11/10/2024
Leadership Learning Strategy Emerging leaders Coaching
It’s no secret that I’m a massive cooking and baking show fan. I’m one of the reasons that Netflix keeps making those types of shows, because I have watched them all and I’ll watch them all again.
One of my favourites must be the baking show called ‘Nailed It!’. Home bakers who have a poor track record in the kitchen seek redemption – and cash – on this 'Netflix Original' series. In each episode the contestants try their hand at re-creating edible masterpieces. The projects don't always turn out great, but whichever amateur baker comes closest to a successful dessert by the end of the episode takes home the USD$10,000 prize, which they might want to use on baking lessons.
Before you run off to watch a season of Nailed It! What has this got to do with leadership development you may wonder? Well, we want to help you avoid making a hot mess of your leadership development initiatives like our home bakers do with their cakes.
In this blog post we are going to talk about the what (ingredients) and the how (method and recipe) of leadership development. We’ll sprinkle in some leadership development statistics for good measure and show you why investing in your organisation’s leadership development is so important.
Why is investing in leadership development important?
Investing in leadership development helps create a culture of continuous learning and growth. Leaders who prioritise their development foster an environment that values ongoing education and improvement. This culture is crucial for organisations to remain competitive and adaptive in a constantly changing business landscape.
READ: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Thriving Learning Culture
Have your cake and eat it!
Simply put, it’s important to invest in leadership development because good leaders are effective ones.
Apollo Technical states that more than 77 % of organisations report that leadership is lacking, at the same time, 83% of businesses say it’s important to develop leaders at all levels. Yet less than 5% of companies have implemented leadership development across all levels.
By effectively developing your leaders and focusing on the key leadership development skills you’ll gain wonderful benefits for your organisation.
Finding a ‘MasterChef’ leader is very hard
Investing in your leaders is important because chances are, your organisation doesn’t consist of ‘MasterChef’ leaders who have perfected the fine art of leading others naturally without having to really work on their skills. It is, however, more likely that you may have more people with ‘a knack’ or talent for leadership that will need some development.
Truth is that great leaders are scarce because the natural talent or ability required to be one is rare. Gallup's research reveals that about one in 10 people (10%) possess the raw talent or ability to manage or lead other people. Few people have the unique combination of natural undeveloped talent and skills needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves an organisation’s performance. These 10%, when put in leadership roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity.
By investing in your organisation’s leadership development, you will also be cultivating future leaders. When you identify and nurture potential leaders within the organisation, you can prepare individuals with high potential for future leadership roles. This reduces the risk of leadership gaps and ensures continuity in leadership, which is vital for long-term success.
Investing in your leaders can and will positively impact the bottom line.
In fact, a Gallup workplace study found that when organisations can increase their number of talented leaders, and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition.
We believe this is because leadership development equips leaders to drive growth and make strategic decisions. Without effective leadership development leaders may lack the insight and flexibility needed to lead effectively in a BANI world and rapidly evolving business environment. The Global Leadership Forecast 2018, found that organisations that embrace a more inclusive approach to leadership training are 4.2 times more likely to outperform those that restrict development to management.
Leaders who are being developed will ‘take the cake’.
Leadership development is important for enhancing key leadership development skills and competencies. Without focused development, leaders may struggle to make informed decisions and effectively guide their teams. This can hinder organisational growth and the ability to meet goals.
Study results show those participants undergoing leadership training improved their learning capacity by 25% and their performance by 20%. Many of these programmes not only teach leadership theory and practices but also how these can be applied to the office setting.
The ‘ingredients’ of leadership development
Every keen baker knows that your ingredients make your cake. There is a base of standard ingredients for most cakes like flour, sugar, eggs, salt or butter. And then anything else you add, depending on your recipe, will give you a different cake. There are so many to choose from! Cheesecake, carrot cake, chocolate cake – the options are endless.
With leadership, the topics or content are like our ingredients. They are the ‘what’ that makes up our cake. So, what ingredients do you need to bake a delicious ‘leadership’ cake for your organisation? All baking puns aside, we get asked this question by our clients all the time. What topics do I need to include to get well-rounded leaders? What are other organisations doing to equip their leaders?
Here is our take on it: it really depends.
“Leaders show us what great looks like. And what great looks like is really contextual for every organisation. Leaders need to intentionally put their leadership skills into practice within the context of their organisation. Leadership development isn’t like a bakery that produces ready-made leaders.”
- Dan Tohill Group CEO at Inspire Group
READ: Taking a Woven Approach to Leadership Development
Identifying and developing leadership skills
Identifying and developing leadership skills, competencies and behaviours is an important part of leadership development. To start to put together an ‘ingredient’ list, you’ll need to identify the key skills and qualities that are essential for effective leadership in your specific industry and context.
