It's said that "The speed of the group is equal to the speed of the leader." This statement tends to carry true in most cases. Suppose about sport teams, families, businesses and professional organizations. Leaders sometimes set the direction, create the culture, and the group responds to the leadership. But, it is not uncommon to work out senior management and executives lacking within the qualities most people equate with sensible leaders. Frequently, those in top leadership roles have achieved their status through achieving sure key results. However, their methodology of how they achieved these results may not are "pretty!"
Alternative folks in the organization observe this behavior and then follow suit. Mid-level managers conclude that it's not important to master sensible leadership skills and they will model the executives' behaviors. As the undesirable behavior permeates throughout the organization, performance is negatively impacted. Sales dip, prices increase, and employee dissatisfaction and turnover increases
Organizations respond by implementing leadership skills training. However, curiously enough, the main focus tends to be on middle management. The rationale is that middle management touches the most people and they're the leaders of the future. Executives sign-off on this investment and insure that their subordinates spend the time attending leadership development training. However, the missing piece is that the executives do not see the necessity to develop their leadership skills. Their rationale includes: "I am already a pacesetter", "I buy results", "I do not have the time", etc. The senior management and executive team fail to recognize that they're the source of the undesirable behavior.
Leadership Development Training - The Govt Challenge
The challenge is how can a company break the pattern and have executive participation in leadership development training if the CEO/President is one of the culprits?
Greg Swenton, CEO of Ryder, Inc. (a Fortune 500 company) stated at Ladies Govt Leadership, that he acknowledges the importance of nice leadership. Ryder's entire leadership team is measured on key capacities that they deem as fascinating qualities in their organization. To reinforce their commitment all leaders are measured on their effectiveness in these capacities in their performance evaluations.
Once there's get-in from the executive team to develop their leadership skills, there are varied approaches to leadership development training. Retreats, group classes, one-on-one coaching, mastermind teams, and self study courses provide opportunities to customize training to suit the organizations' needs. The best results are achieved when:
1. An integrated approach is applied: It is best to couple one-on one coaching for executives that attend cluster categories, retreats or take self study courses. Most executives keep their guard up in front of others. One-on-one coaching provides a "safe-area" for the executive. Most executives find one-on-one coaching extraordinarily insightful and beneficial.
2. Executives are held accountable for his or her leadership style: Most executives are acquainted with being in control of hard line results (sales, profitability, growth, etc.). It's imperative that the executives also are held accountable for his or her behaviors. Accountability ought to be tied to compensation and promotion opportunities.
3. Ongoing development: Acknowledge that having a mindset and culture of continuous improvement means that that some type of ongoing leadership development training should be implemented for everyone.
Therefore if you wish to possess effective leadership throughout the organization, create positive that leadership development training starts at the very prime!
Author Resource:
Riley Jones has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in Leadership, you can also check out his latest website about:
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