Centralized or Decentralized Succession Planning?
One of the important strategic decisions you'll have to make when determining how to approach your succession planning is whether you want the execution of it to be centralized or decentralized.
Centralized
If you choose the centralized route, HR will be the hub of the succession planning. They will know who is in the pipeline, they will oversee or even prescribe the professional development that those people will need in order to be prepared, they will sign people up for classes, send them to conferences, hire them coaches, and make sure that they are progressing along a career path and/or a learning path.
Decentralized
In the decentralized approach, all of those responsibilities just listed will be taken on by every department head, whatever title you want to give that (manager, director, VP, etc.). In the decentralized approach, each individual department will plan their own succession pipeline and keep HR in the loop. HR will not have individual sightlines into each department’s or each individual’s succession plan. Instead, HR will be kept apprised of the plan and act as a consultant to the department head.
The role of HR is very different in the centralized versus decentralized approach. In the decentralized approach HR is more of an advisor to each individual department, as opposed to owning the process and making sure that the company, as a whole, has succession planning in place.
Example
If a department head says “I want my folks to have more industry knowledge,” HR would say, “OK, give me a week and I'll come back with a couple of options that might fit your goals.” What HR won't do is assess where people stand now, what development they need, or be involved in the development process in any way other than an advisory role.
HR’s Responsibility
The responsibility that HR has when the process is decentralized is that HR has to make sure that all department heads know what they're doing.
· Do they know how to plan a career trajectory?
· Do they know how to delegate?
· Do they know how to identify special projects or stretch assignments?
· Do they know how to coach?
· Do they know how to teach their people how to coach?
· Are they willing to let people go from their department in order to advance their career and make a more well-rounded contributor to the organization?
The centralized versus decentralized decision depends on how your organization prefers to manage the process and how much time and dedication you think your individual department heads will give to the process. Also, consider if a department head leaves, will the next leader be on board with this responsibility?
Warning: There is one glaring problem when succession planning is decentralized, and that is: if a particular department just drops the ball. HR may not be apprised of the fact that there may be a big gap in the succession pipeline of a particular department. In the centralized scenario, HR will make sure that every spoke in your company hub has a succession plan in place, and people are progressing through that plan.
Interleaving + Succession Planning
Interleaving is actually a term used in education: It is a process whereby students mix, or interleave, multiple subjects or topics while they study, in order to improve their learning. For example: when learning about Italy, the math segment might teach about how to calculate the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The history segment might teach about Italy’s alliance with Germany during WWII, and the health segment might teach about the people who live in “blues.”
The way that I like to think of interleaving is similar to this piece of fabric where you have multiple colors that are intertwined with one another, and it's hard to tell where one begins and one ends. They all work together simultaneously to make one pattern.
Similarly, succession planning isn't a standalone.
It includes career paths that you create for every role and every department in your organization so that people know where their careers can go and what they can achieve in your organization.
As well as learning paths that are cobbled on top of - or done in conjunction with - career paths. So not only do people know where their career will go, but they also know what learning or accomplishments they have to achieve in order to hit all of those career milestones.
And it includes performance appraisals. What are you rewarding people for?
And regular performance appraisal conversations tie all of these things together.
Do your managers know how to have worthwhile performance conversations? Are they asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years? What would you like to learn more about, in this organization? Is there a job you'd like to move to, laterally?” These are questions that generally aren't heard in performance appraisal conversations because most performance appraisal conversations look backward rather than looking forward.
And again, when it comes to succession planning, all of these things are done simultaneously. They aren’t done consecutively, they don’t build upon one another, they are interwoven. You're doing all of these things simultaneously, which bolsters your pipeline of future employees.
I often say that succession planning isn't hard, but it is time-consuming and quite tedious. You have to maintain extraordinary attention to detail because there are so many moving parts that have to function on their own as well as intertwined with one another. And the organization has to support all of these things simultaneously.
The reason that I use the term interleaving when talking about succession planning (and I’m probably the only person who does!) is because it is a perfect descriptor of the intertwining of the different “threads” that organizations must define and then commit to support in the long term, in order to ensure they have capable and ready future leaders in their pipeline.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
The Importance of Clarifying Leadership Competencies and Skills
Are you a great communicator?
Do your employees trust you?
Are you able to inspire people to do more than they themselves thought they could?
These are all behaviors of a leader - yet most interviews for senior leaders never screen for these qualities.
In this issue of Succession Planning Tips we are going to focus on the critical differences between behavioral competencies and skills - because without understanding the difference, you cannot hire leaders who gel with your organization.
Why is it important to define the competencies and skills of a leader?
Differentiating between competencies and skills is important because a lot of organizations are finding themselves having to hire senior leaders from outside their organizations. The current senior leaders have been on the job for decades and companies have not had the foresight to prepare younger generations to step into senior roles. If you are looking to fill senior leadership (aka C-suite roles) roles you need to know what you're looking for in terms of cultural fit with the organization and its values - and 99% of that fit has nothing to do with what the potential new leader knows but rather with how they behave.
What’s the difference between competency and skills?
A competency encompasses various skills; skills that put a finer point on defining a leader.
For instance, one of the competencies you might want your senior leaders to possess is “excellent communication skills.” Who among us has not seen that on a job posting, right? But what does that look like in terms of actual behavior? Is “excellent communicator” one thing or many things? It might mean:
“In this organization, we speak respectfully to one another.”
“We welcome feedback and we act on it.”
“It's okay to speak truth to power in this organization.”
Here's a different way of looking at it: Say you have a child who needs a bit of behavior modification. Saying, “You need to be a good boy,” isn't very specific is it? But breaking down what “good boy” means in terms of skills or behaviors is something you can identify, he or she can comprehend, and you can recognize and reward in practice.
Back to the world of work:
A good rule of thumb is to identify 6-8 competencies and beneath them, 5 to 6 skills/behaviors that further define what that competency looks like in practice. So you might have potential competencies such as:
critical thinker
excellent communicator
thinks strategically
works collaboratively
team-first attitude
ethical
Then you’ll need to define the skills/behaviors that demonstrate those competencies - as the “excellent communicator” example does, above.
When you are interviewing for senior leadership roles your questions should be more about how the person fits within your definition of your company’s critical competencies and not about what they’ve accomplished in their previous roles (we can presume that if they made it to a senior executive interview they have conquered the requisite performance). Rather, ask clarifying and probing questions to determine if someone will be a fit with your organization and continue to promote the values and goals your company and your people work toward.
Get help crafting questions that get at behaviors and fit.
Defining competencies and the skills that make up those competencies puts a finer point on what you expect of a senior leader in your organization - both those who are already with you and those you are inviting to join the organization.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn
The Importance of Breadth and Depth in Your Succession Plan
Succession planning 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀; it's about creating leaders. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮l within your organization today, to ensure a strong leadership pipeline for tomorrow.
In all the years I helped companies with their leadership development there was always one burning question: Can you really teach leadership?
The answer is yes – but it’s not easy and it’s not fast.
The same is true of succession planning.
Although I would say it IS easy – if you have the right plan… but it’s still not a fast process.
Part of the reason it is not fast is the need for breadth and depth in succession planning.
