A leadership development plan is a useful tool to ensure that your organization has a strong pipeline of future leaders. The continuous evolution and success of any organization are linked to the continuous growth and evolution of its leadership. Creating a solid leadership development plan helps outline detailed steps to identify and nurture the next generation of leaders within your organization.
A leadership development plan is a strategic plan designed to help employees gain and develop leadership competencies and prepare them for management and leadership roles within an organization.
This plan is usually structured, long-term and personalized for the unique needs of an employee and the organization. It outlines learning objectives and activities an employee is going to undertake to reach their goals.
Steps to creating a leadership development plan
1. Assess and identify talent
Some organizations have a formal leadership development program and talent pools from which they can select talent for a specific leadership development plan. However, some organizations do not have formal talent identification or assessment procedures.
For those organizations, we would recommend a simple 9 Box Grid. A 9 Box Grid measures potential (future performance capacity) vs. performance (present performance). Ideally, you should select High Potentials, Stars, and High Performers for a leadership development plan.
2. Obtain buy-in from key stakeholders
For a leadership development plan to work, there must be buy-in from senior leadership, the manager or supervisor of the targeted employee(s), and the employee.
A leadership development plan often requires more significant investment into that employee. This usually includes allocating a budget for it to be successful. The budget would need to be approved by senior leadership before proceeding. A consideration Senior Leadership may have before approving the budget is the degree to which the plan aligns with the organization’s strategic objectives. The Senior Leadership may also want to be the final approver on who is selected to participate in the leadership development plan.
The manager/supervisor also needs to be engaged in this process. The reason for this is that the targeted employee may need to take on additional projects and attend training that divides the employee’s focus from current work commitments. They may also be temporarily assigned to another team to develop additional competencies. Unless the manager/supervisor has bought into this plan, it is hardly likely to succeed because the employee will feel torn by these different demands.
The employee(s) targeted for this plan also must want to participate. While this may seem like a great opportunity, there may be an employee or two who may not want to participate or wish to postpone participation for another time. This may be due to other personal commitments, or the employee may not be interested. Not every employee wants to be in a leadership position, even if they may have the capacity to be a leader.
3. Identify the leadership style
There may be an overarching leadership style within the organization that is expected of potential leaders. This may be based on the organization’s culture and business needs. According to American Express Business Trends and Insights, there are seven different leadership styles. An eighth style, transformational leadership, has been gaining traction.
Autocratic
Authoritative
Democratic
Pacesetting
Coaching
Affiliative
Laissez-faire
Transformational
An organization may prefer one or two of these styles. However, the current uncertainty and volatility of business environments require leaders to function effectively in several of these, depending on the situation.
4. Determine the key leadership competencies
Identifying key leadership competencies needed for the organization’s current and future success is essential to carrying out a successful leadership development plan. These competencies become the foundation of the developmental plan. Developing them means ensuring the next generation of leaders are ready for current challenges and unknown crises yet to be encountered.
SHRM классифицирует лидерские компетенции на три группы:
Компетенции для руководства организацией
Компетенции для руководства другими
Компетенции для лидерства в себе
Moreover, there are three additional competencies to highlight:
Cultural Intelligence (CQ) – It measures a leader’s capability to relate and work effectively in culturally diverse situations. It is the drive and knowledge leaders have and the strategy and action they take to understand and intergate into different cultures to achieve business objectives. Organizations and stakeholders are becoming more and more diverse, and therefore leaders need to be culturally competent. Cultural intelligence and competence are foundational to leaders developing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment.
Digital Intelligence (DQ) – According to the DQ Institute, DQ is “the sum of social, emotional and cognitive abilities that enable individuals to face the challenges and adapt to the demands of digital life.”
Agility – The book ‘Imagine It Forward’ (Comstock, Raz 2018) says, “good leaders absorb the shock waves and anxiety in moments of radical change.” Good leaders have the ability to use these moments of radical change to propel their organizations forward.
5. Assess key leadership competencies
To understand what the leadership development plan will entail, the organization will have to assess the selected employee(s) against the critical leadership competencies identified. The results of this assessment will highlight where the competency gaps of the employee are. Then, use these gaps to identify and/or design the most suitable developmental opportunities for the employee to bridge those gaps.
A few Leadership Assessment Tools that can be considered are:
Consult your organization’s Learning & Development subject matter experts to develop the appropriate learning opportunities for the employees. Incorporate as many of the learning solutions as possible listed below to provide a rich learning environment for the employee:
Self-paced micro-learning – Similar to LinkedIn Learning and Google Grow.
Complementary leadership mentoring – This type of mentoring pairs potential leaders with leaders who are strong in the competencies they are weak in.
Job shadowing – This allows the employee to get a realistic view of how a job flows. It also presents an opportunity to meet key stakeholders, and understand the challenges on the job.
Job rotation – The employee assumes new roles for a period of three to six months, often for a temporary period.
Professional development course – These are usually 2-3-day offsite training for a particular skill or competency.
Professional certifications – Employees may need to acquire and maintain professional certifications to perform in certain roles and be deemed credible by their peers.
This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. You should combine the learning strategies in a way that helps your employees meet their goals.
You want to know if your leadership development program is effective and reaches its goals. That’s why you need to create a way to monitor the employee’s progress during and to determine readiness after completion of a leadership development plan.
Leadership development plan template
Using a leadership development plan template allows you to streamline the process of nurturing and advancing potential leaders within your organization. It provides a clear framework that outlines the key components of leadership development, including goal setting, skill development, action plans, timeframes, and feedback.
A customizable leadership development plan template caters to the unique strengths and areas for improvement of each employee, helping engage and motivate them. At the same time, it aligns their growth with the strategic objectives of the organization.
What’s more, incorporating such a template into your organizational practices promotes consistency, accountability, and measurable progress in leadership training.
Invest in your future leaders by creating leadership development plans and ensuring that the right skills are identified and developed in real time. Have them take the Modern Leader course. Only a modern leader can effectively manage a modern team in the age of the digital revolution!
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