Leadership Development

Definition
Leadership development—broadly defined as formal and informal training and professional development programs designed for all management and executive-level employees to assist them in developing the leadership skills and styles required to deal with a variety of situations.

Introduction
“Emotional intelligence is twice as important as cognitive abilities in predicting outstanding employee performance and accounts for more than 85% of star performance of top leaders.”

In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations have high expectations of their leaders. The ideal leader is flexible, proactive, possesses strategic thinking and analytical skills, is culturally competent and adept at competitive positioning. To attain this level of leadership, the organization must be committed to leadership development. Thus, to define leadership competencies, develop leadership models and identify high-potential leaders with the appropriate skills, HR leaders must establish a strong partnership with the Board, CEO and senior management.

Effective Leadership Development
Effective leadership development encompasses four key areas:

1) the speed required to forward the development of leadership talent;

2) determining the most effective leadership methods;

3) wisely investing money and time for leadership development; and

4) clearly demonstrating the success of leadership development methods.

A recent survey of 240 major public and private U.S. companies on effective leadership development notes that the 20 top companies have formal leadership programs and 90% have formal leadership competency models. In addition, these companies integrate their leadership competencies into processes for selecting, developing and assessing leaders.

Further, research shows that organizations that approach leadership development with a process, such as the recommendations outlined below, are among the most successful and high-performing organizations.

• Assess leader styles and motives and determine their impact on climate and performance.
• Create customized, competency-driven leadership models to support the organization’s strategic goals.
• Focus on and expand the emotional intelligence of their leadership (e.g., self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, social skills).
• Demonstrate a strong commitment to extensive development and coaching efforts.
• Measure and reward both leadership development and performance.

Leadership Development Tools
The following list of leadership tools covers a wide range of training options.
• 360-degree feedback.
• Assessment instruments.
• Formal and/or informal mentoring.
• Executive coaching.
• On-the-job experience (e.g., rotational assignments, action learning).
• Off-the-job experience (e.g., community leadership, industry associations).
• Leadership scorecard.

Not all leadership tools are utilized equally. Assessment instruments, for example, are underutilized as a leadership development tool in domestic as well as international organizations. a study on global leadership reveals that 29% of organizations use assessment processes to screen emerging leaders.5

Designing a Leadership Development Scorecard

Measuring the effectiveness of leadership development requires the consideration of different data. Below are seven types of data that address satisfaction, application, learning, business impact, return on investment and various intangibles related to leadership development.

1) Indicators [show the scope and volume of leadership development].
2) Level of satisfaction [with leadership development activities and programs].
3) Learning [acquisition of knowledge and leadership skills].
4) Application of leadership skills [e.g., applying knowledge to various job situations].
5) Business impact [e.g., the consequence of applying knowledge and new skills].
6) Return on investment [comparison of monetary benefits to program costs].
7) Intangible benefits [business impact measures not converted into monetary values; e.g., soft data—working habits, work climate, job attitudes, initiative].

Data may be obtained through a variety of sources, such as questionnaires, focus groups, observation (e.g., video recording, audio monitoring), 360-degree feedback, participant estimate and testing. A combination of sources is suggested.

Literature and Research

Antecedents and Consequences of Reactions to Developmental 360-Degree Feedback
The 360-degree feedback is a developmental tool used to provide information regarding leadership behavior. This study explored and identified factors that had an impact on leaders’ reactions to 360-degree feedback and the relationship of different feedback reactions relative to development activities and changes in leader behavior. Overall, the study showed that leaders’ reactions to feedback were related to the degree of change in ratings over time, rather than to the number of follow-up activities reported. For example, the study results suggested that leaders who had low ratings and agreed with others regarding theses ratings were less motivated than those who had low ratings and over-rated themselves. On the other hand, the study results also revealed that motivation was not an influence for those with high ratings and agreement between themselves and others’ ratings. In general, individuals who had more favorable attitudes regarding the use of feedback tended to be more motivated to follow the feedback.

Career Anchors of Managers With Global Careers
Due to the globalization of the marketplace, it has become more important to understand the career ladders of global leaders. This qualitative study provides new evidence on career anchors of global leaders. The internal career approach is now one of the most relevant focuses on career paths. Typically, global leaders have careers that include international assignments. The study results suggest that most managers’ career decisions are based on two or three career anchors, rather than one dominating factor. In this study, the most typical career anchors were pure challenge and managerial competence. The study’s key conclusion is the importance of the new internationalism anchor for global leaders: that is, the majority of respondents ranked the internationalism anchor as either their major anchor or among a few major anchors.

The Effects of Leader Moral Development on Ethical Climate and Employee Attitudes
This study examined the effect of leader moral development on employee attitudes and the organization’s ethical climate. The survey results suggested that the relationship between ethical climate and leader moral development was affected/moderated by two factors: 1) the age of the organization; and 2) the extent to which the leader utilized his or her cognitive moral development (i.e., capacity for ethical reasoning). That is, the leader’s moral development had a greater influence for those leaders whose moral actions were consistent with their moral reasoning. Further, the influence of the leader moral development was greater in younger organizations. As predicted, the connection between the employee’s moral development and the leader’s moral development was positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment and negatively associated with turnover intentions.

In Closing

As part of talent management, the literature highlights the importance of commitment to effective leadership development by the organization, from the CEO and the Board level downward. As with all change efforts, leadership development requires thoughtful planning and implementation. Integration of leadership development with other key processes—such as recruitment, selection, training and succession planning—is essential for successful leadership development.