Breadth of Organizational Knowledge/Experience
Breadth in a succession plan refers to the variety and diversity of experiences and expertise that individuals in the succession pipeline possess. It involves having a pool of potential successors who have gained a wide range of experiences across different areas within the organization. These individuals should understand the functioning of the organization as a whole rather than simply being experts in their specific roles or departments – which is what “leadership” looks like in most organizations today.
Having individuals with diverse experiences and backgrounds in the succession pipeline is crucial for several reasons:
1. Holistic Understanding of the Organization:
Employees with diverse experiences throughout the organization have a comprehensive understanding of how different departments and functions operate and intertwine. This knowledge is vital for effective decision-making at higher levels when organizational decisions must be made.
2. Adaptability and Flexibility:
Exposure to various roles and functions fosters adaptability and flexibility in future leaders. They are better equipped to respond to changes, challenges, and opportunities, which is especially important in today's dynamic business environment.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration:
Individuals with experience in multiple areas can bridge invisible barriers and facilitate collaboration between different parts of the organization. Collaboration fosters teamwork and innovation which in turn enhances overall organizational performance.
Depth of Generations
When you have depth in your succession plan, you have multiple layers and generations of potential successors. It is important to cultivate talent at different stages of their careers and identify individuals who can step into critical roles as they progress within the organization.
1. Long-Term Talent Development:
Identifying and nurturing talent early in employees’ careers allows for a long runway of development opportunities, which is crucial for learning behaviors. If you expect a future leader to be knowledgeable in the operations of the whole company – that will require many years of experiences to achieve.
2. Employee Engagement and Retention:
Employees are more likely to stay if they know that your company offers a future for them and a path for career growth.
Incorporating both breadth and depth into your succession plan ensures a comprehensive and robust approach. It's about not only having a diverse pool of potential successors but also nurturing them at different stages of their careers for a seamless leadership transition.
Remember, succession planning is about preparing for a sustainable and thriving future.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn
The 3 C’s of Leadership Development
With record numbers of people quitting their jobs, the mass exodus of Baby Boomers, and the current report that more than 10% of all leadership positions in organizations are currently vacant, there is an urgent demand for leadership development in all kinds of industries.
From the kinds of inquiries we get each week, we’ve realized that most organizations are not approaching leadership development in a strategic way. They are looking for coaching or courses without a real plan for how they will roll them out, what they expect the benefit to be, or who is ultimately responsible for them.
Here are the three C’s of leadership development which are necessary BEFORE you actually begin any development approach:
1. Culture
2. Communication
3. Coaching
Note: It may take a year or more to get these things in place, but it is time well-spent if you want your leadership development efforts to be successful.
1. Culture
For decades organizations in the US have had a “top-down” culture. There are natural progressions from individual contributor, to manager of others, to leaders of departments, divisions and more. For organizations to be successful going forward, however, leadership is less of a position and more of a capability.
This is a significant change in thinking, in practice, and in organizational culture. And organization’s (and society for that matter) do not change their cultures quickly.
The leader’s role now is to develop others. The perspective must shift to “How far can this person go? What can I help him/her achieve?” rather than “What skills do they currently have and do they serve a specific purpose?”
The pandemic has brought this shift to light more quickly. With so many individuals working from home without direct “supervision,” everyone is essentially leading themselves; and for everyone to be successful (the individual and the organization as a whole) they need the ability to grow their capabilities in many ways, with their leader’s support.
Bottom line: Organizations need to shift their culture from control-and-command to guide-and-support.
2. Communication
The next critical practice is communicating - not only communicating the shift in culture but constantly, loudly, reinforcing it. The shift in thinking and practice must cascade from the top of the organization to the bottom. Not only do managers need to know what is expected of them, but employees need to know what to expect of their managers.
This is not a fast process. Much like in marketing, where the maxim is that someone needs to hear or see your ad at least 7 times before it even “registers,” you’ll need to keep communicating the role of the leader is to develop his/her employees.
Additionally, you’ll need to explain why this shift is happening. When everyone does better, the organization itself does better. Increased capabilities means increased creativity, productivity, and agility – all of which contribute to increased profitability. When individuals are supported to grow within a company, it is easier to retain (and recruit) employees. You pick the “positioning” which would work best for your organization and stick to it.
Bottom line: Expect to explain and reiterate your message over the course of a few years. There is a quote from (former) President Obama in which he stated his biggest surprise about being president was how much he had to repeat himself.
3. Coaching
Coaching is a skill that needs to be imbued in all managers because it is the only way that a culture of developing others will come to fruition. BUT FIRST the organization must commit to a culture of developing every employee to be able to do their best work (#1), then that commitment must be communicated and reinforced (#2), and finally, the skills to fulfill the commitment can be taught to the managers who will actually make it happen.
Coaching is a time-intensive approach to managing because it requires really getting to know one’s employees and investing time in regular 1:1 conversations with each individual. By developing deeper and more personal relationships with one’s employees, you begin to understand who is more analytical and who is more social…which leads you to be able to identify “perfect fit” roles and development opportunities for them. If you have children you get this concept – every child has a different personality, different skills, different passions, different things that make them “tick.” You only know this because you spend so much time with them. And, because you want the best for them, you help them to pursue and develop their capabilities.
Bottom line: It is the managers in your organization who will truly develop your future leaders – not classes or curriculums.
For companies to be successful in the fourth industrial revolution, it is imperative that “leadership capabilities” are present throughout the organization; this will only come to fruition through an intentional culture of developing others and a reskilling of today’s managers to be proficient in coaching.
Note: This article first appeared on LinkedIn 12/10/21
Gearing Up for Leadership Development
Things sure are different, aren't they?
- working from home is no longer a “perk”
- companies are truly embracing “our employees are our greatest asset”
- 2 million more boomers retired in 2020 than predicted or expected
- HR has found its seat at the table
There is no such thing as “average” or “normal” or “trivial” these days.
Which means….
The way you approach leadership development in your organization is in flux as well.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies and business leaders are avoiding having this conversation.
Why?
- they believe it is cumbersome to undertake
- they believe it is a financial sink-hold
- they are too focused on “todays’ crisis” to worry about the one barreling towards them tomorrow
Does this resonate with you? You're not alone.
👏 THE GOOD NEWS IS - we have a 3-day challenge this month that can help you get started.
Join us for the three-day (30 minutes each day) Gearing Up For Leadership Development Challenge - September 21, 22, & 23 at 3:00pm EST.
💡 Just imagine the peace and confidence you’ll have knowing your future leaders…
- can problem solve
- make critical decisions
- are adaptable to change
- communicate clearly and with purpose
- have self-management skills
and more….
❔ (BTW, why do we call these “leadership skills?” why wouldn’t we want everyone to have these skills?)
Would it benefit YOUR organization to have future-leaders with these skills?
What about ALL your employees? After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.
When you join us for just 30-minutes a day, September 21, 22 and 23, we’ll cover:
Day 1 - Who will be your future leaders - GenX? Millennials? GenZ?
Each generation has a different leadership style - and will shape your culture differently - who is right for your organization?
Day 2 - What skills do your future leaders need?
According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report (October 2020) more than ¾’s of the skills employees need by 2025 will be soft skills – not technical skills!
