On route of developing effective leaders, many organizations fall short of anticipated targets. A general notion is that a person cannot be placed in a leadership role without leadership development. This can be the case.
If there is lack of clarity in terms of leadership development it can have an impact on your organization in various ways. It could pave way for low morale, low productivity, absenteeism, high turnover, etc. This is what describes the employees in your organization; it is time to turn over to leadership development.
As part of a recent study it was found out that leadership development has adverse impact on organizations globally. Nearly 63% of employees feel that their employees do not develop their leadership skills fully. For sure this is expected to have serious negative effects. Considering these things in mind it is important to understand the importance of leadership development in your organization.
Numerous benefits exist if there is a clear cut defined leadership strategy and if you implement it correctly. It is necessary to identify the benefits on track for successful implementation of a leadership development plan.
The benefits expected from leadership development
Works towards better employee retention
Managers have an important role to play whether an individual stays or leaves an organization. An alarming piece of statistics reveals that 32.5% of employees feel that they would leave an organization due to a bad boss. Merely tweaking the manner by which a manager does their job would go a long way. At this juncture the importance of leadership development comes into picture.
The moment an employee feels valued and protected by a great leader they tend to become more engaged. Now how that would matter? Nearly 53% of the employees feel that they are loyal to their boss and this would prevent them to walk away from an organization. This piece of news proves that as far as the engagement level of the manager and even employee relationships is important as far as leadership development is concerned.
Higher accountability
Good leaders learn from their mistakes and ask others to be learning from them. The onus on them is to keep everyone productive. They pass on this accountability so that a superior stature of accountability exists in the firm. By leadership development a sense of accountability is developed in the leaders. By the development they tend to gain a fair understanding of why the quality of accountability is important for a company.
Work on skill gaps
Once we are discussing about leadership development it is the separation between what an employee wants an individual ends up doing. This task of mending the skill gaps becomes a point of issue once an organization realizes how serious the issue might be.
It was found out a lot of individuals especially the graduate group did not have the soft skills to have successful careers. A lot of gap was witnessed in communication skills, leadership skills, problem solving skills etc. Just by asking individuals to focus on their skills the gap could reduce. One of the best ways to undertake it is by implementing a leadership development program as a platform for individuals to be learning.
Clarity in terms of role
Role clarity is something that is often talked about as far as leadership development is concerned. This is surprise as it is of utmost importance for an individual in an organization. This is basically defined in the manner by which individuals act in an organization. They are also aware on how their role fits into the big scheme of things. It is really important that you have role clarity for leadership roles as it leads to accountability.
As a leader you need to be aware of the role of every member in your team to make them productive. By leadership development programs leaders are aware on how to keep their team members on track. These roles can be implemented as long as managers provide autonomy to the team.
Problem solving strategically
In a top notch leader problem solving is a vital quality. This means analysing the root cause and addressing the issue at the earliest. This also means formulation of an open minded solution to every issue at the workplace.
Now how this quality would pave way for leadership development? To have a team of leaders with strong leadership skills can lead to competitive advantage. Once you implement the program you would see the change in the leaders and even performance of your organization.
The methods for implementing leadership development
The best way to introduce leadership development in your organization is by mentoring and coaching. By this program you can go on to develop the leader. Though coaching is mentoring are leadership programs they tend to be quite different from each other. Based on your leadership development goal you have to choose among them. But before we make a choice we need to understand the difference among them
The coaching tries to inspire confidence in a leader. A new perspective is provided to them on how to deal with everyday responsibilities. By coaching relationships the managers are able to think freely. They also pick up new techniques that would discourage individuals from asking questions.
As far as leadership development evolves coaching is the key. All the more so if you want a high empowered individual without any previous management experience.
Now if you decide as part of your leadership development programs to implement mentoring, then it is better to opt for reverse mentoring. During this course the role of the mentee and mentor are swapped. By this strategy it can diffuse the knowledge gap, bring the various generations together where the mentee is being empowered as an emerging leader.
A mentoring program is effective in the form of reverse mentoring since it provides a trial run for the emerging leaders. A bond is developed between individuals that could come handy at a later point of time, especially when the work environment becomes stressful.