In our last post, we talked about how critical it is to keep your leadership pipeline full and highlighted how to identify people within your organization who could become future leaders. This week we want to talk about implementing a leadership development program that makes it possible for you to continuously grow your leadership pipeline in the most effective, efficient way. 

At Jackson Schmidt Consulting, we offer a range of services, from leadership assessments to succession planning, to help organizations with this challenge. What we’ve found is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for leadership development. In fact, it can vary widely based on organizational size and culture. 

Finding the right strategy for your organization

How do you begin to plan your leadership development strategy? We suggest you start by answering these critical questions: 

• What are our organizational goals? Leadership and development plans must align with your overall business strategy and objectives. For example, if your plan is to scale in the next year, you will need to develop more leaders rather quickly. Think about where you want to be in a year, five years, and 10 years, and build your development strategy to support those goals.
• What type of culture do we want to create? Leaders shape the culture, so if your goal is to move in a new direction or reinforce the culture you have already developed, you need to build a program that will identify and coach employees to become leaders who will support that culture. 
• How do we want to initiate development? Do you want participants in the program to be nominated by coworkers, managers or HR? Do you want to conduct formal leadership assessments? Can training be initiated by employees looking to advance into leadership roles? This part is critical to define so that you can ensure a steady line of candidates. 
• Do we have criteria or expectations for employees to enter into development programs? For example, do you want participants to have worked at the organization for a specific amount of time? Or will job performance be a factor? Development can be resource- and time-intensive so you may want to qualify candidates to ensure you receive a return on your investment.  
• What skills are critical for leadership roles? Every organization requires different knowledge and skill sets, and the various leadership roles will too. Outline the skills that are critical for every leader in your organization to possess (i.e., communication, decision-making, delegation). Then outline any skills required for specific departments and teams, specifically if technical skills or expertise is necessary to be effective in the job. Doing so will help you plan training and coaching sessions. 
• What can we afford? It’s our stance that the cost of not implementing a sound leadership development program is far higher than investing in one because bad leadership can lead to costly turnover, customer attrition, and productivity issues. Still, most organizations are operating within budget constraints. Think about how you want to allocate funds for development. Will it exist at the manager level or organization level? And plan how much development you will offer and to whom. Do you want to offer basic training to everyone or specialized coaching to a select few? 
• Do we have the resources internally to support the strategy? Within your existing staff, do you have people onboard who can provide training, coaching or mentoring to support development? How will you track learning to ensure you are getting results? In many cases, your best bet may be to partner with external resources, for example, a leadership coach to develop, execute and measure your leadership strategy. 

Taking the time to answer those questions thoughtfully will help you start to plot the priorities and goals for your leadership development program, as well as consider some challenges you may face. If as you dig into the questions, you feel stuck, we would be happy to help you move forward with your strategy. Just reach out anytime.