Leadership development is not linear. However, we know there are intrinsic practices in top companies built upon research and best practices that routinely develop tomorrow’s leaders. Even if you develop a leader and they eventually leave your organization, you have built a ground up relationship that can serve you or your company in some fashion for the long term. If you are in a position of developing leaders or leadership in your organization you must ask yourself the blunt questions: How am I accomplishing this? How well am I doing? How can I do better? If you are the employee, the reciprocal applies. Here are some of the core leadership development practices being utilized today:

 

-Mentorship and Reciprocal Mentorship

-Coaching (Professional & Personal)

-Support Groups specific to needs

-Up-Skilling

-Encouragement & Budgeting for Continuous Learning -Sufficient Work Life Balance

-Balanced Remote Work & Independence

-Cross Division Learning

 

Professional development should also be personalized and dynamic to each individual. This is the equivalent of an open-door policy between mentor/mentee and supervisor/ supervisee. People experience insights spontaneously for their development and being able to share those ideas at any time versus a quarterly or annual review keeps people committed, engaged, and builds trust. Team members or similar configurations of colleagues who meet in a facilitated informal group to discuss this topic can also be advantageous. It builds trust, knowledge share, and innovative thinking. I was impressed how a division wide activity titled "successful habits” produced powerful results among team members. They were divided up in pairs, had a set time to brain storm their daily routines and habits that they believed contributed to their leadership success, and then each member shared their results with the other. This was then collectively shared among the entire group. People had “a-hah" moments even in refining some of their own habits, such as using commute time more effectively for learning, or fine-tuning a work-out schedule, or finding a resource that they simply did not know existed. You can take this kind of effort online as well in a leadership development channel that grows organically. Of course, there has to be core values in your company with a proven track record, or an authentic initiative for this kind of effort to make it successful.

 

The Exercise:

From the list above, write down what currently exists, what doesn’t exist, and a brief plan how leadership development can be steadily improved. Have a strategic meeting to discuss your findings with key decision-makers and effectuate a new or updated plan.