How to ensure leadership development programmes deliver business impact

Although exposing leaders to leading-edge theories and concepts could still add further value, the real challenge usually lies in implementing these concepts as this typically requires real wisdom, deep self-understanding and the ability to artfully balance polarities. The biggest lever for enhancing leadership effectiveness therefore lies in:

• Strengthening their personal character base and maturity as a foundation for their leadership role

• Building capacity to deal with the complex environment and uncertainty
• Developing the relationship skills required to influence and collaborate effectively

• Developing the capacity to monitor and challenge own thinking.

Structured leadership development programmes are often the preferred method chosen to enhance leadership effectiveness. Adhering to the following principles will ensure that such programmes deliver tangible business results:

1. Customise the leadership development process to support the strategic context of the business

Development interventions realise more benefit if adapted according to the relevant contextual requirements. Leadership development programmes thus need to be crafted specific to the organisations strategic context and reality, thus it is important to adopt an approach of content with context:

• Content in the organisation's manager context - what is my role as leader in the organisation's strategic and operational leadership landscape?
  
• Content in personal context - what are my personal barriers, levers and dynamics relating to this context and the programme content?

Leadership development processes further need to be aligned with the organisational vision, strategic direction and focused on creating the strategically appropriate culture.

2. Focus on deep level change for sustainable growth and results

Sustainable change results from a shift in all the dimensions of the individual - intention, thinking, emotion and behaviour. The aim of any leadership development programme should thus be to facilitate personal transformation to ensure deep entrenchment of new behaviour.

As a leader and manager, your personal self is your biggest tool. Your effectiveness as a leader and manager will be fundamentally limited or enabled by your level of personal awareness and effectiveness.

Furthermore, effective leadership development means holistic person development, and consequently, should focus both on changing external behaviour in line with the relevant organisational competencies and management behaviour as well as changing internal frameworks, patterns and neural pathways to ensure behavioural agility and sustainable change.

3. Design the programme based on leading-edge process design and a strong focus on the experiential and business application

Successful learning/growth interventions are as much dependent on process (the how) as they are on content (the what). Accordingly, leadership development programmes should be built on leading edge best practice content and also supported by an appropriate and anchoring development process.

Fundamental to the success of any development effort is the ability to create a shift in people's inner world. The process of the actual learning intervention (the way delegates are engaged) is as critically important as the content (theory, information slides and workbook) of the intervention.

Effective skills transfer requires a multi-faceted approach built on the following cornerstones:

• Experiential Learning: Active engagement of workshop participants via simulations, structured exercises, group discussions and role-plays that are processed for learning.

• Adult Learning Principles: Activities are linked to actual experiences with the focus on relevant information and real time feedback for delegates to evaluate their own and others' performance.
• Multi-sensory: Information intake is secured by using multi-sensory information acquisition through all senses.

• Practical application: Development should be closely linked to the real application in day-to-day work.

4. Craft learning journeys rather than facilitate interventions/events that are not embedded in a bigger change process

An appropriate learning journey should be designed for the specific target population to ensure that sustainable change takes place through a process of gaining insight, experimenting, and application over time. Should the learning journey consist of group-based "modules", ensure that these are supported by custom-designed sustaining mechanisms to enhance and entrench the learnings.

These sustaining mechanisms could include facilitated peer group learning sessions, individual coaching support, line manager orientation and development contracting, self-reflection tasks, pre- and post- module assignments and syndicated tasks etc.

As for the group-based modules, it is important that these interventions are designed in such a way that they adhere to the following principles:

• Focus on internalisation of learnings and assisting leaders to work through any blockages they may experience.
  
• Create in-depth self-awareness through personal profiling processes - we cannot manage what we are not aware of.
  
• Provide the opportunity for application of learnings to ensure business impact and integration.
  
• Supported by practical tools and techniques, but also ensuring the appreciation of the underlying principle and personal implication.

5. Enable a growth environment with "best in class" facilitation

It is critical that the learning process strikes a balance between process and content to drive "here-and-now" learning at both rational and emotive levels within the class room setting.

Successful leadership programmes are therefore not "trained". The facilitation approach is more often than not the difference that makes the difference. Deeply skilled and experienced development facilitators (not "soft skills trainers") are critical to ensure not only the active engagement of the delegates, but also to ensure a process-based approach where the group and individual processes that play out are used as vital learning mechanisms.