Leadership Development Must use Experiences to Foster New Behaviors
Leaders MUST create developmental activities designed to ensure that the collective leadership of the organization is prepared to implement the most important initiatives. The leadership development program specifies how learning and development should occur on behalf of the organization, rather than for individual units. This L&D program must identify what is absolutely essential for leaders and the collective leadership of the organization to accomplish while demonstrating a clear line of sight between investments in leadership and desired organizational outcomes. Learning the new way of working, the new behavioral habits and skills, requires the leaders to take a holistic approach to the learning to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Leadership development depends not just on the kinds of experience one has but also on how one uses the experiences to foster the development of new beliefs and behaviors.
Leadership must go beyond vision, executing transformation through coaching and developing new experiences, beliefs, and behaviors around the core elements including:
- Focus upon the strategic intent
- Create a common view of the organization’s purpose and the vision of the future state
- Untiring communication to build an understanding of the new expectations, and open dialog for constructive discussions
- Institutionalize desired behaviors through example, feedback, rewards, and assessments
Existing formal and informal leaders, as well as potential leaders, find transformation new and different hence must be coached via a structured development process. Leaders know that they have much to learn and that each person has something important to teach them. Leaders don’t always know what is needed and what to do. They are willing to listen before making suggestions, they ask questions and are sincerely interested in the answers. Leaders of effective organizations put others before themselves, they focus on the needs of others and how they can best serve others. Leaders are willing to give trust, to believe that others can do the job and to have positive intentions. They work to envision the potential of people to become formal and Informal leaders.
