s important to create an environment of inclusion, so people feel  listened to, and believe they have a path to leadership. Ask whether you’ve  inadvertently excluded women, people of color or those with varied cultural  backgrounds-and what valuable points of view you are thus missing.

I’ve heard an  analogy that diversity is being invited to the party, while inclusion is being  asked to dance when you’re there. When people are challenged to stretch beyond  what they know, that builds leaders.

When upper management supports these best practices, and makes sure that  developing leaders from within is part of the company’s organizational values,  the results will be far- reaching. Employees will understand where the company  is trying to go and how they can play a role in getting it there, and those who  seek to move into leadership roles will have the resources and  well-defined pathways to make that happen.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7681562

From: Center for Creative Leadership, Leading Effectively

Career paths and development strategies are increasingly self-directed. How do you gain the information and insight needed to steer your course?

One essential strategy for getting a clear view of yourself, your context and your career is to seek “sense-making” relationships.

“Other people can help us see more clearly how specific activities or behaviors or experiences fit into our career path and our development,” says Regina Eckert, co-author of a CCL white paper, Through the Looking Glass: How Relationships Shape Managerial Careers. “This process of sense-making is an important and often overlooked aspect of why relationships are valuable.”

Sense-making is simply the process of assigning meaning to a phenomenon or development. From a career perspective, a CCL study found that relationships help managers to make meaning of their work and development in three key ways:

1. To Guide. Some relationships help managers define what they want to achieve and why. Friends, colleagues, mentors, parents or other more experienced or senior people may guide informally by sharing their experiences and perspective. Guiding can also be very direct in the form of practical advice and tips.

2. To Affirm. People who know a manager’s field and/or organization are in a position to affirm, encourage and build confidence. These relationships are helpful for calibrating what’s going on in one’s own career development, as well as in the career market inside and outside his or her organization.

Affirmation is especially needed in the absence of obvious career paths and multiple (often competing) choices to make.

3. To Stretch. Another form of sense-making comes from a challenge to managers’ implicit beliefs about their potential and career goals. Some relationships push them to rethink or reframe a situation or experience.

For example, working with someone who has a very different perspective or take on an issue is a huge opportunity. This often feels uncomfortable, but it opens the door to deeper understanding and new possibilities.

“If you don’t have people to help you make sense of your career development, your context and your goals, our research shows you that you have two choices: Either you seek out relationships that give you the sense-making support you need, or you change your existing relationships to be more relevant for your career and development,” says Eckert.

“Depending on your personal circumstances and the kind of support you’re lacking in your relationships, you can decide which avenue is more promising for you.”

From: Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), Learning Effectively

Changing culture is about changing minds.

Executives, leadership teams and entire organizations need more mature minds to deal with the increased complexity, uncertainty and inter-connectedness of our world.

 CCL’s approach to changing culture is focused on growing bigger minds and fostering the thinking that allows for creative action in the face of complexity. Based on five principles, we use four broad, overlapping, reinforcing phases:

Discovery learning — determining willingness. What is the feasibility of entering the culture-change process? This is a mutual learning phase between CCL (as facilitators) and the client (as change agents and organizational leadership). It begins with an assessment of the current level of leadership culture and a look at the capability required by the business strategy.

Players’ Readiness — developing understanding. What are the long-term implications of integrating a new culture into the organization’s work? What is senior leadership’s ability to engage in the change process? It requires a commitment to participate in public learning — practices that many conservative institutions will decline.

Game Board Planning — framing the change process. What does culture change look like? How does interdependent leadership play out in business and leadership strategies, the learning process and organizational work targets? What are the beliefs and behaviors required? As senior leaders’ understanding of the change process grows, they are better able to frame the change challenge and engage other leaders.

Playing the Game — building capability. Once senior leadership has internalized the change work and discerned the way forward, they begin to move the new culture forward into the broader the organization. The same beliefs and practices that moved the leadership culture at the top are taught, practiced and required elsewhere in the organization.

The four phases are not a list of simple steps to take, cautions CCL’s John McGuire.