And in a December 2020 publication from Deloitte, titled Diving Deeper, Five Workforce Trends to Watch in 2021, the senior executives polled said employees “doing new work” and “increasing capacity” are at the top of their list of immediate concerns.
Less and less we need people who “can do,” and more and more people who “can think.”
Day 3 – Three Keys to Designing the Perfect Leadership Development Process
One of the things (perhaps THE thing) that stops most business owners and leaders from beginning leadership in their own organization is the belief that this is a BIG endeavor.
It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, organic development that is integrated with people’s real-world work responsibilities is 1000X’s more effective and economical (because people actually “get it”) AND it returns immediate ROI so there’s no “hoping this pays off in the long run.”
All you have to do to join the challenge is follow us on Facebook OR LinkedIn and join-in on September 21, 22, & 23 at 3pm EST every day.
See you there!
The Future is Here
Our 2017 book - Future-Proofing Your Organization by Teaching Thinking Skills has just been updated and re-released. Read the new introductory chapter, below!
As I write this update, it is July 2021. A LOT of things have changed since this book first came out in 2017. Most of these changes have occurred in only the last 18 months, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Interestingly, as I re-read the book in preparation for writing this update, I realized that while the content is still 100% spot-on and needed little updating, what HAS changed is the urgency behind our need to improve the skills and capabilities of employees if our organizations want to survive the 21st century. What was predicted to take until 2030 to materialize was compressed into a single year – 2020.
Here is a look at why things have become more urgent.
Mass changes in labor statistics happen very rarely. This is one of those times.
The above quote is from an October 2020 blog piece from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The article goes on to say, “We are moving from a ‘one manager, one office, 9-5’ world to a ‘fluid, team-based, work-from-anywhere, always-on’ world,” which, in my interpretation, means we need to be confident that our employees are capable of working independently, making intelligent decisions and working with others that they cannot see and perhaps will never meet.
Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, many companies laid off large swaths of their workforces. As the economy recovers, companies will be hiring experienced individuals with unknown thinking skills or younger workers who lack the kind of work experience that enables critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving. Not only will learning and professional development become more critical than it has been in the last twenty years, but companies will need to develop career paths that show new employees “the future” of working with that organization.
Generational Shift
One of the premises discussed in the this book (circa 2017) is that the US Census prediction that all of the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) would be out of the workplace by 2030 leaving a large leadership void in most organizations given that Gen X (born 1964 and 1980) generally have not been given leadership roles or appropriate leadership development. The Boomer population is so large that most leadership roles in organizations are claimed by Boomers (as they got there first), and many of those Boomers have stayed on past what is considered a “traditional” retirement age, sometimes working well into their 70s - leaving few leadership vacancies or opportunities for Gen X.
The pandemic changed that dynamic nearly immediately. Boomers quickly reassessed their priorities and accelerated their retirement plans. According to Pew Research Center analysis published in November 2020, the number of Boomer-age retirements between September of 2019 and September of 2020 was 3.2 million, up significantly from the 2 million per year that had been holding steady since 2011.
This leaves an immediate and massive void in leadership. The people who had held leadership roles the longest and have the most years of institutional knowledge, wisdom, and experience are gone.
Increase in Technology Use (in Professional Roles)
Another extraordinary development that arose from the pandemic was the widespread and nearly immediate adoption of technology to keep people connected remotely. Platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and more, suddenly came to the fore, although the technology has been around for decades. Personally, I’ve been using WebEx since 2002.
While the adoption of synchronous technology means people can continue to work while isolated in their homes, it also means that critical thought and creativity may suffer when there is no one there to bounce ideas off of or debate with. Humans are collaborative. We learn faster and make better decisions when we are doing it with others. Lapses in ethics, which one would never dream of when peers are in proximity, become less black-and-white when working in isolation.
And again, how will we teach Gen Z about business protocol if their interactions with peers occur solely online during meetings with tiny boxes that frame people’s faces? How will we coach them to do better work if we cannot see how they are doing their work?
Another concern brought about by technology is that artificial intelligence (AI) is barreling towards us and far from the fear of it eliminating jobs, it’s more likely that we will be able to attain higher-order outcomes through the use of AI. Higher-order outcomes are things such as strategizing, creating, and evaluating… things that AI cannot do. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Margie Meacham’s book: AI in Talent Development which gives great insight into the shifts that will occur in the workplace thanks to AI. At the heart of allowing the humans to do higher-order work, however, is that they must be capable of thinking at more critical and expansive levels than what we have expected from the vast majority of workers in the last 50 years.
Our need to teach thinking skills is urgent.
Career Paths
Prior to the pandemic, unemployment was very low for quite a long time, giving employees the upper hand in the labor market. Companies were so desperate to fill open positions that people were able to easily move from job to job. One reason that Millennials are known to “job hop” is because they value professional development* over other “perks” like pay and flexible schedules. Since few employers have viewed or offered professional development as a business strategy, it has forced Millennials to move to a new employer simply to learn something new.
This is a luxury that neither the employer nor the worker can enjoy any longer.
Not only will the companies who want to retain workers need to implement professional development strategies, but the wisest ones will integrate professional development with career paths, so that when a recruit interviews with your company they not only know the job they will be accepting, but the ones that are possible 3 and 5 and 10 years down the road should they stay with your organization. This will require companies to create career paths that show how professional development leads to increased responsibility and leadership roles.
According to Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education, professional development attracts 25% higher qualified applicants and contributes measurably to retention. “Companies that build careers will be the defining companies for Millennials and Gen Z. For the future.”
* This is something that Gen Z reports is important to them as well, but they haven’t been in the workforce long enough for us to see if this is true.
People Skills are the Domain of… People
Look at the diagram in Chapter 8. It depicts the five learning domains needed for a well-rounded businessperson to develop the thinking skills necessary to be an effective and respected leader in your organization. None of the five can be performed by robots or AI technology.
In October of 2020, the World Economic Forum published their “Future of Jobs Report,” a biennial fiver-year projection of the skills and capabilities that will be needed by employees in order for their organizations to remain viable. (In other words, your folks better have these skills by 2025). 12 of the 15 top skills described in the 2020 report were personal or interpersonal skills. People skills.
As I mentioned above, when rote tasks are accomplished via technology, it is only higher order skills and interpersonal skills that remain the domain of the employee. Unfortunately, after a decade-plus of technology usage – both personally and in our workplaces – we, as a society, have diminished our interpersonal skills. Many of our employees lack the ability to make eye contact, engage in small talk, or constructively deal with conflict. So, in addition to teaching thinking skills and business acumen (see below), organizations will need to redouble their efforts to teach people skills such as communicating verbally and in written form, dealing with conflict, giving and receiving feedback and many, many more.
Check out Chapter 6 for my take on the importance of utilizing mentors and coaches in this regard.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report, Oct. 2020 - Employee Skills Needed for 2025
Business Acumen
One of the things I didn’t spend too much time on in the first edition of the book was the importance of developing business acumen, although you’ll find it has equal weight in the diagram in Chapter 8.
Too many people know how to do their job, but not how their job impacts the organization or how their organization fits within their industry as a whole. If we want to build a pipeline of capable businesspeople, they need to understand how the business works. This is business acumen.
