Leadership development notes

From PLN

1 Crucibles of leadership development
2 Three-dimensional leadership development
3 Training Magazine
4 Related articles
5 Your turn: Talk about it

Shorter notes on aspects of leadership development.

Crucibles of leadership development

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest June 2008

What makes ordinary people into great leaders? Robert J. Thomas, author of Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn From Experience to Become a Great Leader, believes it’s how they handle their experiences, especially the traumatic “crucible” events. Leaders who grow through crucible experiences are distinguished from others by their approach to learning. They develop a “personal learning strategy” that helps them confront challenges and extract valuable lessons about leadership.

Thomas’ recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review, which is based on his book, discusses how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club have “mastered the art of turning crucible experiences into leadership gold.” Both organizations are large, complex and durable, and have grown rapidly in the last 30 years. Each one uses a specific activity as a crucible for leadership development. For the Mormon church, it’s the missionary experience; for the Hells Angels, it’s motorcycle runs.

These two “fringe” (or formerly fringe) groups provide important lessons about leadership development:

Both organizations demonstrate how core activities can “serve as practice fields for leaders.”
They make “elaborate preparations” before sending potential leaders “out into the field.” They teach technical skills and “critical leadership intangibles”, e.g., rules of the road, how to sense trouble; when to say no.
They provide “supporting infrastructure” during the crucible experience. Senior supervisors, whose job it is to demonstrate commitment to the individuals and to the organization’s mission, are on the scene.
They recognize the need for individual and organizational renewal. The crucible events are designed to “foster a new generation of leaders” and “enable the organization to replenish itself.”

These lessons require “an openness to experimentation and risk taking in the area of leader development…” Properly developed and managed crucible experiences can help organizations develop their next generation of leaders.

(Robert J. Thomas, “Crucibles of leadership development”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2008.)

Three-dimensional leadership development

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest March 2008

Organizations that don’t offer development opportunities to their employees risk losing future leaders. How do you keep your best and brightest? Take “an active role in their development.”

The authors of this article believe the best approach to development is three-dimensional: through the head; through the heart; and through the guts.

Use your head
- Be clear about what kinds of skills your organization will need to further its strategies.
- Educate your staff about the strategy and industry realities.
- Invest in your strongest performers for mission-critical roles.
Use your heart
- Give frank, constructive, regular performance feedback.
- Develop trusted relationships with your staff.
- Create opportunities for staff to talk regularly about their strengths, weaknesses, and goals.
- Build realistic development plans for staff.
Use your guts
- Take calculated risks; accept that failure can happen.
- Give talented staff opportunities to lead projects even if they’re not quite ready.
- Put staff in role-stretching assignments. And stretch yourself!
- Expect high performance — “good enough is not enough.”
- Be a role model.

“The payoff of this holistic approach? You will increase the depth of talent in your team today and create the leaders your [organization] needs tomorrow.”

(Seth Lieberman and Steve Krupp, “Three-dimensional leadership development,” Harvard Management Update, March 2008.)

Training Magazine

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest June 2007

There’s a new digital edition of Training Magazine that you really need to take a look at for two reasons:

It’s a really innovative new online approach. It’s a little hard to navigate at first, but try turning the pages if you do nothing else. We need to get used to this.
There are also some interesting articles on leadership and training--two of which I’ve summarized below.

“Microsoft’s leading edge” tells us about Microsoft’s leadership development program. On the surface it looks like other programs, but what sets it apart is the intentionality “that underlies and guides all those activities.” The purpose of the program isn’t just to build leaders, but to grow people who can “make Microsoft precisely the kind of company it wants to be.” They identified cultural attributes and then looked at competencies by asking, “What does ‘differentiated performance’ look like today, and what must it look like in the long term?” They identified leadership competencies, such as “deep insight” and “building organizational capability.” Looking at how leaders grow at Microsoft, their thinking was influenced by the book The Leadership Pipeline (Josey-Bass, 2001), which identifies six distince career stages. For each stage, competencies were identified, and then “key events that foster deep and sustained learning.” This led to a “taxonomy of pivotal experiences.” Together, these all drive the way leadership development is thought about at Microsoft.

“Leadership drivers” describes a leadership development and best practices roundtable held in New York that gives a glimpse of what some companies are doing to strengthen and promote leadership development. A few highlights include:

Leadership development is very different from training.
Align leadership development with business objectives.
Some companies have simple goals: zero outages (replacements are always available); and succession, not replacement.
A major problem is getting agreement on defined competencies for a position. One solution was to define 3 elements: technical knowledge; strategic thinking process; and execution.