Who are the potential leaders within your organisation?

by Jeff Austin

The benefits of developing the leadership potential within an organisation are widely accepted, but many companies struggle to identify such individuals effectively. In this article, Jeff Austin, Managing Director of Siyandza Skills Development Training, shares his insight into how to spot and develop talent within an organisation and offers advice about what a company should expect from its leadership training provider.

The many benefits of actively fostering and developing the latent leadership potential within an organisation are well documented. Effective leadership development not only minimises the disruptions and loss of continuity associated with the unexpected departure of key management and executive personnel, it can also help retain and motivate staff at all levels of the organisation by equipping them with a clear sense of where they, together with the organisation, are heading.

As well as improving the sustainability of an organisation by minimising the leadership ‘gaps’ within it and ensuring that transitions between key personnel are as smooth as possible, the internal development of leaders allows a more unified and consistent company vision and culture to be maintained.

Moreover, implementing a leadership development program needn’t be an expensive exercise. In fact, when weighed up against the costs associated with employee churn and hiring talent, it typically makes clear financial sense for organisations to develop leaders internally.

Courageous risk takers or conservatives?

There is a growing acceptance among forward-thinking organisations of the advantages of nurturing internal leadership talent, but many struggle with the practical challenges of how to set about identifying such individuals and what to do with them once they have.

Before discussing what indicative traits to look for and some of the techniques that can be used to evaluate those qualities, an important point must be made concerning the setting up of any internal leadership development program. It is absolutely vital to begin by confirming exactly what kind of leaders need to be developed in partnership with the organisation’s executive team.

The fact that there are many different kinds of leaders that can be nurtured is, surprisingly, often overlooked. The executive team will need to determine if they want leaders who are courageous risk takers in the future or whether the organisation favours conservative decision making? Maybe growing customer sophistication suggests a very specific blend of leaders will be required. These questions need to be asked right at the start and used to inform the program’s focus.

Strategic thinkers

One common leadership trait is the ability to think strategically. Leaders have the capacity to weigh up the potential impact of a complex decision across the entire organisation. Most executive roles require decision makers to be able to quickly understand and assess the potential risks and rewards associated with specific activities and choices.

There are two simple techniques that can be used to examine an individual’s ability to think strategically:

The easiest and most formal is to encourage staff to submit proposals outlining where they think the business will be, and should be, in five years time. These proposals will give one a clear indication of how they think and how well they understand the relationships between the various business units within the organisation. The second technique is less formal and more time-intensive, but can be far more insightful if managed correctly. It involves interviewing the candidate on a one-to-one basis, presenting them with a complex scenario and discussing it with them. A great example would be to include them in the budgeting process and ask how they would, for instance, realise 10 percent savings in the next fiscal year to see how they understand, measure, and weigh the effects of changes in the organisation.

Effective communicators

Another common leadership trait is the ability to communicate effectively. It is a skill that every leader needs in order to ensure that their strategic vision is clearly understood and can be implemented accordingly.

Perhaps the best and easiest way of identifying this skill is by incorporating a mentoring channel within the leadership development program. The regular discussions about tactical and strategic issues that mentors have with their assignees will enable them to accurately assess and develop their communication skills. Another potential approach is to use peer evaluation and customer surveys to find out how an individual’s communication skills are perceived by others.

Relationship builders

Customer surveys are also an excellent way of identifying individuals within the organisation that are able to build and maintain effective relationships and get the best out of others. This is an important leadership characteristic, but it is essential to ensure that they are able to develop these relationships while delivering against their assigned tasks or KPAs.

Peer evaluation and internal support groups are also useful ways of detecting such individuals within an organisation. For example, if everyone within the accounts department really likes ‘Manager X’, it is probably safe to assume that they have built effective relationships and manage their colleagues well.

Passionate people

It might seem too intangible to identify easily, but passion or enthusiasm is an important leadership ingredient. To capture this quality, it needs to be actively appraised through all of the organisation’s internal review mechanisms and staff loyalty programs, not just the leadership development program.

What to expect from a training provider

When it comes to selecting the right leadership development training provider, it almost goes without saying that the supplier needs to demonstrate genuine understanding of your leadership vision, particular business challenges and corporate culture, but there are a couple of less obvious considerations that also need to be appraised during the selection process.

The first of these concerns the development of the training programs. Can the provider customise the training so that it encompasses both international best practices in leadership development and the specific, unique needs of your organisation, from reinforcing bench strength to team building?

Generic leadership development training is not as effective as tailored training programs since it is not aligned to specific strategic or operational needs. In such instances, some potential leaders may struggle to apply the theories learnt back into their host organisations.

Consideration also needs to be given to how the training provider implements its leadership training programs. Does the provider employ the latest Outcomes Based Education (OBE) methods to ensure efficient, measurable knowledge and skills transfer? Is the firm versatile enough to adapt to other complementary programs employed by your organisation, including loyalty schemes and mentoring initiatives?

One final consideration is whether the training provider has systems in place that will allow you to track and measure the success of the leadership development process. Can the provider report back on all activity and ‘close the loop’?

Executive sponsorship

Ultimately, though, a leadership training program will only be successful if it is aligned with the organisation’s overall strategy and that is not something the training provider can develop. Senior company executives need to be actively involved in the program from the start to ensure the vision matches the firm’s unique leadership needs.

Executive sponsorship is also required to ensure the rationale and importance of the program is clearly communicated to participants. Employees need to understand why they are being developed, their role in the process and the expected outcomes. Such open communication can also help reduce churn of leaders being developed within the organisation as they will have a clearer picture of how they fit into its future.

As a final observation, best practice evidence suggests that the organisation would also benefit from integrating the leadership development program into its Balanced Scorecard since this will ensure sustained monitoring of its effectiveness and focus.

The many benefits and advantages of growing internal talent and developing the organisation’s leaders ‘from within’ are compelling enough to convince more and more companies to start leadership development programs, but unless it is recognised as a core organisational goal and the responsibility of every department, not just HR, leadership development is unlikely to deliver on its many tantalising promises.