This lack of knowledge and sense of being and integral part of a whole is going to be exacerbated by the WFH (work from home) culture, especially as it pertains to young Gen Z workers. A junior accountant is never going to see the trucks coming to the loading dock, or the lab-coated R+D scientists developing the next iteration of your product, if they are sitting at home working on spreadsheets. If their focus is solely on their job, it become interchangeable with any other junior accountant job at any other company. I predict this will lead to high levels of turnover at the entry level and will detrimentally impact critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, and risk taking (which are all informed by business acumen) as well as greatly impact your leadership pipeline.
I’ll conclude this chapter by reiterating a line you’ll find in Chapter 8: Businesses have spent years parsing employee development down to the bare minimum and now must change the mindset to one of providing maximum capability for growth and success in the long term. This was a critical need in 2017 when the book was first published and now it is both critical and urgent.
Pivot, Pivot, Pirouette
The Training Doctor is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year!
We were founded in June of 1991, during a recession (the best time to start a business it turns out); and through the decades, as you might imagine, we’ve had to pivot a few times to keep up with industry changes and trends.
We thought we’d share a peek into our time capsule.
At our start, we weren’t even called The Training Doctor – at first we were named Business Visions Consultants or BVC for short (dreams of IBM dancing in our heads). Why did we change our name? You try to say either of those things (the full company name or the abbreviation) when answering the phone. They are both completely unintelligible.
PIVOT
Also at our start, we were focused on contract facilitation for various organizations in the Northeast such as school systems, insurance companies, casinos, and state agencies. After four years in business and one particularly grueling, year-long, facilitation gig teaching supervisory skills using a million-dollar curriculum our client had purchased from a well-known leadership development company who shall go unnamed because it was sooo b a d (suffice it to say, they are no longer in business), we commenced our FIRST PIVOT and decided that there were a lot of great facilitators around but NOT a lot of great training designers and we would be better suited to focusing solely on instructional design.
For the next 20 years our sole offering was to design custom curriculums for our clients and hand it back to them for delivery. This was typically because the work our clients did was either very technical or proprietary, and they needed something custom designed for them. Since our expertise is in how adults learn, and particularly how adults in the workplace learn (where behavior change is the expected outcome), we had the pleasure of working in all sorts of industries and for companies you have never heard of like a cheese processing plant in New Jersey, a startup medical company founded by one of the original founders of WebMD in Atlanta,
a 15-store kitchen wares retailer in Connecticut (think Williams Sonoma, but on a much smaller scale) that was doubling its number of retail outlets in one year, the precursor to VMware in Massachusetts, a twenty-year-old, UK-based, global insurance broker that had never had a training department before, and many, many more. If you are interested, you can go to our home page and see some of the logos of the more recognizable companies.
During this time we crisscrossed the US speaking at many industry conferences which were focused on training, adult learning, human resources, and organizational development, helping others to learn how to take knowledge from SME’s heads and turn it into a curriculum, how to design fair and legally valid tests administered post-training, and how to ensure you are designing a training program that actually gets at the root of a performance problem, not just a symptom. Additionally, we had two books published – how to be a successful one-person training department since many of our clients were just that, and how to design a blended learning approach to workplace training.
PIVOT
It was also during this time that we completed our SECOND PIVOT into Virtual Instructor Led Training, or vILT. While the focus on instructional design stayed true, the delivery mechanism changed. Throughout the nineties and first few years of this century the only option was classroom-based training. But with the advent of the internet and computers at every desk, and the development of WebEx (which was the front-runner in synchronously delivered training, followed by many others), we saw the potential for global companies to embrace the use of vILT to cut costs and still provide high-quality training in a “classroom” environment.
From about 2002 to 2015 The Training Doctor specialized in designing virtual instructor-led training curriculums for many Fortune 500 organizations that had global footprints. This became the expertise we were most known for since designing engaging, interactive, online learning to a group of people who are all sitting alone at their desks is no easy feat. Especially when the end goal is to get those people to change their behavior as a result of participating.
Virtual Instructor-Led Training is the format that pulled together all our history and skills: facilitation, design, adult learning theory + radio and television training (because as hard as it is to design for vILT, it’s even harder to be the facilitator).
As an aside, you might be interested in learning about the pivot we DIDN’T make - which was NOT giving the time of day to eLearning which was all the rage in the late nineties. eLearning – in our opinion – is not effective for learners or clients, for a number of reasons: it’s largely self-study and we know that most people are not self-directed… there is no one to ask questions of… back in the 90’s and early 2000’s it was very linear and real-life is not linear, so it wasn’t teaching “real world”… the completion rates are abysmal… adults are collaborative learners and there is no collaboration with a computer… the cost and time to “program” are astronomical… and the maintenance to ensure content is up-to-date can be cumbersome or neglected. vILT overcomes all of these faults, which is why we embraced this form of learning via computer.
PIROUETTE
Our last pivot was more of a pirouette which occurred in 2015. We now focus solely on the design of leadership development to help organizations to develop leadership pipelines and bring their future leaders “up” from within. Throughout our 15+ years of designing custom curriculums via vILT two topics were consistent: sales and leadership. And what we saw large, well monied, reputable organizations doing in the realm of leadership was wrong, completely wrong. And we were PART OF THE PROBLEM.
You cannot teach someone to be a coach in a 2-hour coaching course with a breakout for roleplay. You cannot teach someone to be emotionally intelligent in a class. It’s impossible to learn to manage stakeholders if people aren’t out in the organization interacting with their stakeholders learning what their values and needs are.
Yes, there is a time and place for classroom (or eLearning) – such as when learning facts, underlying rules, and how-to, but leadership is a behavior and changing people’s behavior is an experiential process done over time and approached in many ways.
Now, in our 30th year, we are committed to forestalling the leadership development crisis that companies have fallen victim to over the last few decades. Our exclusive focus (and passion) is helping small to medium-sized organizations to create a leadership pipeline by having a development strategy that starts when an employee walks in the door. Some of our unique techniques include experiential learning, job visitations, mixed cohorts of learners, and other proven development strategies that you won’t find in “off the shelf” leadership development or a one-and-done course.
If you think we can assist your organization – please give us a call or you can download an overview of our process here.
Leadership Skills for All
What do you define as a “leadership skill?”
Is it being a good communicator?
Or helping other people to increase their skills and capabilities by being a coach?
Is it understanding strategy and your company’s business goals?
Or is it working collaboratively across departments and divisions to achieve the best outcomes?
Here’s another question to ponder: Why do we label ANY of those things “leadership skills?”
It’s much easier to learn leadership skills as a young working professional than it is for someone who has been on the job for 10 or 15 or 20 years. At that point in someone’s career, you’re actually working harder to UNdo behaviors they’ve been practicing for a decade or more. Yet companies typically wait until someone is promoted to leadership and then start developing their “leadership skills.”
Here’s a list of things we typically label leadership skills:
Critical thinking Decision making Risk assessment Continuous improvement Strategy Forecasting Influencing others Behaving Ethically Understanding Finance Project management Workflow planning Ethics
NEW Question!!
What makes those “leadership skills” and not general business skills and how hard is it to teach those skills to everyone?