Best practices for discovering the ‘what’ for your organisation's leadership development
If you’re feeling ready to get started in the leadership kitchen, here are some pointers:
- Make it specific and contextual to your organisation: experiential learning provides a well-rounded development experience. Leaders must be able to put into practice (in real life at work) their leadership skills learnt.
- Always align leadership development with organisational strategy: leadership development should be aligned with the organisation's strategic objectives. The skills and competencies developed should directly contribute to the achievement of organisational goals.
- Don’t forget to involve senior leadership: senior leaders should actively support and participate in leadership development initiatives. It really does flow from the top down. Their involvement demonstrates the importance of leadership development and sets the tone for a culture of continuous learning and growth.
- Keep moulding your cake: there should be no such thing as 'One and Done' with leadership development. Standalone experiences are not going to cut the mustard. As the organisation moves, grows and learns, so should the learning and experiences for leaders and their development.
Creating a leadership development plan
Like all great cakes, no great organisation is built or ‘baked’ accidentally. But instead with deliberate action, a recipe – a plan.
A leadership development plan is a ‘recipe’ that outlines the specific actions and activities required to develop leadership skills and competencies. If you have identified the 'what' of leadership development for your organisation, you may want to put together a recipe for success.
Get ‘Master Baker’ help
You might consider making the best of a leadership development framework, crafting a leadership development plan or developing a robust leadership development strategy that lines up with your organisation’s strategic goals and objectives. Take a breath! You don’t have to come up with a recipe on your own. If you need help with figuring out where to next, then seek out others with experience and insights to share about leadership development to guide you. 😉 Let us help you!
Like frosting melting off a hot cake
“Don’t do it! Your cake is too hot!!” That’s me, the ‘couch chef’ shouting in my living room. One of the classic mistakes of amateur bakers is putting their perfectly good butter cream frosting onto a hot cake that’s just out of the oven. They do this because they are rushed for time and/or they just don’t know any better. Pretty soon, it all just melts into the cake and turns into a hot mess.
The problem with slapping learning onto the issue of ineffective leaders.
Maybe you’ve got your leadership topics all sorted and even have a chosen framework or a leadership development plan. Please, don’t just ‘slap’ these learning topics onto your leaders and hope it’s going to stick. It’s bound to be ineffective. Here is where we think it's important to pause and reflect before you go ahead.
“We've been talking to clients frequently over the years about challenges with leadership capability.
One of the biggest challenges that's often shared by those clients is that whatever they've tried before just hasn't worked. It hasn't really shifted the dial for them in terms of leadership capability, in terms of the organisational outcomes that focusing on leadership development should drive.
When we dig a little bit deeper, what we often find is what they have tried has been predominantly driven by a content-heavy approach, which might be focused on key themes of the ‘what’ of leadership development.”
Aidan Stoat – CEO Inspire Group NZ
Nailed it!
Why investing in the ‘how’ of leadership development is more important than the ‘what’
While watching a recent episode of Nailed It! it got me wondering. How is it that, with the exact same ingredients and the same recipe, those home bakers produced a hilarious display of baking mishaps? Yet, their ingredients were not sub-par or any different to those used by the pastry chef.
As it turns out, the success of their baked goods wasn’t tied up in the baking powder or eggs, it was about ‘how’ those ingredients were put together and applied. That is the difference between a beautifully fluffy baked masterpiece and a hot mess.
The ingredients (what you are doing) are the same for both home bakers and the pastry chef, but the application, the context and skills, the attention to detail and care in preparation (how you do it) made the difference between a culinary disaster and an exceptional baked delight.
This emphasises that the method and effort behind the task often carries more weight than the task itself.
The problem with focusing only on the ‘what’ of leadership is that those things like the leadership hot topics or content are often quite susceptible to change.
– Aidan Stoate CEO Inspire Group NZ
It's the same with leadership development: common leadership development programmes or methods may not give you the impact you need.
At Inspire Group we believe in moving our focus from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’. We want to have conversations with our clients that really get them thinking about the learning experience rather than the leadership topic that they're looking to drive.
We believe in creating more transformative experiences for leaders and for their organisations. By establishing a consistent and robust foundation for designing great experiences that will actually remove some of that frustration of ineffective leadership development.
– Aidan Stoate CEO Inspire Group New Zealand
Savouring the results
We believe that transformative leadership starts curiosity. Being curious about with the way your learning experiences are designed and delivered will open up new ways of thinking about your leadership development strategies. Specific skills or capability areas may evolve with new directives or directions, but the fundamentals of how these skills are developed should be consistent and consistently effective.
That's why our approach to building leadership capability is to design and develop powerful, engaging and contextual learning experiences that enable your leaders to cultivate their confidence and competence.
Master chef or home baker? Reach out to one of our Learning Partners and let us help you create a leadership experience that will take the cake!
