Accelerating leadership development ?

Do you need to accelerate your leadership development ?

 

Not many business leaders would say they are not concerned about developing the teams that will lead their business in 5 or 10 years from now. There are plenty of business opportunities, but very often we are confronted by the question of who will take the lead of the company's growth. We know we cannot do everything ourselves. But we have doubts about our existing teams. We know their limits and think more about why they will NOT be able to deliver. We imagine that we will find that perfect pearl somewhere on the market. Someone that really has all the talents and qualities that will drive our business to the next level.

 

Yet leaders have come to realize that, although bringing in new talent is necessary, it is far from sufficient. When no explicit effort is in place to develop teams, those bright talents that joined will not stay around for long.

 

So what do you do to develop your teams ? Send them to more training programs ? Ask all of them to sign up for an MBA program ? Or make sure they all join the annual team building retreat ? All these are nice to have, and for sure appreciated by employees. They have almost become benefits. But after years of spending resources on these efforts, it is clear the impact is limited.

What works then ? A survey of 210 business leaders in Asia, organized by the Conference Board, looking for which approaches are most effective at accelerating leadership development, brought out Action Learning at the top of the list.

 

Action Learning is not as physical or fun as team building on the beach, or maybe not exciting as a training-session-with-games-and-role-plays. But it is for sure efficient in developing and growing talent.