Helping leaders grow

When talents come into an organisation at the entry level or early in their career, there’s no question that they need development. But this training should not only happen with a view to workers doing their jobs more effectively. It should also cover the skills needed at higher roles and areas of greater responsibility.

The fact is successful staff are often promoted before they have received any specific management training and this is when they might feel both unprepared and excessively challenged. As managers are developed in the organisation and moved upwards, the softer skills in leadership become more and more important. It is, therefore, critical for companies to have a comprehensive staggered leadership development plan that develops leaders at multiple levels of the organisation and at different points in their career.

The fundamental need

Leadership development is now on the agenda of CEOs, directors and boards of organisations around the world. While Asia may have been slow off the blocks in the first instance, this issue has since become one of the most important talent issues that these leaders deal with - given the scarcity of qualified talent and leaders in the region. Even ignoring some of the most eye-popping statistics that the wars for talent are helping to create, there is indeed a huge shortage of leadership talent now plaguing major economies around Asia. Needless to say, organisations that had seen this coming a few years ago and took proactive steps to oil their leadership machines are now set to break away from their competitors, who may have deferred this important issue.

HSBC Singapore, for instance, has taken a multi-pronged approach to its leadership development strategies. The company has a tailored curriculum, the Leadership and Management Development Learning Map, which aligns all soft skills training to a global leadership capabilities framework. It includes both classroom and eLearning seminars.

Tammarika Tricarico, Senior Vice President of Talent Management and Strategic Resourcing, HSBC Singapore, says the bank partners with a number of business schools to organise its strategic programmes. The courses are designed to challenge and provoke participants, and to provide tools, frameworks, models and examples of internal and external best practice, which will ultimately help improve individual and company performance.

“A programme calendar is released each year; courses are run at different locations,” she says. “Our leaders may attend a programme at any location (including London, Singapore and Mexico City) further facilitating global networking between colleagues in addition to programme participation.”

HSBC also offers opportunities for short-term attachments and long-term international secondments through its global network of offices. On top of these, high potential talent have chances to participate in bank-wide projects such as employee engagement initiatives and corporate social responsibility schemes.

As staff move up the ranks, external qualifications become paramount. HSBC Singapore also offers sponsorship to complete such courses, optimising the capabilities of its leaders to support the both professional and business objectives. Trucario says this also enhances staff performance in their existing roles and assists with the development of their careers.

Gaining momentum

The 70-20-10 rule applies to leadership development as much as any talent, experts say. This means that 70% of a leader’s development should be through appropriate job roles that stretch them to develop their leadership skills. 20%, meanwhile, should come from mentoring and coaching; while just 10% of development should come from formal training and learning activities.

Pushp Deep Gupta, Client Partner, Leadership and Talent Consulting, Korn/Ferry International, says this simple model should be a fundamental anchor for all training efforts. “A clear understanding of the leadership pipeline and the different competencies required at each level is critical,” he tells HRM. “There is clear and compelling research around the different ‘leadership transition levels’, and how the demands from leaders change at each point.”

No matter where a staff member is working currently, development of skills critical to the next level he or she is being considered for should start immediately, he says. “It cannot wait until the leader actually moves up the pipeline to the next level.”

Development via “experiences” can be as formal and as informal as desired, as long as there is a certain level of “developmental heat” and rigorous debriefing for every lesson, Gupta adds. Formal modes could include experiences in turnaround situations, crisis management, international assignments and task forces. Informal modes could include mentoring and shadowing of other leaders in the organisation.

Building the pipeline

So what happens when these trained, developed and successful leaders retire or jump ship? Nancy Verhoeven, executive coach, Vincere Coaching, says that could be just the time for those preparing for their role to step up. “Some of the best leaders I have known will say, ‘I know I am doing my job when I am no longer needed and I have prepared someone else for my job so that I can move on to bigger and better things in my career’,” she says. “Succession planning is crucial for any leader who wants to develop him or herself. Without this, they will tend to be held back and ‘hold on’ to positions that should be passed on.”

However, real succession planning is more than just deciding who is going to take over a leadership role. Arthur Carmazzi, founder of Directive Communication Psychology, says it’s also about building and maintaining the desired corporate culture. “If you have a great culture, you want to perpetuate it, and it must evolve as does the face of business, social interaction and technology,” he says. “Every potential successor must have the understanding of how he or she would affect (that) culture. They must have a clear picture of the corporate culture that exists and the culture objectives, and must work with and help evolve guiding principles that have been set by the organisation.”

Measuring the success

“I measure the success of leadership development if the organisation is healthy financially, the environment is an exciting place for people to work, employees feel motivated to give more than they are asked to give, and they feel valued for their contributions,” Verhoeven observes.

However, there are also a number of more quantitative metrics that can be applied to Leadership Development. In the short term, metrics around replacement planning, satisfaction of participants with leadership development programs, completion of action learning projects, engagement and retention of High Potential talent can be considered, Gupta says. “Over the long term, there is only one key metric for Leadership Development: have you been able to staff your most critical business challenges and initiatives with the best possible talent available internally as well as externally?

“If many more have been staffed by talent internally (which has been benchmarked with the best externally) you have succeeded,” he says.

Andrew Bryant, Director of the Singapore-based Self Leadership International training consultancy, agrees. “When you are able to promote from within your pipeline and when senior manager easily and effectively take the reins of the business (you can consider your leadership development strategies a success),” he says. “Of course, it is a lot easier to measure the failure in terms of loss of profit, and loss of key people.”

The contrast between success and failure has been most stark in the aftermath of last year’s economic downturn. Bryant says those organisations that neglected leadership development are now finding themselves far behind their rivals that maintained their leadership training strategies as times got tough. “Some of my clients put leadership development ‘on hold’ whilst others continued with their plans recognising that it was part of their core strategy,” he tells HRM. “I have hard evidence that those who continued have hit 2010 running, whilst the other are scrambling to play catch up.”