Here are the answers….
They ARE general business skills, but for some reason we don’t teach them UNTIL someone is promoted to a leadership position. And THAT’s why we label them “leadership skills.”
Are companies afraid to make their employees more capable? Would they rather have someone with limited knowledge and skill - who can only perform a finite task?
There’s a famous quote by Zig Ziglar in which he asks: What’s worse? training your employees and losing them? Or not training them and keeping them?
Perhaps companies are afraid of investing in their employees for fear of the employee going elsewhere…But here’s the kicker – if you DON’T invest in them – they WILL go elsewhere. There have been numerous studies conducted by SHRM and Deloitte and others, that all come to the same conclusion: Millennials and Gen Z workers – those workers under the age of 40 right now – want the same things
- A job that they believe is purposeful and fulfilling, and
- Professional development
Above all else. Above promotions, above pay raises, above titles… So if you AREN’T providing skills development, they WILL leave your company to find it.
It isn’t hard to teach leadership skills to everyone in your organization. There are small, organic things that you can do every day to instill leadership ability.
By teaching leadership skills to all of your employees, you’ll be raising the capability of the whole organization.
More capable people means more productivity; more productivity means more profitability.
So – from this point going forward – let’s all embrace the concept: Leadership skills for all – leadership from day one.
Why We Have to Start Leadership Development at Day One
“The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations.”
This statement was uttered by a financial planner who was counseling customers to understand what the fundamentals of their stock purchase were – what attracted them to the company… were they in it for the long term or short term…. at what price point would they believe it was wise to sell the stock….
Here’s how we relate the quote: “The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations” to leadership…
In today’s business environment, we are under the gun all the time. Things are in constant flux … and we can never count on tomorrow being the same as today. Therefore a lot of decisions are made on the fly. Which may not be based on your company’s values or principles – and which may actually hurt your business or your reputation.
Look at what happened at Wells Fargo. Somewhere along the line, someone in a leadership position decided it was OK to commit fraud in order to make sales quotas. To hell with ethics. To hell with serving the customer responsibly.
What if – long before that high-stress situation in which they made that decision – they already had a fundamental belief or value, that ethical behavior was of utmost importance?
How or when would they have had to develop that belief system?
Early on in their career – when they were not in a high-stress situation and when they were not in a position of authority. If they had that fundamental belief system early on – it would simply carry with them – through their career.
Here are two analogies to further make our point:
The “first job” analogy. Many of us continue to practice behaviors or hold fundamental beliefs that we learned through our first jobs. Think about that for a minute.
What was your first job and do you find yourself operating today – in a way that you learned decades ago from a manager or a leader who said “this is how we do things.” We might dress a certain way, address customers a certain way, define “quality,” a certain way… all based on learning those principles in our first jobs.
So – why don’t we teach leadership skills and behaviors to your employees at the START of their careers? Why do we wait decades and then have to undo basic principles or value systems that they hold? Teach them what your company values and what is acceptable leadership behavior – from the get-go; even before they become leaders.
And even if they don’t become leaders – you still have a BUNCH of people who are operating under the same principles and with the same understanding of your business values and how they should conduct themselves accordingly.
Which brings us to our 2nd analogy: Baby manners.
Right around the same time that your baby learns to talk – you start teaching manners. Do they know what manners are? No. Are you going to wait until they UNDERSTAND what manners are before you teach them? No. Do you have to EXPLAIN why what you are telling them is appropriate behavior? No.
You say: Say goodbye to Grandma! And you say it over and over until, as the child gets older, they are able to independently say “hello” and “goodbye” to people they encounter.
Which is good manners.
You say: Don’t hit the dog! Don’t hit your sibling! And you say it for 7, 8, 10 years! until eventually, as your child gets older, they recognize that that is not an appropriate behavior; and most of us grow up to be people who don’t smack the crap out of one another.
You teach your children to speak politely, to share with others, to be cognizant of other’s feelings and many, many more fundamental principles of being a responsible human. And you start teaching those principles even before they know what they mean or why they should or should not behave that way.
You start to teach those things even before they are verbal.
So why are we not teaching leadership skills to everyone who walks in our doors? Why are we reserving that knowledge for a ‘select few’ … and why are we waiting so late to start?
This is the foundation of Leadership From Day One.
If you teach EVERYONE to be a better communicator, to work cooperatively with others, to understand that they contribute to the greater good of the organization – and at some level are fundamentally responsible for it – to behave in an ethical manner…. The list goes on and on of things that we consider “leadership skills,” which really aren’t.
They are the basic, fundamental manners of being a worker in a business and YOU – as their leader – business owner, director of operations, GM, department head… are responsible for teaching them that.
Think of how differently your company would be operating – and how confident you would be in your employees and your organizational capabilities – if you knew that everyone operated in the same way and embraced the same principles and values.
Help them to make the right decisions, early in their career.
We can help you do that.
The ROI of Leadership Development
Last year I invested in an up-and-coming technology company. In less than one year, the stock rose 201%. WHAT?! Where else can you get that kind of return-on-investment in such a short period of time? I know of one other place…
Here’s my hot “stock tip” for business owners: Invest in leadership development.
Every dollar you invest will return 300% - 500%, nearly immediately – here’s how.
There are three distinct ways that leadership development pays back the organization:
1. Reduced turnover and greater retention
2. Easier recruiting
3. Leadership benchstrength
Let’s take a look at these in a little more depth.
Reduced Turnover and Greater Retention
With the exodus of Boomers from the workforce, there will be a rapid rise in leadership roles fulfilled by Millennials. What’s important for every employer to know about this group of employees is that they value professional development above money and titles. They are most excited about continually learning and advancing their career. By initiating a leadership development program in your organization you minimize the risk of losing an employee who will leave simply to learn something new.
Another advantage of providing a steady stream of professional development is that it increases productivity. As people learn more and are more capable, they can produce better outcomes and work with others in the organization more cooperatively, which leads to higher productivity.
A 10% increase in productivity can increae the profits of most organizations by 50%
Peter Drucker
Finally, employees are more committed to an organization when that organization provides professional development and a career path.
Easier Recruiting
One of the most expensive activities for any company is the recruiting and hiring process. Recent data from SHRM has determined that it can cost anywhere from $3000 to fill an hourly worker’s role, to as much as two-times the salary of an executive to replace that individual. Since so few organizations provide well thought-out professional development, it is seen as a real perk by employees and potential employees – lessening the need for recruiting efforts and costs. Oftentimes organizations that embrace professional development are listed in their local “best places to work,” lists – which is worth more than any advertisement to attract quality workers.
Leadership Benchstrength
As mentioned at the start of this article, Millennials will be moving up the corporate ladder sooner than expected (the US Census had predicted that the Boomers would be out of the workforce by 2030, simply based on their age, but the pandemic has accelerated that exodus by a decade) and will not have the years on the job to learn organically as the Boomers have. There must be a purposeful and concerted approach to develop your next generation of leaders’ skills such as decision making, problem-solving, teaming, risk management, stakeholder management, and a myriad of others.
By having a group of prepared individuals at the ready, organizational leaders can sleep better at night knowing that there will be continuity in performance and culture as younger professionals step into leadership roles.
