How can you develop leaders with limited resources?

I believe that- Leadership is a behaviour set and exists across all levels in organisations Leadership skills are not created equally. And also the Leadership skills are used differently at different levels in an organisation Three key areas I suggest to focus on are: 1. Formalise leadership principles, competencies and behaviours 2. Tap into internal expertise and getting internal experts and leaders to coach others - you can’t train for leadership but definitely coach for it 3. Set up and scale leadership development initiatives with customised delivery mechanisms and reassess with a feedback loop to continuously improve. Implementing basic principles and focusing on doing the basics well makes an impact

What you need is a strong values-driven leader who leads with strength of character, competence and values. When the leaders makes decisions through the bedrock of his values, he tends to drive , trust psychological safety and influence. With this people understand his vulnerability and humility and start to get influenced and take massive action. EI - Empathy, kindness and compassion are all critical resources that encourage involvement and intensity in their people. When values are thought as guiding paths for taking decisions, these leaders are able to shift identities and behaviors towards optimism, accountability and trust.

Assessing your needs also comes from retrospectives and lessons learned. They become a very important contributor to continuous leadership development.

Rising next-gen leaders can significantly benefit from attending local lecture forums and events hosted by area professional associations, chambers of commerce, and regional colleges and universities. These events can be excellent opportunities to hear from area and national leaders on business trends, gain insights from successful leaders, and more. These are also wonderful opportunities to develop networks with other attendees from various professional backgrounds.

You need to start with the idealised image of the leader you value. From this image, you can break down the idealised image into behaviours that leaders might exhibit. From those behaviours, you can think about the activities that would encourage the development of those leadership behaviours in others. Then you can diagnose, in your participants, what needs are missing. So, yes, you need to know what you are targeting first. the kinds of leadership and development activities that would enable learners to develop the behaviours and skills.

Leadership development equals character development. Therefore, the person on your team with the highest degree of character is the best person to develop leaders. Their position or title is irrelevant. These high character people can facilitate group discussions using no/low cost resources such as books or online videos and podcasts. Episode #305 of the Blue Collar Leadership Podcast provides a FREE 30 minute lesson on how to facilitate a high impact book study. There are 360+ character-based episodes too! The principles and methods taught in Episode #305 can be applied when facilitating discussions around audio or video lessons too. Management is about developing your competency. Leadership is about developing your character.

Leadership development doesn't always mean you need to pay a company to run a development program or coaching engagement. One of my clients runs a leadership book club with his team. They read a few chapters each week and then meet for 1 hour to discuss what they learned. You could also use this same idea with podcasts, TED talks or other free resources online. You could even have leaders teach lessons themselves. Another idea is mentoring. Volunteer based (both from the mentors/mentees) is generally the best way so each party wants to engage. Leadership development can be accelerated by paying experts but there are definitely ways to develop leaders where the only costs are time and effort.

One of the ways we’ve approached this is look at what the needs are for different leader levels. While it can be very powerful to work with an external coach, it might not work cost wise for everyone, even with more scalable solutions out there today. If you are committed to building a coaching culture, I’d think about how you can activate your own leaders as mentors, coaches or facilitators of leader development for others as another approach. You’d have to make some investment in time/training, but the benefit is that the mentors and coaches themselves develop too, not just the people they are coaching.

I'm a fan of an hour of learning each week or month. You bring people together for a session to grow the team’s collective knowledge - e.g. It's an effective way to establish a learning culture by ensuring your product team continues to learn by setting aside an hour to focus specifically on learning new things. The "learning" could be something a product team member has learnt recently you would like them to share (e.g. top themes from a recent conference, etc.) or something you feel the team should know (e.g. best practices for user research, difference between leading and lagging metrics, etc).

There are experts in every workplace and the goal of a leader is to identify the qualities within each team member that makes them an expert. For example, some may be skilled at communication, problem solving, quality or innovation. Pairing the expert with the novice is two-fold. The novice gains the wisdom of the expert, while the expert become engaged in mentorship.

For starters, you need to get rid of the myth that all good leadership development resources are paywalled. There is a lot available online, whether it's books or videos, or more engagingly, tools or facilitation techniques to start discussions. If you are in the non-profit space, a plethora of options are likely open to you, including speakers and facilitator from corporate or other public sector organizations. There is no one right way, but if you aren't even exploring what's available, that's likely the only wrong way.

Paying a leadership coach to do a single workshop or series of workshops can go a long way in creating a common vocabulary that employees can then use to coach each other from a shared framework.

Invite people from your network to be guest presenters. It is free and easy to get folks you already know to share their experience and knowledge with your own team. Start by identifying the gap you'd like to address and then find a couple of people in your network that have those demonstrated skills/experience. Reach out and kindly ask them if they'd be willing to be a guest presenter. Offer to take them out to lunch or coffee. I've done this countless times and have often received feedback that the guest's presentation was more valuable than a class or more formal program. The guest feels good about helping and gets recognition (don't forget to post on LinkedIn), the team learns, and you spent very little if any money. Win, win, win!

Listen to podcasts as a group pausing at key moments to facilitate a thought-provoking discussion to raise awareness. We refer to these as BCL (Building Character-based Leaders) Sessions and recommend our clients do these with books, podcasts, and videos. Many podcasts and videos can be accessed at no cost. Episode #305 on my Blue Collar Leadership Podcast contains a 30 minute lesson on how to facilitate a high impact book study. I have published 360+ episodes focused on personal growth, workforce development, leadership development, and cultural transformation on my podcast. I feature many 30 part series on some of my books that my clients often use to develop their teams. I’m currently releasing a series on “Who’s Buying You?”