“Many of the traditional serial, step-by-step change management methodologies regard human beings as things to be managed,” McGuire says. “But we’re not things. We’re complex beings with minds and imaginations and beliefs. We have to engage and participate in order to learn and change.”

“We know this work is not for everyone,” McGuire continues. “But if senior leadership is fully engaged, they become adept at their own collaborative learning. Then the senior team is able to immerse larger numbers of leaders from across the organization and develops toward a critical mass for enterprise-wide change. Our goal is to eventually involve everyone in the organization in a learning process that creates trust, ownership and increasing forms of interdependence.”

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7580570

From: Center for Creative Leadership, Leading Effectively Feb. 2013

It’s never too early to learn leadership, according to a CCL survey.

Fully 90 percent of respondents believe leadership development should start before age 18 — and certainly should be part of early-career learning.

The study, and CCL’s work with youth and young professionals, gives insight into what leadership skills matter most and how businesses can invest in next-generation leaders.

What should youth leadership development be developing?

Our survey — along with growing interest in CCL’s leadership initiatives for K-12 and university groups — clearly signals the need for leadership development to be a part of every student’s educational experience. If so, what should be the focus of youth leadership efforts?

The five most important competencies for young people entering the workforce today are:

1. Self-motivation/Discipline
2. Effective Communication
3. Learning Agility
4. Self-awareness
5. Adaptability/Versatility

In comparison, the five most important competencies for young people entering the workforce 20 years ago were:

1. Technical Mastery
2. Self-motivation/Discipline
3. Confidence
4. Effective Communication
5. Resourcefulness

Looking ahead, in 10 years the most important competencies will be:

1. Adaptability/Versatility
2. Effective Communication
3. Learning Agility
4. Multi-cultural Awareness
5. Self-motivation/Discipline
6. Collaboration

Notice that effective communication and self-motivation/discipline appear on all three lists — these may be core and enduring competencies that could receive more developmental focus during the high school and college years. Learning agility, too, is a “master” competency or core skill that fuels other skills and allows us to learn from experience.

Two competencies that appear on this future skills list — multi-cultural awareness and collaboration — are driven by the increasing interconnectivity and interdependence of our work and lives. Fortunately, these skills can easily be developed through project-based learning in high school and college, as well as through early leader development experiences on the job.

What can businesses do to develop next-generation leaders?

• Seek new and creative ways to partner with educational institutions — universities and K-12 — to better prepare young leaders. Southern Methodist University’s Lyle School of Engineering is incorporating leadership content into the curriculum for all 999 engineering students. CCL has also begun a multi-faceted leadership development program involving students, faculty, staff, board members and parents for Ravenscroft, a K-12 private school in Raleigh, NC.
• Provide support to existing youth leadership programs run by nonprofits and schools. Good programs exist but reach far too few students and are usually under-resourced. For example, CCL and the Greensboro, NC YMCA created an innovative program with 28 modules involving leadership and mentoring for African-American and Latino youth during their high school years. The work is now fully run by the Greensboro Y, but other youth organizations could benefit from program enhancements, financial support and mentoring support for programs like this.
• Establish two-way, cross-generational leadership and mentoring programs. Pair a young person, either just in the workforce or soon to enter the workforce, with an older, experienced employee for co-mentoring. The youth have much to offer in mentoring their more experienced and/or longer-tenured bosses and coworkers — typically they are comfortable with technology and the pace of change, have good multicultural awareness and adaptability, are willing to learn and eager to make a difference. The more experienced leaders can offer insight on career direction, ideas for greater effectiveness, feedback and opportunities for development.
• Provide leadership opportunities. Be sure your early-career employees have mentors and bosses who know how to develop others and will give them opportunities to practice their skills in a real leadership context. Intentional, planned job rotations, developmental assignments and involvement with a variety of projects and on cross-functional teams or task forces are effective strategies. Coaching and leader development programs are also good ways to build the self-awareness so critical for leadership.
• Encourage employees to “own” their leadership role and development. Help people (at all levels in the organization) see themselves as the person in charge of their job, in coordination with others on the team and in alignment with the organization’s goals. Remind them that it is important to seek frequent feedback on  performance, get coaching (formally or informally) on areas where skills need to develop, and do all they can to learn outside of their current skill set and knowledge base. Let them know they can develop off-the-job, too — being on a local Board, directing a community project or creating something new on their own.

