In last week’s article, “Time to demystify the leadership development challenges”, I clarified a few common misunderstandings about leaders and leadership, as well as training and developing.
I also elaborated about how the conventional leadership development approach might be outdated and unable to produce leaderships fast enough given the rapid changes in the business landscape. In other words, the greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay relevant and competitive amid constant turbulence.
Because building an organisation’s leadership capabilities is going to be a major differentiator for future success, now is a good time for you to think about your current development method and see whether it is sufficient to enable you to outperform the competition.
To be able to excel in developing leadership capabilities, there are a few dimensions you need to focus on. First, before you implement any development roadmap, you need to spend a little more time building ownership or commitment during the engagement session. In other words, spending a little more time during the first phase to inspire people to develop is a critical success factor in helping them to eventually become transformational leaders.
This is in line with the theory of “transformational leadership” — the leadership style that also inspires positive changes in those who follow. Transformational leaders are often energetic, enthusiastic and passionate. They not only are concerned and involved in the process, but they tend to focus on helping others to succeed as well.
It is said that transformational leaders are leaders who continuously reinvent themselves and love to improve those around them by taking them to where they don’t necessarily want to go, but where they ought to be.
This is because when you invest in developing people who feel committed to developing themselves, and they feel accountable of their own success, the return on investment is much higher than if you try to force people into a classroom — not ready and not willing to learn and develop.
Moreover, due to the changing nature of organisations, it is likely that a more distributed view of leadership will be needed. Thus, the focus shifts from the traditional single leader to a collective leadership approach — an intricate and complex web of leaders who possess a wide range of abilities and experiences necessary to ensure that the leadership function is fulfilled to the benefit of the whole organisation and, most importantly, to drive strategic business imperatives.
To elaborate on this, as the speed of transformation in business increases, one leader alone cannot possibly have access to all available information, and no one can really claim that he or she knows everything. When there is no longer such a thing as “the boss knows best”, saying “I don’t know” should not be perceived as a sign of weakness. Instead, leaders at all levels need to keep learning continuously, whereas the organisation can simultaneously benefit from collective wisdom shared among capable leaders.
Another critical factor is to develop an innovative approach in developing leadership capabilities. It’s undeniable that developing leadership in the 21st century requires more than mere classroom training. And it’s true that many of us know about some of the current hot tools such as e-learning and action-learning.
However, to fully benefit from the advances in this era, the development transformation goes way beyond those approaches and includes new terms and methods such as “flipping the classroom”, “70-20-10”, “mlearning”, “social/community-based learning” and “collective wisdom”. If your organisation is not currently using these yet, get ready. This is because to grow and keep your next generation of leaders, you will need the next generation of tools and processes.
What’s more, to be able to outperform your competitors in leadership development, I recommend that you start thinking about performing a leadership assessment to strategically craft a leadership development plan that is clear and goal-oriented.
These are just a few examples of what you should consider when you rethink your current leadership development method ensure your organisation’s future success. They are simple suggestions that I’m sure any organisation can start following easily today.
Last but not least, let’s all keep in mind that today we are in need of leadership much more than leaders themselves. Peter Drucker, the legendary management consultant, once said: “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes”. Shouldn’t we all rethink how we are developing the right leadership now?
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Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand’s leading Organisational and People Development Consultancy. For more information, write an e-mail to arinya_t@apm.co.th or visit www.apm.co.th