Get 8 tips to create impactful leadership development
Typically, only around 15% of the managers who attend traditional courses and training programs are able to translate their new knowledge into value-creating new practices when they return to the organizational workplace (Brinkerhof & Dressler (2015). This is surprisingly few. Fortunately, you can get a significantly greater benefit from your development programs if you plan and design them correctly. Some studies have shown that 80% of participants have converted new knowledge into value-creating practices. Read on to find out which three pitfalls you should avoid and get 8 tips for designing an effective leadership development program.
3 traps of traditional leadership development
There are three traps that traditional leadership development courses and leadership training often fall into, and you need to make sure you steer clear of them.
1: The first trap is that traditional leadership development doesn't happen in real time. Real time means learning the new method and using the learned method at the same time. Instead, traditional processes are typically based on a tank-passer metaphor, where knowledge is passively accumulated for later application in the manager's practice. This means that the development process is disconnected from the manager's everyday life and practice, and that development takes place in a vacuum. This makes it difficult to apply what has been learned in the hectic daily organizational life where change is the only constant.
2: The second trap is that traditional leadership development is often not based on the organization's real challenges and opportunities, but rather on theoretical or fictitious issues. But why, when there are always relevant development areas to address in an organization?
3: Thirdly, traditional leadership development often overlooks the importance of formulating both learning and impact goals. In doing so, they lose sight of the inseparable connection between the learning and the desired organizational outcomes that should come out of the changed management practice.
If leadership development is to have an impact, it should take place in real time, and it is crucial to create the right framework for the development process. In addition, the development process must be directed towards real challenges and opportunities in the manager's daily life, and you must remember to set both learning goals and impact goals to ensure a clear link to the desired results.
Watch our video on effective competence development and learn a model and a number of concrete methods to help you get more impact from your competence development programs.
READ MORE ABOUT OUR EDUCATION
Want to get even better equipped to manage processes?
The Process Consultant program gives you the methods to design, facilitate and lead strategic development processes and changes to create the impact you need.
This is an education for those who work with development, processes and change management.
8 tips for creating an effective leadership development program
If you want to ensure that leadership development creates both learning and organizational impact, there are several ways to go. One of them is to draw on the mindset and methods of Business Driven Action Learning (BDAL) - developed by Yury Boshyk and Ed Boshry (2000), among others - which is rapidly gaining ground in leading private corporations. Examples include Siemens, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, and Novo Nordisk. A crucial difference with BDAL is that leadership development is based on the organization's real challenges and everyday organizational life, is closely anchored to management agendas and aims to both strengthen competencies and produce real organizational results. Specifically, this can be elaborated in the following 8 tips:
1: Actively involve top management and make him/her a sponsor of the BDAL group. The sponsor should delegate tasks to the BDAL group and outline top management's requirements and expectations. The sponsor will typically be available for sparring one or more times during the BDAL process.
2: Put together a BDAL group with a high degree of diversity in mind. Each team should be made up of a wide range of nationalities and professions, some of whom will be experts in the specific task at hand. The typical BDAL team consists of the organization's top talent from all over the world.
3: Plan the BDAL program as either a one-week intensive BDAL session or ideally as a modular program that runs over several sessions. In between modules, participants must put actions and learnings into practice and solve the problems related to their task.
4: BDAL groups work on real strategic challenges that are set by senior management and communicated and framed by their sponsor.
5: BDAL groups seek knowledge and experience inside or outside the organization via experts, seek out best practices in other companies, etc. and produce a recommendation for solving and implementing the strategic business challenge. In some cases, the BDAL group's task can be expanded to include the implementation task.
6: Ensure that leaders' learning and development happens through experience-based and knowledge-seeking teamwork, which should be facilitated through coaching and reflection.
7: Engage both internal and external facilitators. External facilitators are typically occupational psychologists and internal facilitators are often high-level managers with great organizational insight. Other times, HR can take the internal facilitator role.
8: Evaluate the process with a special focus on the BDAL groups' task solution and their work process, and make sure that top management decides on a possible implementation of the task solution proposals. Also evaluate the organizational and individual learning.
Bring together many different learning methods
When planning business-driven leadership development, you also need to consider which learning methods you want to use. An effective development process should always consist of a mix of several of these learning methods:
- Training and cases
- Individual learning methods - journaling, self-assessment and coaching
- Problem-solving methods - analysis, stakeholder interviews, etc.
- Team-based learning - through team coaching of the group
- Benchmark and best practice - visit best practice organizations
- Information technology mediated learning - e-learning, simulations, e-learning platforms.
The art of implementation
We offer management and organizational sparring, research-based training and presentations on implementation as well as training courses with a specific focus on giving you and your organization general implementation skills. Read examples of our services here.