Leadership lessons (both good and bad) are all around us, hiding in plain sight, if we are aware enough to notice them! And unlimited free and low-cost resources as well: Books, blogs, podcasts, articles, webinars, and more. So, just taking some time -- from 20 minutes to 2 hours a day -- to educate yourself on leadership can go a long way. As educator John Dewey famously wrote: "We don't learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences." So, make the time and take the time for personal reflection, to explore how you might be able to apply your learning and your experiences both in the present and in the future.

Exceptional team managers lead by inspiring, empowering, and incentivizing their teams. They exude integrity, nurture an innovative and learning-centric environment, delegate wisely, maintain a balance of autonomy and support, and reward accomplishments - all vital for fostering team's purpose, credibility and direction.

Leadership development should be tailored to the unique needs and circumstances of the organization and its leaders. Customizing the content, format, duration, and frequency of training or coaching activities ensures that they resonate with the audience and are aligned with the organization's goals. It's about creating a personalized learning experience that maximizes engagement and effectiveness.

Recognize the uniqueness of your organization and its people. A one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development may not yield optimal results. Tailor your strategies to align with your organizational culture, industry dynamics, and the specific needs of your team members. Consider flexible learning formats, such as online courses, microlearning modules, and on-the-job training. Customization enhances engagement and relevance, maximizing the impact of your leadership development initiatives.

All good leadership has the same fundamentals. Delivery will be different in context but fundamentals are all the same. You need self and team empowering mental models. You need specific skills to make mental models actionable. You need to be building other leaders in your teams. Doesn't matter if it's software or hospitality - same fundamentals.

Effective leaders understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to leading and managing. Each individual team member is unique and requires a tailored approach to being led and managed. Similarly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development. Each individual leader is unique, as well, and should be given a training program that allows them to discover their individual style and embrace what makes them unique.

You can develop an internal leaders monthly meeting and develop an agenda aligned to the HR calendar - talk about manager topics around goal setting together, feedback etc. as they come up throughout the year. You can have HR and some more seasoned leaders lead the sessions and bring in free guest speakers from your network. This provides external focus; internal development for the more seasoned leaders to mentor and do some public speaking, and overall learning for all.

There should be a predecessor step after the needs assessment to define your outcomes and target metrics... what is there to evaluate if you haven't planned to measure what matters most? Make a measurement sandwich - start with a measurement strategy, and end with doing the measuring!

Tapping into existing resources: Experience leaders in the team Long tenure experts in the team Role models in the team. Each of them can be invited to share or teach others. I love the concept of leaders as teachers. When people see the impact they can have into others, you will be amazed on the engagement and the results you get with limited resources

Continuous evaluation is paramount to the success of your leadership development efforts. Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure the effectiveness of your programs. Solicit feedback from participants and stakeholders to gauge the real-world impact of leadership development initiatives. Regularly review and adapt your strategies based on performance data. This iterative approach ensures that you can refine and optimize your leadership development efforts over time, even with limited resources.

When I first got into HR my ability to continue my HR Leadership/Business Partner education was extremely limited. Time and money were scarce. I took the initiative and found courses through Alison, HRCI, and SHRM and began self-learning at home in my free time. Getting new education and certifications helped cultivate my leadership skills in my industry on my terms and I expanded into a professional world where I have more time to continue my HR and leadership education, maintain work-life balance AND continue to give my clients the level of service they expect and deserve. The ability to self-start and self-learn are the first indications that you are on your way to being a leader in your field. Those are the hardest steps to take.

Some of the most impactful things that develop leaders require no resources. This includes showing up and being an example of leadership. Continue to up skill yourself on leadership skills so that you are a walking example that people can learn from. This includes learning about emotional intelligence, and cultural awareness.

Working with limited resources is something I'm very familiar with. While it presents challenges, resourcefulness and ingenuity have always been the keys to overcoming them. Here are 3 cost-effective ways to leverage the existing resources from within the organization for leadership development 1. Identify potential mentors among current leaders who are willing to provide guidance and support 2. Offer opportunities for emerging leaders to hone their skills through involvement in projects where they can practice and refine their leadership abilities 3. Start a peer support group dedicated to sharing knowledge, experiences, and best practices related to leadership

Develop leaders, with low or no budget, by building a storytelling culture. Encourage leaders (and everyone else!) to share their journey, their experience and their purpose in forums such as weekly meetings, offsites, Townhalls. When we share stories, we build emotional connection and shape culture, creating leaders who lead through relationship not job title.

You don’t need resources or huge budgets to develop new leaders. Leadership is a journey which people embark on with a clear vision & purpose to serve others without any reward. Leaders are born and not made. You can for sure develop & enhance the skills of an individual showing leadership traits. Best way is to set a precedent through your actions. Be humble, be approachable, be kind, compassionate, empathetic, eager to learn from mistakes and be courageous enough to admit if you don’t know something. People will voluntarily follow such a person, adapt the ways which have been shown in practice. A great leader makes more leaders and not followers. Period!

Requires creativity, prioritization, and a focus on leveraging existing assets. Try some Ideas: ? Peer Mentoring ? On-the-Job Training ? leverage Online Resources ?Cross-Functional Collaboration: Encourage cross-functional collaboration and teamwork to foster leadership skills. Assigning individuals to interdisciplinary projects allows them to develop skills in communication, collaboration, and problem-solving. ? Feedback and Coaching