The ‘New’ Journey to Leadership Excellence

Jennifer, the Regional HR Director of a Belgium based Multinational contacted me with the following request: “Charlie, we have a leadership talent pipeline issue. Most of our C-Level executives in Asia will retire within the coming 3-4 years. Most of the managers reporting to them are not ready to take over such top management positions, yet. Hiring from outside is for numerous reasons not a viable option, so we need to do something to accelerate their development. Otherwise, we’ll run into major issues in a couple of years from now.

We thought of sending them to an executive development program of any of the top business schools, but that seems also not a very good option, because we’re looking at developing 15-20 leaders in Asia alone, trusting that about half will make it to the top. And sending 15-20 leaders to such program will be a tremendous cost. Also, in our business we need very practical and hands-on leaders even at top level, and we’re afraid that the programs offered by the business schools won’t really suit them.

What should we do?”

If Jennifer would have asked me this question 10-15 years ago, my answer probably would have been:

• Let’s identify the development needs
• Then let’s run a series of leadership workshops
• Then let’s do a bit of follow-up to support the implementation of what they learnt

While this approach achieved some visible improvements, it rarely led to a very significant transformation of the participants.

The Challenges

Over the years, we kept experimenting and researching the best ways to transform leaders to get ready for more senior roles. But we faced many challenges:

• Lack of willingness of participants to do what it takes
• Identifying what would have the greatest positive impact on the participants if developed
• Geographical dispersion of participants – difficult to get them together numerous times at the same time into the same place
• Achieving an optimal learning impact during classroom sessions
• Insufficient action of applying what was learnt (main excuse: ‘no time’)
• Limited budget for development
• Having the most suitable facilitator(s) for the program in terms of background, language requirements, location, etc.

These challenges are still there today, but we have a lot more possibilities today to address them effectively than 10-15 years ago. I’d like to share a few things that we learnt and how we integrate them in our transformational leadership development programs:

1.     Structuring Leadership Development Journeys

2.     Maximizing Impact through thorough Assessment

3.     Learning Approaches

4.     Measuring the Impact

5.     Integration of (new) Technologies

1.   Structuring Leadership Development Journeys

An impactful and transformational leadership journey is like a great meal. It contains different dishes made of premium ingredients and cooked by a great chef. Different people will like different dishes and therefore a number of ingredients need to be available to ensure we can cook the ‘right’ dishes.

Likewise, in a Leadership Development Journey, we’ll need to decide which ‘dishes’ we ‘cook’ and what ingredients are needed. In order to decide that, we first need to have 100% clarity about the purpose of this program (e.g. in Jennifer’s case prepare for C-Level) and the specific objectives (e.g. improved Strategic Thinking, Entrepreneurial Mindset, etc.). With that clarity, we can start to put the ‘dishes’ together and look for the needed ingredients.

Here is an example of possible ‘dishes’ for the ‘meal’:

Here is an example of possible ingredients:

Like with cooking, having great ingredients doesn’t guarantee a great meal. They need to be carefully combined and skillfully processed to ensure tasty dishes. In the case of Leadership Development Journeys, that means a tailoring to some degree of the ingredients. For example, if cases or role-plays are part of any workshops, then they need to be tailored for optimal impact on and learning transfer by the participants.

2.   Maximizing Impact through thorough Assessment

Knowing what kind of development would best serve the purpose of the program, can help focus resources and limit the impact on the budget while maximizing the effect in terms of transformation.

There are multiple ways how this can be addressed, for example:

• Stakeholder Interviews
• 360 Degree Assessments
• Psychometric Assessments
• Full-blown Development Centers (we call them ‘Progress Centers’)
• Shadowing (observing participants in ‘real-life’)

As a rule of thumb, you could say: the more extensive the leadership development program will be, the more you should invest in this first step in order to optimize the use of the budget.

A few hints what to pay attention to when using one or more of these assessment methods:

• Stakeholder Interviews: make sure to prepare a meaningful script and have a capable interviewer conduct it who is able to ‘dig deeper’ to identify the true development needs; stakeholders can include participants, line managers of participants and HR/L&D.
• 360 Degree Assessments: make sure the questionnaire is tailored to what you’re looking for; assessees should have been in their current role for at least 6 months and the questionnaire needs to include only behaviors that can be meaningfully observed; also ensure confidentiality and trust in the process to get honest feedback.
• Psychometric Assessments: the biggest issue with psychometric assessments is validity, specifically construct validity (‘does it measure what it claims?’), reliability (‘are the results reliable?’) and predictive validity (‘can it predict strengths and areas for development for future roles?’). Only psychometric assessments that fulfill these criteria are really useful to assess development needs.
• Development Centers (Progress Centers): Development Centers are relatively complex undertakings to assess development needs but can bring numerous benefits justifying the relatively high investment, if done properly. Frequent flaws in Development Centers include lack of ownership by participants (can be countered through laser coaching sessions integrated into the various activities), ignorance of flip behaviors (can be identified through Harrison Paradox Report), poor / inconsistent role-players (remedy: engagement of professional actors), and incompetent observers (remedy: engagement of professional internal/external coaches experienced with this task).
• Shadowing: finding the right opportunities for shadowing as well as openness of those being shadowed can be a challenge; also, the observer must have strong observation and note taking skills to ensure a meaningful outcome.

