How do you align leadership development goals with organizational outcomes?

Two thoughts: a) leadership development = the company. That is a fact; so not much "alignment" needed there. b) building leaders takes time, consistency, budget, and buy-in. So the bigger challenge is how to stick with this throughout the business cycle, recessions, CXO changes, and skepticism.

With defining scope; it’s important to work backwards from the overall strategy and vision for the company. The problem is most companies have done a terrible job at defining their vision. They may have “vision statements” but most of the time they are too generic or ambiguous to actually take anyone anywhere. There’s no point in developing leaders if you don’t know what direction you are going to point them once you are done.

Leaders development should be not only focused on the mission and vision of the organization but the organization behaviour, Leaders KPIs and the ecosystem behaviour.

I have a couple of points to add: 1. Work with the leadership/management to design the leadership development program. Assess the needs of the group and avoid imposing a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits all, program. Off-the, shelf solutions can work as a generic solution but a more tailored and nuanced approach may better fit your business, your culture, and individuals within your team. 2. Consider the different requirements of senior leaders and more junior managers. Some of it may be the same but it's likely that the requirement at the senior level may be better fulfilled by individual coaching, whereas the more junior level may be well served by group classes.

Great leadership can be boiled down to 3 main skills; Future-seeing; Decision-making; Persuasion. Any leadership development program should follow this process. 1) Assess which one of the three areas there are deficiencies 2) Identify the baseline skill level in there areas 3) Aim for a 1% improvement through the training 4) Re-assess afterwards. It’s rinse and repeat from there.

Including Action Learning in the program will help you measure the impact, during and after its completion. For each competency, identify a real-life business problem and create assignments that challenge participants to find a solution. With each assignment, learners work with advisors in the business to apply theories, tools and models to the challenge at hand. These assignments make the program relevant and engaging, plus they provide data on how well learners throughout the program. I end these programs with a group capstone project that quantifies either cost savings or revenue generation.

Utilize Action Learning Assignments, Knowledge Checks, feedback from learners, mentors, and managers, and the results of Capstone Projects. These diverse data sources offer insights into program strengths, gaps, knowledge acquisition, and real-world application. Successful leadership development programs adapt to evolving leader and business needs.

In a complex world it may not be desirable to define organizational outcomes before the start of a leadership program. "You can't solve a problem with the same thinking that created it" (attributed to Albert Einstein). Leadership in a world full of wicked problems needs more emphasis on problem "setting," which, in itself, can be a very powerful leadership development intervention. Let the leaders-in-development define the organizational outcomes through experiential learning and generative dialogue rather than asking the organization's current leadership. Together with colleagues I developed an approach called Learning-Based Work in which learning is the goal and the work (innovation opportunities, etc.) emerges from that.

Actualmente, el verdadero liderazgo va más allá de solo dar órdenes; se trata de empoderar a nuestro equipo. Como líderes, nuestro objetivo es crear un ambiente donde los miembros del equipo se sientan seguros para asumir roles de liderazgo en sus áreas y tomar decisiones. Esto implica fomentar su independencia y confianza tanto profesional como personal. Así, cuando surjan problemas, serán capaces de analizar diferentes escenarios y presentar sus ideas no para buscar una instrucción directa, sino una orientación que los ayude a tomar una decisión por sí mismos y, por ende, crecer en carácter. Este enfoque transforma el liderazgo en una herramienta para el desarrollo personal colectivo, asegurando un impacto positivo en las empresas.