Leadership is not the nebulous topic that most people make it out to be. It is a skill that can be taught - but it must be taught over time, which is counter to the typical methodology for leadership development in the last fifty years. There are significant benefits for forward-thinking organizations that provide leadership development as discussed above; any one of which can save a company tens of thousands of dollars a year. Smart investors (aka business owners) will make the minimal investment today in order to reap amazing return on investment in both the short and long-term.
No Time to Prepare for This Leadership Crisis
In a recent TV interview I watched, with the president of Delta Airlines, he was talking about how the airline has managed to not lay off any workers in this economic downturn. And the “solution” was that 20% of employees have taken early retirement throughout the summer.
So who are those 20%? Clearly older generations. Who's eligible for early retirement, but Boomers and maybe some Gen X, depending on how long they've been with the company. This is a serious problem for organizations. I know they have to downsize. I know they have to conserve funds right now, but this is going to have an incredible boomerang effect when they need to ramp up again, when the economy turns. When the business climate turns and companies start to ramp up their offerings again, there are going to be so few leaders left in organizations.
It's a real concern. It's a real concern for business owners, managers, the people who were left in the ranks at organizations, because the question is “who is left to run the companies?”
If the Boomers are gone, if the older generation Gen Xers are gone, the people who have the history of the company, the culture of the company, years of experience and knowledge within that company... if those folks are gone, who is left to run the organization?
Now clearly there are younger generations, younger people in the organization. But do they have the knowledge and the skills the older generations do? Will they have the same leadership abilities as the folks who are leaving the organization? This is something that keeps me up at night. I worry for the state of American businesses. This is something that was supposed to happen in 2030 - according to the US Census - all the Boomers would be out of the workforce by 2030.
It worried me then when it was a 2030 deadline, but at least companies had time to prepare. There's no time. The Boomers and some older Gen Xers are leaving organizations - voluntarily or not - and there's a much younger cadre of individuals left in organizations who will have to step up, into leadership positions, whether they have leadership skills or not.
The Biggest Mistake in Leadership Development is...
The biggest mistake in leadership development is waiting to do it.
Too may (all?) organizations wait until they promote someone to a leadership position and then start to apply leadership development. And that’s for the lucky folks. Most organizations don’t offer any kind of development to their new leaders and instead let them struggle to figure it out all on their own. I know that’s what happened to me the first time I was promoted to a managerial role. I was flattered that the organization thought I had the potential to lead a department of eight at the tender age of 25, but then I panicked because the only “training” I had was modeling the good leaders I had had in my life and anti-modeling (yep, I made up a new word) the bad ones. I was flying by the seat of my pants. This was especially terrifying because at least two of my employees were old enough to be my mother.
This approach is really unfair to the individual and detrimental to the organization.
There are plenty of things we learn through the school of hard knocks – not to speed through a yellow light, not to cheat on an exam, not to lie on our resume… and most of the time the only person we hurt is ourselves.
Often, in the midst of the pain, we’ll think, “If only someone had warned me…” But in the workplace, there are other individuals that are impacted when a new leader is rattling around trying to find their footing. And without good guidance, new, unskilled managers can really do damage.
Don’t know the difference between constructive and critical feedback? Perhaps you’ll figure it out when your employees start to defect. Don’t recognize your personal bias in a performance review? The HR department can bring you up to speed when one of your employees lodges a complaint. Think it’s OK to hang with the boys (but not the women) after hours? Lesson learned. Lesson learned. Lesson learned.
What’s truly unfair to the new leader is that the organization is expecting him/her to also take on new functional responsibilities like scheduling, project planning, budgeting, and more. This is too much to ask of a new leader all at once – to be functionally responsible for a department and to change their behavior at the same time. As a training and development professional for decades, I know that the hardest thing to “train” someone to do is to change their behavior. Yet organizations consistently drop the ball on shaping individuals’ leadership behaviors early on.
This is detrimental to the organization as well because when push comes to shove, the new manager will need to focus on their functional responsibilities – it is what they will be judged on after all; and in all likelihood, it is what got them promoted in the first place. So without a focus on leadership and interpersonal skills early in one’s career, there is a lot of heavy lifting that is required of a new leader – and any failings impact both the individual and the organization.
The Solution is Early Leadership Development
In a perfect world, leadership development would begin the moment a new employee walks in the company’s door. They would be handed their HR paperwork and a development plan for the next 3 to 5 years. Not only would this approach benefit the organization by ensuring everyone has “baseline skills” (of your choosing) such as business writing, giving and receiving feedback, understanding how the company makes (and keeps) money, and more, but think of the impression made on the new hire! “Wow. This company is investing in me from day one? Amazing!”
In today’s business environment, a need for and a confidence in employee’s self-leadership skills is critical. I’ve seen a number of articles lately that discuss company’s monitoring their employees while they are working at home. This seems perfectly reasonable if your company has not set and trained for a certain standard of behavior. It’s like trusting your child to stay home alone for the first time. The parent who hasn’t trained for good decision making and responsibility is a lot more worried than the parent who has.
In the long-term, the company that has trained for leadership skills at the start of their employees’ careers will have a ready and capable pipeline of leaders who can fully focus on their functional responsibilities because their leadership abilities are standard-operating-procedure by the time they are promoted.
At The Training Doctor we specialize in preparing your employees for future leadership roles. Apply early and often, for best results. Give us a call to discuss your needs. It never hurts to ask… is another truism my mother taught me.
Helping Small and Medium-sized Businesses to Prepare for the Next-Era of Leadership
Free 4-day Event
Every business - small to supersized - has changed significantly since the start of 2020.
Leadership teams are turned upside down.
Companies are being forced to downsize, right-size, and sometimes capsize.
Your company’s future depends on having strong a leadership plan in place as you adapt to the workforce that lies ahead.
We are here to help, with a series of leadership conversations. All FREE.
Meet with fellow business people, hear from experts with long tenures in developing organizational leaders, ask the questions you need answered.
Check out our roster of speakers
Patricia Carl
June 3 3:00 pm EST
Re-imagining / Redesigning Your Leadership Team
Patricia Carl has 20+ years’ experience in Human Resource leadership for both private and public companies, across multiple industries. As President of Highland Performance Solutions, she coaches and consults with executives in order to help them build high-performing teams.
Lee Eisenstaedt
June 10 3:00 pm EST
What Skills Are Needed in the Next 3 - 5 Years?
Lee has been the Chief Operating Officer of a number of top companies included 22 years with the SC Johnson family of companies in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Lee has authored four books, co-authored one, and is a frequent contributor to Forbes.com
Jeff Harmon
June 17 3:00 pm EST
The 5C Method to Create Sustainable and Scalable Leadership Development
Jeff Harmon has over 20 years of experience building relationships to equip and mobilize leaders to achieve their most important goals.
He helps company leaders to identify their strengths as well as the strengths of their team.
He is the author of “Become a Better Leader, 10 Minutes at a Time.”
Nanette Miner, Ed.D.
June 24 3:00 pm EST
Creating a Master Plan for Leadership Development
Dr. Nanette Miner founded The Training Doctor in 1991 to help organizations to grow and thrive by a developing worker capabilities. She is on a mission to help organizations to sustain their success through developing their future leaders from the moment they walk in the door.
