The Updated Leadership Development Toolbox
Back in January 2014, Right Management published a piece by Dr. Ric Roi, Their Global Talent Management COE Leader. The title was “What’s in Your Leadership Development Toolbox?” Here’s the summary paragraph.
“The practice of leadership development has evolved considerably. Years ago, the focus was on the individual: up-and-coming executives attended classroom programs and seminars, striving for personal development. Version 2.0 was team-based development, which emphasized skills like communication, decision-making, and morale building. Version 3.0 has shifted to collaboration; leaders are learning how to build and sustain relationships across organizational and geographic boundaries to achieve success in a global marketplace.”
This is a great, checklist, kind of post if you’re seeking tools your company can use in leadership development. But it misses important things.
What’s missing?
The toolbox is the organizational toolbox. Oh, sure, an individual can ask for the opportunity to experience something that’s in the toolbox, but the self-directed parts of leadership development are only hinted at.
Harold Jarche likes to point out that in today’s world, “Work is Learning and Learning is the Work.” Any development toolbox needs to include tool that help people direct their own learning on the fly.
The fact is that no one is good enough to predict the opportunities and challenges that the world and work will present. But we know them when we see them. We say, “Wow, I need to get up to speed on this and do it quickly” or “I better learn more about ________ if I want to get promoted.”
Leadership development planning
People should know how to plan their own development. I’m not talking about detailed micro-step planning. I’m talking about planning that gets a person thinking about what’s important to them, what they’re good at, and what they want to accomplish. Here are two excellent resources for that kind of planning.
From Dan McCarthy: How to Write a Great Individual Development Plan (IDP)
“I’ve written about the importance of written individual development plans (IDPs) for leadership development, and how to develop your leadership skills, but not how to actually write one. I’ll draw on my experience from having helped hundreds of leaders write IDPs, using them for my own employees, as well as my personal experience with my own IDPs”
From Jack Zenger: Throw Your Old Plan Away: 6 New Ways To Build Leadership Development Into Your Job
“Every leader I know is extremely busy getting their job done. At the same time, they also realize that investing effort in their own leadership development is good. The problem is that when faced with a choice, work seems to always trump personal development. Everyone runs fast and hard, and personal development is put off as executives wait and hope for a break in the schedule. I’ll argue that this is a false dichotomy.”
Leadership development needs more than a toolbox. There must be a plan.