From Center for Creative Leadership, Leading Effectively

Do you think of yourself as “politically savvy” at work? If not, CCL’s Jean Leslie and Bill Gentry can help you out.

Politically savvy people have better career prospects, are seen as more promotable and are less likely to have derailed careers. People who bumble through the political realities — or avoid or ignore them — are missing opportunities, connections and resources.

Politics is neither good nor bad 

According to Leslie and Gentry, the first step in overcoming your political weaknesses is to accept politics as a natural, neutral part of work life. Politics is neither good nor bad.

“Navigating politics doesn’t come easily for most of us, so we have a negative reaction to it,” says Leslie. “But you can be politically savvy without playing games or taking advantage of other people. Political savvy isn’t about being false and inauthentic. Instead, it involves the sincere use of your skills, behaviors and qualities in order to be more effective.”

Focus on Behaviors

A key CCL study found that a select set of leadership behaviors vary according to level of political skill.

“These findings suggest that if you strengthen these behaviors, you’ll strengthen your political skills in the process,” says Gentry.

• Building collaborative relationships. Developing and maintaining effective working relationships is related to two measures of political skill: interpersonal influence (a convincing personal style) and thinking before you speak (ability to size up situations well before speaking). Those who are highly skilled in interpersonal influence are capable of adapting their behavior according to their audience, which appears to translate into especially strong relationships with bosses.
• Composure. Are you calm in a crisis? Do you recover quickly from mistakes? Composure has to do with controlling impulses during difficult times and being responsible for what you say. Composure ratings seem closely linked to measures of how well an individual thinks before speaking.
• Putting people at ease. This gets at the heart of what it takes to make others relaxed and comfortable in your presence. People who are warm and have a good sense of humor are often able to make others feel at ease. Bosses saw the ability to put people at ease as related to interpersonal influence. The ability to adapt according to contextual conditions is related to how comfortable others are in your presence.
• Career management. How well do you manage your own career? Those adept at career management develop, maintain and use professional relationships for mentoring, coaching and feedback. Bosses related career management to two important political skills: networking ability (adept at developing and using diverse networks) and thinking before you speak. In other words, managers who are seen as being good at managing their careers are likely to have strong networking skills and are able to think about the potential impact of their words on others.

A Word to the Women

Office politics can be especially difficult for women.

“Many women are uncomfortable with the idea that political savvy may be an important component of leadership,” Leslie explains. “Because of this perspective, they find it difficult to incorporate political behaviors into their repertoire.

But, if you accept that organizational politics is a neutral, natural part of the workplace, you can build your capacity to lead, influence and persuade others in a sincere, authentic manner — advice that applies to politics-wary men, as well.

From: Center for Creative Leadership, Leading Effectively, Feb. 2013

A change in business strategy demands a change of leadership culture — and a shift in language, too.

CCL’s organizational leadership work draws on ideas, definitions and practices that aren’t part of the conversation in most organizations. Here, an introduction to terms and definitions, which shape the process of organizational culture change:

Leader: The role of a person who participates in the process of leadership.

Leadership: The social processes producing the outcomes of direction, alignment and commitment among people with shared work.

Leadership Culture: The self-reinforcing web of individual and collective beliefs and practices in a collective for producing the outcomes of shared direction, alignment and commitment.

Leadership Development: The expansion of a collective’s capacity for producing shared direction, alignment and commitment.

Interdependent: A form of leadership culture or mindset based in the collaboration of otherwise independent leaders and groups.

Independent: A form of leadership culture or mindset based in heroic individual achievement.

Dependent: A form of leadership culture or mindset based in conformance or tradition.

Vertical Development: Transformation of leadership cultures or mindsets from dependent, to independent and to interdependent, such that each more capable successive stage transcend, yet includes, earlier ones.