It's Time for All Hands on Deck
Many companies are going to find themselves with a different leadership landscape when business is able to resume and employees are able to return to work.
In addition to the usual pressures of competition and the relentless pace of technology, I predict that many companies are going to experience a shift in their leadership roster either because the Boomers (and some GenX), who were close to retirement decided “enough is enough,” and choose not to come back to work after the Covid-19 crisis, or because organizations will have to greatly reduce their workforces as they come back online, and the easiest way to downsize and remain solvent is to not bring back the more experienced, higher-salaried personnel.
So what can an organization do to identify its future leaders and successfully return to profitability?
Identify Successors
If your organization faces the situation where senior leaders choose to retire, ask those individuals to identify their replacements. They will have the most knowledge regarding who on their team is capable of taking the reins. It’s a good idea to also ask the self-selected retiree if they would come back for three or four months to ease the transition.
If you are choosing to let the senior leader go, again, ask them who on their team would be most capable of stepping up. Also ask them for the top three to five priorities for their department, at this time. This will enable you to pass this knowledge on to the next leader and also allow you to keep track of the priorities yourself.
Begin Mentoring
The best-case-scenario would have been for your company to utilize mentoring already, but if that is not the case, begin a mentoring program immediately. You need a way to transmit institutional knowledge as well as business acumen from more seasoned workers to the younger ones, and the best way to do that is through personal relationships that can adapt immediately to changing pressures.
Circulate a Skills Assessment
Now is the time for all-hands-on-deck; trouble is, most organizations have become so silo’d that they don’t know what individuals are capable of doing (vs. what they are being paid to do, today). Start with a simple survey using Google forms or a subscription survey tool, if your company has one. You’ll want to be able to collect individual responses – not aggregate responses. Ask for name, email, phone number, department, current role (e.g. marketing / graphic designer), and the top 5 skills (fill in the blank) they use in their current role. THEN ask them for 5 additional skills they are capable of deploying. You may find your graphic designer is also great at copy editing or has experience in SEO. To really get the most from this assessment, also ask each individual what soft skills they excel at – because leadership capability is heavily dependent on soft-skills.
If your company comes back online with a reduced workforce, this assessment will enable you to move people around, if necessary, rather than simply eliminating a role based on its title.
This article is admittedly practical and how-to. It does not venture into the best ways to have these conversations or the need for empathy and compassion at this time. It is purely focused on the organization as an entity.
Leadership Pipeline Assessment
If you’d like to assess what your organization’s current leadership pipeline looks like (and indicates for your future) click on the Leadership Pipeline Assessment, at the top of the screen, in the blue bar. It contains 13 questions and will only take about a minute to complete.
One Critical Leadership Skill
Many young business people aspire to become future managersand leaders but there is often a lack of leadership development available until one is promoted to a leadershipposition. Of the myriad of skills that leaders need to master such as criticalthinking, problem solving, and working collaboratively with others, one skillcan be learned independent of a formal learning process. This skill is not onlyused daily, as a leader, but mastering it early in one’s career helps to mark oneas “leadership material.”
That is the skill of asking good questions.
If you aspire to leadership you’ll want to purposefullythink about (and practice) the way you ask questions. When most people ask aquestion they are asking for facts or details such as What happened next? Whatare my options? What would you like me to do? But a leader needs to gather critical insight through his / herquestions in order to make decisions that move the business forward. There arethree types of questions you can practice, this week, that will help you togather critical information and to be viewed as a thoughtful up-and-comingleader.
Open ended questions
Open ended questions require the other person to respondwith their thoughts or beliefs. it is a personal response rather than a factualone. A common mistake of new managers is to give an instruction or directionand then ask “Have you got that?” which only requires a short yes or noresponse and doesn’t help the manager to assess if the instructions really wereunderstood. If instead the manager were to ask “What are your thoughts onthat?” or “How can I help you with this assignment?” he / she then elicits moreinformation from the other person and learns if they are confident, concerned,or confused.
These kinds of questions can move the whole organizationforward by forestalling miscommunication and failed actions based onassumptions.
Clarifying questions
Too few individuals take the time to ensure that they trulyunderstand a speaker. I have always found that anytime I ask someone “Did youmeans this, or this?” what I hadoriginally assumed the answer to be was wrong. Clarifying questions are important for leadersto master because they can save an organization from disastrous results.
Example: Shelby, a salesperson for a media company, wasreviewing a proposal with her manager before presenting it to a new client. Atthe end of the conversation her manager said it would be OK to cut the cost ofthe proposal by 5-10%. Shelby asked, “Do you mean you want me to cut the costnow? Or to use that as a negotiation strategy?” Her manager replied, “I’m glad you clarified that! I mean to use it as anegotiation tactic, if you need to. Good luck!”
High gain questions
High gain questions are used rather rarely as they tend tostop a conversation while the respondent considers their response; however,high gain questions are the mark of a true leader in conversation. High gainquestions require the respondent(s) to apply critical thought beforeresponding.
Consider the difference between
What are the obstacles you foresee? (open ended) and
What are our two best options going forward? (high gain)
While the open ended question is good for gathering more information,the high gain question returns a carefully considered response.
Being able to utilize each of these types of questions – open ended, clarifying, and high gain – is a skill that can be practiced early in one’s career in preparation for moving into a leadership role.
Note: This article was originally published by Forbes.com
Don't be a Know-it-All
Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) has said: "being alearn-it-all is better than being a know-it-all."
Unfortunately, a lot of people truly do NOT know how tolearn.
In the 21st century, people are more reactionary than thoughtful, reasoned, and contemplative. This is a "tide" that will damage business' future viability, very, very soon.
Can One Employee Take Your Company Down?
Your company is doing great work. It is creating jobs where they didn't exist before... you are contributing to the betterment of society... have you considered whether or not one employee could bring that all to a screeching halt?
Since February of 2017, with the recording of Travis Kalanick's (former CEO of Uber) poor behavior as he berated an Uber driver, displayed all across America, there have been frequent episodes of bad behavior demonstrated by numerous corporate leaders. In just the last month we've seen:
Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork was forced to step down after the filing of the company's pre-IPO paperwork shone a light on suspect financial dealings which ultimately benefitted Mr. Neumann to the tune of millions of dollars. The IPO was withdrawn, the company has laid off over 4000 employees, and its estimated value dropped 40 billion in the blink of an eye. See more here.
The Houston Astros baseball team fired their assistant General Manager for verbally attacking 3 female reporters after a pennant win in October. In addition to a social media onslaught faulting the organization and how it handled the incident (initially accusing one reporter of fabricating the incident and then taking 3 days to admit to it and holding the AGM accountable), the team will be fined by Major League Baseball, and the way that the incident was handled is now inviting scrutiny of the company's culture, which will result in further public relations embarrassment and could see the departure of many others in leadership positions in the organization. This incident, and the stress it caused the whole organization, may have just cost the team the 2019 World Series. See more here.
The CEO of McDonald's resigned this past week, saying this: "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on." The values of the company? The values, that as CEO, he was most-responsible for upholding? See more here.
