Jeff Rock Consulting, LLC

How do you develop leaders within your organization?

 

This is one of the biggest challenges for any organization. Looking to identify future leaders within your ranks? If you do it right, it could boost morale, creativity, and spark the transfer of good ideas that lead to profitable growth.

 

Tom Donnelly, in an article discussing Leader Development at the Walt Disney Company, states “What kind of magic does the Walt Disney Company use to keep its large and sprawling staff of smiley, friendly, and competent workers all on the same page ... and keep them all smiling? Contrary to popular belief, it's not the pixie dust. What's actually responsible is a robust and internationally recognized leadership program that aims to carry on the virtues first established by Walt and Roy Disney 80 years ago.”

"Our guests are more likely to return based on our interactions with cast members who are more prepared, more willing, if they have great leadership that supports them," says Bruce Jones, the programming coordinator for the Disney Institute, which started as in-house training for Disney company staff and has expanded to offer training and development for outside organizations.

In other words, Disney learned quickly that internal leadership development was crucial to success.

What kind of leadership program is right for your business?

 

Experts say internal development is often something that gets axed as businesses look for ways to save money.  But they say overlooking the value of cultivating your own in-house talent can be a fatal mistake. Leadership programs help ease the chain of succession, make employees feel more connected to the business, and can transfer good ideas from one section of your company to the whole organization.

 

At Jeff Rock Consulting, we can assist your organization in “Creating a Leadership Development Program!”

 

First Things First - Assess Your Organizational Goals

 

Before you start a leadership development program, you have to make sure your business has a clear vision and stated goals. It seems like a no-brainer, but experts say many companies discount this critical first step, which makes it harder to inspire new leadership. What do you value and what do you believe in and what behaviors would you want to reward and recognize when people are observed doing it right? A simple way to go about this is to ask yourself: What do we want our future leaders to accomplish?

 

 

Mark Murphy, chairman and CEO of Leadership IQ, a training firm based in Washington, D.C and he has worked with GE, Time Warner and Coca-Cola, says there aren't universal values that apply to everyone. The goals needed in a turnaround situation are different from the ones needed in a high-growth organization or a highly collegial, collaborative one, he says. "One of things that hurts the leadership industry is the idea that there are 10 or 12 skills that magically work for everybody," he says. "That's not how the world works. It's a variety of skills, a variety of styles."

The goals and vision you create should also be believable, or you risk compromising employee trust. After all, the most successful companies create objectives that they can – and do – clearly act on, says Harold Scharlatt, a senior enterprise associate for the Center for Creative Leadership, a research and leadership-training firm based in Greensboro, N.C. "At others, you'll find it's a little bit more of a poster than it is a reality," he says. Another reason to embrace setting leadership goals, experts say: Treat it as a change initiative, and it can reprioritize your business strategy. People have to be willing to invest in new approaches to a job, and updating your company's core goals is a good place to start. If your business is still reeling from the recession, putting employees through leadership workshops can help re-motivate them, boost camaraderie, and create new challenges that have the potential to stimulate creativity.
 
 

Creating a Leadership Development Program: Identify Leadership Candidates

 

Identifying employees best suited for leadership can be tricky, and theories vary on how to best identify those candidates within your organization. Disney focuses its development programs largely on promoting from within, and more than 60 percent of its management comes from its existing staff, Jones says. The company also keeps an informal, hands-off approach to its succession program by setting goals and then standing back. “Other companies simply put their entire staff into development programs with hopes of making everyone more effective. But identifying the employees who bring the most energy, ambition and success into your company is a smart way to focus development dollars”, says Tommy Daniel, senior vice president of PDI Ninth House, a global leadership development and consulting firm. While leadership training can potentially benefit every employee, some positions will only result in a small revenue bump for the whole organization, while other positions can garner a huge return, he says. At the same time, you should be conscious that the best employees don't always make the best managers, Murphy says. "The skill sets are about 180 degrees away from each other," he says.

 
Creating a Leadership Development Program: Use Real-World Examples/Storytelling

A leadership development program is only as good as its practical applications. Note: Disney doesn't just tell its employees about customer service values established in the 1960s; it gathers good customer service stories from around the company to share with its leadership classes, and takes employees backstage at its parks to see its complex support environment. When on the road doing classes for outside organizations, instructors create a virtual experience using film and photographs. "We want those case studies to be as current as possible, as relevant as possible," Jones says. "We're always careful to make sure what we're talking about is not just baked in historical context." Disney treats itself as a living laboratory to see what approaches work, and shares those successes in its classes.

 

At Jeff Rock Consulting, we can help you put together a Leadership Development program that makes sense for your organization!