Self Leadership Coaching Blog

A friend of mine is an Asia Pacific Managing Director for a global firm. We were chatting over lunch and I was sharing the need for a longer term approach to developing leaders; “I agree”, he said, “but my company would never sign up for something like that.” When I inquired as to why not, he explained that any commitment to learning and development would be viewed by quarter, because, with the uncertain future in 2012 they would want to be able to cut back on any non-essential expenditure!

This conversation highlights the dangerous lack of preparedness that many leadership teams are in. If 2012 is going to be uncertain or tough, then shouldn’t we get ready for it? Shouldn’t we put the best leadership team in place and make sure they have the competencies required? Or is this a non-essential expense?

Consider that, post the Global Financial Crisis, many leadership teams were decimated by cut backs and organizations are talking about growth when they don’t have the bench strength of talent to achieve it. It is frightening that less than 10% of executives have a plan to develop their strengths and the more senior they get; the less likely they are to receive constructive performance and strategic feedback.

My friend’s organization has 20,000 plus employees and I happen to know that engagement is low and in certain sectors attrition is high. It costs, on average, 18 months’ salary for each manager or professional that leaves, creating a massive financial strain. The engagement or commitment levels of employees are critical to an organizations success and yet with an increased work-load and smaller work-force employees are feeling stressed and fragile.

You would think that now is the time to align the leadership, and engage people through focusing on developing the skills to face ‘The New Norm’ that will be 2012, but perhaps this is a non-essential expense?

A PWC survey showed that 66% of CEO’s say that talent gaps are their biggest fear, whilst 52% are worried about the competition poaching their top talent. And in Asia, where 90% of CEO’s think growth will come from, there exists an alarming shortage of highly competent people leaders.

If this is not a compelling argument to make a strategic commitment at developing and retaining top talent then I don’t know what is. Unfortunately companies are highly sensitive to cost and see this activity as an expense rather than an investment. To an extent, I can actually sympathize with this view. Many so called leadership training programs are either outdated ‘cookie cutter’ approaches or they are just too academic. Such programs suck up time and money and don’t often deliver a tangible or measurable result.

If you are going to develop your leadership talent you are going to have to go beyond the generic leadership competency list that HR has kindly put on a Power Point slide. You are going to have to identify what specific behaviors do you want your leaders to role model. These can be as fundamental as that ability to give constructive feedback or have a crucial conversation without it degenerating into conflict. More advanced behaviors might include the ability to re-frame a challenging business situation and be able to identify opportunities or to communicate strategy in a way that middle management can delegate and execute.

To achieve measurable result requires seeing developing and retaining talent as a core business function and putting some metrics around the results. It requires an attitude of preparing people for the challenge ahead and not just making do. The approach of just doing the odd training here or there when the budget allows probably is an ‘unnecessary expense’, because if the business doesn’t fail, it will fail to capture the growth that it so desperately desires.