3.   Learning Approaches

Over the years we have learnt to appreciate the impact of blended approaches. At the core of any integrated leadership development journey are workshops conducted in classroom or virtually. Traditional directive training/teaching methods in workshops have proven to be of little effect when it comes to developing leadership excellence. To learn more about why this is the case, please read 'Karate by PowerPoint'.

However, workshops alone won’t be sufficient to achieve real transformation. We found blending workshops with several other activities amplify the transformational impact:

• Follow-up Group Coaching Sessions: essential to support participants in the implementation of their action plans, to hold them accountable, share successes and address challenges.
• Moderated Peer Coaching Sessions: a great way to keep ‘sharpening the saw’ as Stephen Covey called it in his management classic “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. If set up properly, it becomes a cost-effective and self-perpetuating way of developing leadership excellence.
• Learning Expeditions/Safaris: exchanging ideas with and learning from executives in ‘very different’ organizations can be deeply inspiring and accelerate the transformation process, if meaningful meetings can be arranged and an effective debrief is conducted.
• Immersion Experiences: letting participants experience something they’d normally never experience can be transformational in itself, e.g. working for one day in a homeless shelter can build humility; or help building houses in rural areas of developing countries for several days can totally shift perspective on life and work.
• 1:1 Executive Coaching: allows participants to address and work on very individual goals with guidance of a professional (internal or external) coach.
• 1:1 Mentoring: gaining effective support from a senior leader helps broadening the perspective and professional network, as well as gaining insights into the inner mechanics of the organization. Well set up mentoring programs include workshops for both mentees and mentors, a clear process, and a comprehensive and helpful guidebook on the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of mentoring.
• Team Project: setting up a meaningful multi-months project for sub-teams of 4-6 participants allows all participants to leverage and implement the learning from workshops while honing their collaboration and communication skills.

4.   Measuring the Impact

“If you can’t measure it - it doesn’t exist.” This quote, attributed to Joan Freeman of Middlesex University, might appear provocative, but she has a point. How would we know transformation or development of leadership excellence has happened if we have no way of measuring it?

While it tends to be more challenging to measure intangibles like leadership excellence compared to tangibles, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done at all.

A few ways to achieve that include

• Post-Program Shadowing of participants in real-life situations
• Post 360 Degree Feedback (would require pre-360 feedback for comparison purpose)
• Interviews with key stakeholders
• Post Surveys

While none of these approaches will be super accurate, they can still give valuable insights on what worked well (to keep doing it) and what needs further attention.

5.   Integration of (New) Technologies

The most significant changes to how we develop leadership excellence today are inspired and supported by new technologies. Here are some aspects of integrated leadership development journeys that would not have been (easily) possible 10 or more years ago:

• Virtual Delivery: increasingly, leaders are dispersed among multiple locations and getting them all into a classroom is often a challenge, time and resources-wise. The technology for video conferencing has made tremendous progress in terms of quality and reliability and cost has come down to almost 0. While delivery must need to be adjusted a bit in a virtual format, almost all activities that are done in classroom can be done virtually, too (with some modifications), including breakout sessions, role-plays, etc. Virtual delivery has the added benefit that a supervisor of the facilitator can easily ‘sit in’ to observe even if located in another country or even continent. Also, the choice of facilitator is not location dependent anymore (if you want to avoid flying in people). Also, the ease of recording virtual sessions allows to have anyone who misses a session to catch up easily.
• Digital Micro-Learning: while there were mixed reactions to e-learning, digital micro-learning takes e-learning to a whole new and different level. Engagement levels have proven to be a lot higher and the same is true for retention of learned contents. Having most theories, models, etc. covered by digital micro-learning allows a lot more time in classroom to practice the application of the same, significantly improving the impact overall.
• Program Platform: with more integrated programs comes more complexity due to multiple activities, timelines, etc. Using a meaningful program platform allows participants and stakeholders track each individual’s progress and completion rate 
• Not yet reality, but likely future technology moves: a digital affective bot who accompanies participants into real-life situations, providing guidance and reminders on essential behaviors (or committed behavioral changes). Also, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to penetrate Digital Micro-Learning and other platforms and make such tools a lot ‘smarter’. Virtual delivery is also likely to include major innovations such as hologram applications, etc. We will see a lot more exciting developments in the coming years.

Back to Jennifer, she opted for this scope for her 15-20 high-potentials:

-       Development Needs Assessment

o   Progress Center (light version), to narrow down from 15-20 to 10 participants in the Leadership Journey and to identify most critical development areas among these 10 participants

• Development Activities

o   Series of 1-day Workshops in classroom and 2hrs Workshops virtually delivered – contents based identified development needs

o   Digital Micro-Learning as preparation for each workshop

o   Immersion Experience (half day engagement with mentally handicapped people)

o   6 hours of Mentoring Sessions (both Mentors & Mentees underwent a workshop on mentoring)

o   Series of Follow-up Group Coaching Sessions (1 * 90mins after each workshop)

-       Measurement

o   Jennifer opted for ‘Post-360 Degree Assessment’ and selected interviews to be carried out with key stakeholders.

If you are serous about developing leadership excellence among the talents in your organization, don’t just cook instant noodles, but prepare a delicious meal with great ingredients that improves your odds of happy customers…

Charlie Lang is a CXO Coach and the Founder of Progress-U Group in Asia. He's considered a thought leader in the areas of Corporate Culture Transformation and Coaching.