SOGI: The social processes of leadership operate, and can be developed, and analyzed, at four nested levels: individual, group, organizational and societal (S for Society, etc.).

Culture Tools: Tools and methods to help people see and experience, reflect upon, and then begin to intentionally and strategically shape their culture. “Quick” tools are portable and adaptable with ease-of-use for groups.

Discovery: Beginning, and then tracking, the process of culture change by deeply understanding the future vision and strategic purpose to be pursued.

Public Learning. Learning as a group activity, such that potentially difficult topics require social risk-taking and personal vulnerability as they are explored with the goal of shared insights and better solutions.

Four Arts: Dialogue, Headroom, Inside-Out, Boundary Spanning: The time and space for leadership groups to practice extending internal experiences, which expand public learning across human and system boundaries and channel better design choices into organizational action.

1. Dialogue: A public learning conversation that temporarily suspends judgment and explores underlying assumptions across differing perspectives with the goal of shared learning and deeper mutual insight.
2. Headroom: The time and space to model risk-taking in public that explores breaking old patterns and experimenting with new behaviors, and that lifts up, or vertically advances the leadership culture toward interdependence.
3. Inside-Out: The subjective, internal individual development experience of focus on imagination, intuition, curiosity, emotions, identity, beliefs and values.
4. Boundary Spanning: Seeing, bridging and leveraging five types of group boundaries: horizontal, vertical, demographic, geographic and stakeholder.

“Beliefs-in-Action” Story Telling. A type of dialogue using personal and shared stories about experiences in the organization that illustrate how changing beliefs result in different kinds actions and a changing set of outcomes.

“Learning Pathways Grid.” A public learning technique for debriefing a difficult interpersonal situation that looks at outcomes in terms of actions and the assumptions and beliefs underlying those actions.¹

From: Center for Creative Learning, Learning Effectively

Looking to increase employee engagement and boost productivity?

Then help employees better manage their work/life conflicts.

Companies that foster employee well-being — including a culture that supports people’s commitments outside of work — are more productive and profitable, according to Ellen Ernst Kossek, a Basil S. Turner Professor at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. “Helping employees manage work/life conflict also gives organizations greater ability to attract top talent, reduce turnover and reduce health costs.”

So, why do so many work/family policies fall short, leaving employees and employers wondering about their value?

Employee support programs have not filtered through

“At all ends of the labor market, work schedules and demands are dictated by short-term employer needs,” Kossek says. “Many companies — and managers — just don’t buy into the idea that helping people better manage work-life conflicts will improve productivity.”

In contrast, productive organizations that use human capital effectively take a longer-term perspective on the employment relationship. Quality human resources are seen as a core competency of the organization. People are seen as an asset to be nurtured and developed rather than merely a cost to be minimized.

“In these healthy work environments, employees feel engaged in their jobs and also in their home lives. They feel an energetic connection to their work and family activities,” says Kossek. “This fuels their engagement, productivity and effectiveness both on and off the job.”

Concentrate on greater congruence between employee and employee interests

Rather than thinking of work/life issues only in terms of policies or benefits, HR teams, top executives and managers across the organization should focus on creating greater congruence between employer and employee interests.

Kossek says three factors are indicators of employee well-being:

1. They feel they are recognized and valued for good work. They believe that their jobs are a good fit with their abilities and interests.
2. They believe they are able to have a career with their employer with “mutual positive social exchange in the employment relationship.” This means they are fairly paid and job demands are not excessive. They do not feel they have to sacrifice their personal and family well-being in order to perform their jobs.
3. They are developing skills and knowledge that keeps them employable for a lifelong career.

In addition, the organization can provide support for individuals looking for new strategies to better manage their work/life conflicts. CCL partnered with Kossek to develop the WorkLife Indicator, a tool to help people understand the factors that come into play when managing work/life boundaries.

The WorkLife Indicator is a simple 10-minute assessment that managers or human resources can provide to help employees as well. The tool helps people to rethink how they manage the boundaries between work and family, identify choices and put together a plan that will benefit them as well as their employer.

From: Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), Leading Effectively

In late 2008, the global economy was in turmoil.