Now, you might argue that these are people in positions of power and it is often the case that with power comes the belief that you are above "following the rules." But a leader is also responsible for the "unwritten rule" that he or she sets the acceptable behaviors and culture of an organization through their example.
When Does It Start?
We cannot assume that only those in the "higher echelon" are behaving badly (and costing their companies money as well as reputation). Think of the myriad of "little" ethical violations that occur in companies daily: taking home office supplies, failing to report a breakdown in product or process because "it's not my job," refusing to cooperate with another department or colleague, giving a customer favorable terms over other customers, the list could go on and on. At what point does a "little" ethical violation bloom into something that is egregious and damaging to your company financially or reputationally?
These types of incidents are precisely the reason why The Training Doctor created its Leadership From Day One development approach. By developing leadership behaviors such as ethics, decision making, and self-management early in one's career, incidents like these should not occur down the line. If all of your employees are immersed in a culture that supports the good of all (the company, its employees and customers), you'll make a bigger impact on the world and sleep better at night.
Are you at risk?
As a business owner, do you presume that your employees are behaving ethically? Do you know your organization's culpability from actions committed by your employees? Especially your senior/leader employees who have more of a "platform" to do harm to the company?
It is never, never too soon to start developing leadership characteristics in your workforce. Don't wait until you've already promoted someone to a leadership role to start to foster the skills they need to lead themselves as well as others; it is harder to rewire behavior than it is to develop it from the start. When you start leadership development early in your employee's careers, it becomes an ingrained and reflexive behavior as they move up through the ranks.
Go to our contact us page if you'd like help establishing a leadership development program that starts with everybody. Today.
3 Free Leadership Development Resources
Note: This article originally appeared on Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/09/26/how-to-develop-your-future-leaders-for-next-to-nothing/#69afc9ec2d11
Are you a business owner or managerwho knows you need to startdeveloping the future leaders of your organization, but you’re paralyzed by theidea of where to begin? No worries. This article will help you get started withno cost and minimal effort.
When people learn that The Training Doctor helps companies to develop their leadership strategy, we often hear, "Yeah, but we have no money.”
There are a LOT of organizations - big and small - in this same situation. And the good news is - leadership development does NOT have to be expensive or time-consuming. Here are three resources (and we have PLENTY more to share, if you are interested).
Reading and Discussion Groups
The best activity your company’s futureleaders can master is to be knowledgeable about business in general and yourindustry in particular. A businessleader needs to know how a business works, not how a job is done. Assist yourup-and-coming leaders by subscribing to industry journals and general-businesspublications such as Forbes, Harvard Business Review, or the Wall StreetJournal.
More importantly, form weekly orbi-weekly discussion groups around an article or two that you think isparticularly enlightening or that would be good for discussion. If you reallywant to go the extra mile, pre-formulate discussion questions that get awayfrom opinion (What do you think of that?) and lean toward critical thinking(Could that happen to us? What would we do, if that happened?). It’s important to have your future leadersthinking about “the big picture,” and your company in the context of yourindustry and business in general.
Job Rotations
Job rotations are traditionallythought of as an activity reserved for “hi-pos” (high potential individuals).Why?
It’s important that your futureleaders understand how your business works, what departments areinterdependent, and especially how you make money. They cannot learn thesethings if they are stuck in the silo of their own department or role.
A job rotation doesn’t have to beextensive or lengthy, but it should give the “visitor” a thorough understandingof another department’s work processes, priorities, and constraints. Imaginehaving a customer service representative work in the sales department for aweek. They could travel on sales calls, learn about your competition,understand better about contracts and pricing and the customer lifecycle, andon and on. Wouldn’t that make them a much more knowledgeable and helpfulcustomer service rep? Now imagine the reverse - a salesperson on the phones inthe customer service department for a week. Wow.
When people have a perspective onthe whole organization they do their own jobs better, have better collaborationskills, better communication skills, more empathy, a better understanding ofthe constraints or opportunities throughout the organization, and are not justfocused on the role that they do at their own desk.
Tuition Reimbursement
Finally, my third free leadershipdevelopment recommendation is to institute a tuition reimbursement program.Now, this isn’t exactly cost-free because it will take a bit of money to hire alawyer and/or accountant to set it up correctly (for instance, the rules aredifferent for C-corps vs. LLC’s) but once that process is done, the payback isextraordinary.
First, you have little to managebut the reimbursement process because participants are engaged more with the institutionwhere they are taking classes. Second, you are able to take advantage of a taxcredit of slightly over $5000 per participant. Third, courses often requireon-the-job projects, which means that your company reaps the rewards of betterproject management or a better HR communications strategy, for example.
And individuals often feel loyaltyto those companies that help them to further their career and their education, soan added benefit is that you’ll see increased retention (which mutes thosecynics who worry “What if I train them and they leave?”).
Bottom line: You CAN afford todevelop the future leaders of your organization with little cost and minimaleffort by starting reading and discussion groups, instituting job rotations,and offering tuition reimbursement, for everyone, not just for those employeesyou think are “high potential.”
For more great suggestions for leadership development follow The Training Doctor on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Encourage Contrarian Thinking
Very often leaders are emboldened by people who are in agreement with their ideas.
That sounds great! I'll get right on it.
Brilliant idea! No way we can lose this one.
This will really knock the competition on their arse.
The employee you REALLY want on your team is the one that says, "Hold up! I see three ways this can go sideways. Did we think this through? Did we ask for input from customers (nod to New Coke), vendors (hello State of NC), or our employees (here's looking at you, Google).
As a consultant, I believe that part of what you pay me for is my ability to "see the other side;" to bring questions and alternative perspectives to your organization. When I worked as an employee my approach was always to ask, "How can I break this?" much like testing a new software... what if I did this? or this? or this pressure is applied?
Contrarian thinkers - and similarly, devil's advocates - aren't negative for the sake of being negative; they are thinking ahead to the future and to ramifications of your, or your company's, actions.
If you are a leader and a developer of future leaders, here are three ways to encourage contrarian thinkers:
Always have two meetings: Don't make decisions at the first discussion of a new idea. Simply have an open discussion about the idea (new product, new process, new hire) and allow a few days for people to think about it. You might even want to charge your attendees with coming to meeting #2 with at least one "argument" against the idea. This process will prevent ideas from becoming run-away before they've been thoroughly vetted. Yes, it will take more time to make decisions, but they will be good (or at least better) decisions.
When addressing your followers, always ask, "What am I missing?" This is especially important to ask of people on the front-line. They are the ones who are actually doing the work and have a pulse on what customers, vendors, and fellow employees are thinking and feeling.
Praise those who come forward with their opposing views. When you ask the "what am I missing?" question, always thank the person who offers their negative outlook. Your job is not to argue the opposing view, but to give it consideration. You might even ask open-ended questions to gather more information, such as "do you have an example you could share?" or ask of the group, "have others seen this same phenomenon?"
By engaging in a conversation, purposefully asking for opposing views, and thanking the contrarian for offering their insight, you are encouraging others to do so in the future; which means you are building a stronger company and a community of forward-thinking employees which helps your organization to foresee and mitigate potential risk.
NOTE: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-risk-part-3-nanette-miner-ed-d-/