One of the most valuable investments that a business can make in its people is creating an effective approach to helping their leaders develop leadership competencies that will have the most positive impact on the success of their business. Short term, “check the box” approaches often don’t produce meaningful results. This must be a long-term commitment to developing leadership competencies. Businesses that make the development of leadership competencies part of the ongoing culture of the organization, rather than an occasional event, will realize the greatest benefits.

Leadership Competencies

There are numerous sources of research and endless lists on what the most important leadership competencies are. Important leadership competencies are centered around themes of what it takes to successfully lead an organization, lead others, and manage yourself. Some of the most common skills, practices, and behaviors often include: effective communication, developing others, setting a vision and strategy, ethics and integrity, building relationships, and managing change.

A Checklist for Developing Competencies

There is a proven approach to developing leadership competencies, which is described through the checklist, below. Don’t mistake the use of a checklist as an indication that this is a quick or easy process. Once again, it takes a long-term commitment to be successful. However, it is well worth it when it is done well:

✓ Develop a List of Leadership Competencies

At the most senior level of your organization, a decision needs to be made that developing a list of leadership competencies that are most important to the success of the business is critical to the future success of the organization. This is the beginning of a long-term commitment to making these competencies a center piece of defining and strengthening the culture of the firm.

✓ Work with Leaders Across the Organization to List of High-Priority Competencies

Create an inclusionary process of engaging leaders from across the organization in a discussion of what should be included in the list of competencies. Start this effort with a clear message from the top that this is an important effort that will hopefully have a long-term impact on the company. Create an environment of open debate of various ideas and approaches to identifying the highest priority competencies.

✓ Reflect on Discussions with a Group of Leaders Involved

Check in with a sample of leaders from across the firm following these discussions to get a sense for what they thought of the discussions, their level of engagement and how committed they are to supporting this effort.

✓ Establish Criteria to Drive Final Selection of Competencies

From the long list of competency ideas that was generated, have a smaller group of senior leaders establish criteria that will drive the final selection of competencies. What standards must a competency meet to be important enough to make the final list? How many competencies should there be? When does the list become too long to be impactful?

✓ Conduct Final Review of Proposed Competencies

During a final review of the list of competencies proposed, each member of the senior team should say if they firmly believe: 

• If executed well, each of these competencies will make a real difference to our business.
• Each of these competencies are critical guiding principles that all of our leaders should follow.
• Have we gone into too much detail or left anything critical out that we should expect from our leaders?

✓ Develop Plan to Communicate Competencies Throughout Organization

Once the list of competencies is finalized, a well thought out communication plan needs to be developed. The plan should start with communication from the very top of the organization about the importance of and commitment to developing these competencies in all leaders. The competencies should be talked about as both leadership skills and a guide to the type of company culture that leadership wants to foster. Repeated mentions of this effort and specific competencies in various company communications over time will be critical to the successful implementation of this effort.

✓ Hold Leaders Accountable and Responsible for Competencies

A thoughtful approach will need to be created to hold leaders accountable for taking personal responsibility for their own efforts to develop these competencies in themselves and amongst the people that report to them.

Keystone Partners: Leadership Development and Career Management Experts

If a commitment is made to the approach described above in this checklist, the likelihood of successfully developing leadership competencies will be significantly increased. The first step in this process, which is starting at the top of your organization to agree that the effort of developing leadership competencies is critical to the future success of your business, can’t be skipped. If that step has been completed, you will be confronted with one of the biggest challenges: how to embed this into the culture of your organization. GOOD LUCK!

Keystone Partners has more than 40 years of experience working with clients throughout all aspects of the employee experience. We have extensive experience helping clients create new or update existing competency models. We can help ensure you have the best system in place for your organization. Interested in learning more about how we can help with leadership development and career management-related needs? Contact us today to find out how we can help your organization realize the full potential of your people.

So, what can be done about this tidal wave of people management problems? There are answers, but let’s first look a little closer at the challenges and then look at solutions, none of which are “quick fixes”.

People Management Challenges in a Covid/Hybrid Workforce World:

1. Weaknesses amongst many organizations’ managers have been exposed as the impact of Covid continues to extend over a prolonged period of time.
2. Employees have had a lot of time to rethink their life choices and work options as the pandemic has continued. For example, working for employers almost anywhere (virtually) emerged as an option not previously available to many employees.
3. Employee dissatisfaction with their direct boss’s and senior manager’s ability to effectively deal with changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic increased.
4. Many managers in the final years of their careers did not want to deal with the long list of people problems that were coming at them. As a result, they threw in the towel and took early retirement. More early retirements are likely.
5. As employees started leaving organizations in record numbers, recruiting practices did not change significantly enough to compete for talent in the current talent marketplace.
6. Many CEOs want everyone back in the office full-time but are being told that they will lose too many employees if they demand that employees come back.
7. There has been a loss of employee connection to bosses, organizations, and company cultures that has resulted in the need for managers to work much harder and smarter to maintain strong relationships with all staff members.