Banking and financial-service firms faced unprecedented challenge and uncertainty — and UK-based Barclaycard wasn’t immune.

A renewed emphasis on customer needs and experience was essential

Even so, Barclaycard leaders were clear they needed to look to the future. A renewed emphasis on customer needs and experience was essential — and it would be fueled by greater collaboration, innovation and operational excellence.

“We needed leaders across the business to have a full and shared perspective on our direction and our challenges,” explained James Prior, Barclaycard’s former head of Executive Development. “At the same time, we had to strengthen key leadership capabilities so our people could implement the strategy, cope in uncertain times and flex to meet changing conditions and needs.

Joint effort yields impressive results

Participants made significant improvement in leadership effectiveness; collaboration and ability to influence.

Participants also showed measurable increases in their ability to take risks, set priorities, lead teams and coach/mentor others.

Direct reports are more engaged and empowered — 80 percent report feeling more empowered to do their work, and 79 percent also report feeling more engaged in their work.

The study also found participants are developing and leveraging networks and relationships to drive company strategies:

• 100 percent increased both the size and quality of their internal and external networks
• 100 percent improved their ability to gather multiple perspectives and ideas.
• 100 percent leverage their networks to benefit Barclaycard.

Read more about Barclaycard’s Executing Strategy Programme.

From: Center for Creative Leadership (CCL),  Leading Effectively

The greatest challenge ahead is not a leadership challenge. It’s a development challenge, argues CCL’s Nick Petrie.

Nick Petrie took a yearlong sabbatical at Harvard University with the goal of answering one question — what will the future of leadership development look like? He looked across fields (education, business, law, government, psychology), reviewed leadership development literature and interviewed 30 experts in the field.

Gap between today’s methods and skills leaders need 

What he found was a profound gap between today’s methods of developing leaders and the skills leaders need to deal with more a complex, volatile and unpredictable reality.

The methods organizations use to develop leaders have not changed (much) in decades. The majority of managers are developed from on-the-job experiences, training and coaching/mentoring.

“While these are all still important, leaders are no longer developing fast enough or in the right ways to match the new environment,” says Petrie.

Petrie identified four trends shaping leader development — trends that top management as well as training and development professionals must grapple with as they figure out ways to prepare for the future.

In an upcoming CCL Webinar, Petrie will address these four trends and potential responses.

Vertical development will matter more. There are two different types of development: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal development focuses on new skills, abilities and behaviors. It is technical learning and competency-based. Horizontal development is most useful when a problem is clearly defined and we have known techniques for solving it. Vertical development, in contrast, refers to the mental and emotional “stages” that people progress through. At each higher level, adults “make sense” of the world in more complex and inclusive ways.

The methods for horizontal and vertical development are very different. Horizontal development can be “transmitted” (from an expert), but vertical development must be earned (for oneself). Horizontal development cannot be relied on as the sole, or even primary, means for developing leaders.

People must own their development. The current model encourages people to believe that someone else is responsible for their development — human resources, their manager or trainers. But people develop fastest when they feel responsible for their own progress.

“We need to help people out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s seat of their own development,” says Petrie.

Individual leaders are less important. Leadership development has come to a point of being too individually focused and elitist. There is a transition occurring from the old paradigm in which leadership resided in a person or role, to a new one in which leadership is a collective process that is spread throughout networks of people. Leadership development should focus more on what is needed in the system and how we can produce it.

The question will change from, “Who are the leaders?” to “What conditions do we need for leadership to flourish in the network? How do we spread leadership capacity throughout the organization and democratize leadership?”

We need a new era of innovation. There are no simple, existing models or programs, which will be sufficient to develop the levels of collective leadership required to meet an increasingly complex future. Instead, an era of rapid innovation will be needed in which organizations experiment with new approaches that combine diverse ideas in new ways and share these with others. Technology and the Web will both provide the infrastructure and drive the change. Organizations that embrace the changes will do better than those that resist it.

“The future of leadership development is evolving, with many paths and little clarity,” Petrie acknowledges. “The answers will be discovered along the way on the messy path of innovation.”