According to a research published by Harvard Business, the majority of organizations have leadership development programs, however, only 7% describe their programs as “best in class”.
This statistic indicates that up to 93% of the current leadership development programs may ultimately be failing both the leaders who participate in them and their organizations!
Furthermore, we all know that the success of an organization lies in the strength of its leaders. With that, organizations need to make continuous efforts to develop leaders who will pave the way for that success.
But why such programs fail?
We have been delivering successful leadership development programs within the Middle East for a decade now, and we have seen businesses coming to us after they failed doing it on their own or through the recruitment of external providers; thus we know for a fact some of the reasons why such programs failed, the following is a non-comprehensive list of “why”:
- Programs are not packed up with succession planning objectives & initiatives.
- Buy-in from managers/leaders was not solicited by all means, in other words managers did not support the program nor accepted it.
- Program components do not match the needed skillset.
- Management do it To managers not With Furthermore, Management did not provide the right support nor the required environment.
- The lack of pre-screening to measure the compatibility of the manager to the training program.
- Objective assessment tools, profiling and a feedback mechanism, all were not integrated in these programs.
- Different learning styles and preferences of the program participants were not taken into account.
- Lack of follow-up, like coaching managers after they attend similar programs, nor they were provided with the required implementation tools.
Back to the same research by Harvard Business, skills that a comprehensive leadership development program should include are:
- Accountability
- Coaching
- Change management
- Communication
- Influence and negotiation
At iLEAD we managed to develop and deliver best in class and world-class leadership development training programs equipping leaders with needed and most crucial skills, tools and behaviors so they confidently lead others and drive the best performance of their team and/or their organization.
Furthermore, we recommend the inclusion of the following skills in any leadership program you consider putting together:
- Emotional Intelligence
- Creativity & Innovation
- Conversational Leadership
- Transformational Leadership
- Performance Management
- Motivation
- Building High Performing Teams
Good Luck Leading…