Actions to Start Taking Now to Address the People Management Challenges of Today

So the question becomes: how can leaders possibly fight this daunting wave of management challenges? To be blunt, the answer is by making a real, long-term commitment to improving the management skills of every manager in your organization. Avoiding short term, quick fix, check the box leadership training that is so common in many organizations is a great place to start. This is a matter of survival for many companies. Instead of taking this approach that is seen all too often, let’s look at some specific, higher impact actions that can be started now:

1. Starting at the CEO level, openly recognize and discuss the significantly increased management challenges your organization is facing (the first step toward a cure is admitting you have a problem!).
2. Discuss your company’s specific management challenges openly. Solicit internal and external input and potential solutions that might make sense for your firm.
3. Move quickly to address weaknesses amongst your leadership team. Don’t allow managers that are struggling take entire parts of your organization down.
4. Ask the hard questions required to come up with new approaches to problems like recruiting talent in a highly competitive talent market. Doing it the “same old way” is not good enough anymore.
5. Create a long-term plan that sets out a goal of improving management skills and leadership capabilities in a meaningful way.  Make this one of the company’s highest priorities.
6. Teamwork, which was sorely lacking in many firms pre-pandemic. has suffered even more as a result of the work-from-home environment. Take a hard look at your key teams and ask: Does this group operate as a team or are they simply a confederation of individuals? Do they openly debate sensitive issues, share valuable information, discuss best practices, and share resources?

We wish you good luck dealing with the people leadership challenges of both today and tomorrow. One of the foundational beliefs of strong leaders is that “things can be better”. There are almost always opportunities for improvement. We firmly believe in this and we hope that you do too! 

Interested in learning more? Keystone Partners has been helping companies of all sizes across all industries overcome their people and leadership challenges for the last 40 years. Our team of coaches has extensive experience helping leaders function more effectively, leading to employees to be happier and more engaged in their jobs. Interested in learning more? Contact us today to find out how we can help develop your organization’s leaders realize their full potential.

Most, if not all the managers and leaders that I’ve met during my 30+ years of business and leadership consulting experience spent a good part of their careers developing the many competencies required to be strong leaders. Unfortunately, the vast-majority of leaders learn these skills through trial and error, without any significant formal preparation to guide their development. The failure rate of this approach is high. If the practice of promoting top performing individual contributors into management positions with little to no preparation for leadership produces such poor results, why do companies continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Some common responses:

1. Leadership development costs too much.
2. We have tried to train our leaders and the results have been poor.
3. We have highly trained professionals (doctors, engineers, investment professionals) that are highly educated and have long track records of success.
4. They are going to manage people just like themselves; with some experience and guidance, they will do just fine.
5. We don’t have time to send our top people to development programs.

WRONG!

An imbalance has occurred in many businesses wherein technical skills have been assigned a disproportionately high value over people and leadership skills. Both types of skills are necessary for organizations to be successful. Insightful leaders recognize this imbalance and take steps to correct it.

Preparation is a critical part of successfully performing the most important tasks in our lives. From the time we are children to the time we are adults, we are taught that you must prepare or risk failure. For example:

• When I was eight years old, I started playing the marching snare drum. I took music lessons and was persuaded to practice the drum every night.
• I spent hours in a batting cage swinging at baseballs to make my little league team.
• In High School, I sanded cars in an auto body shop to prepare them for painting. I was taught that the quality of the paint job was heavily dependent on the quality of the preparation.
• We spend hours preparing for tests throughout our academic careers.
• The only way I overcame my nervousness about public speaking was to over prepare by rehearsing the speeches over and over again.
• A group of Air Force fighter pilots and astronauts that I worked with described their careers as over 90% preparation, with the smallest percentages of their time dedicated to flying and debriefing after missions.

If we know that preparation is critical for almost all difficult tasks in life, then why is preparation for becoming a leader substantially ignored by many organizations?

I will share a belief after working for great leaders and truly terrible leaders, leading people myself, and helping develop leaders: One of the greatest untapped potential competitive advantages that is readily available to most organizations today is the opportunity to develop strong leaders throughout the organization. Leaders who create an engaged, positive, open communication, and teamwork culture that produces top-tier business results.

After reviewing a lot of leadership research and observing many leaders, I’ve developed a theory that leaders fall into one of two categories:

• Two thirds of leaders fall into the “just OK to horrible” manager category.
• One third fall into the “good to fantastic” manager category.

These “just OK to horrible” managers dominate the corporate landscape and that is why employee engagement is low, turnover is so high, and many companies struggle to produce their desired business results. This does not have to be true. There are known fixes available.

There are proven ways to achieve this goal, but it takes the long-term commitment and persistence of an organization’s top leaders to realize the benefits over a period of years. It starts with a belief that developing strong leaders is a critical part of developing a successful work culture. And, that a successful work culture is the foundation required to effectively execute business strategy.

Consider the following ways that companies have been successful at developing leaders have achieved their goals:

• Make a conscious long term and ongoing commitment to developing leaders.
• Budget enough money every year to have a meaningful impact on leader development.
• If “people are our greatest asset,” start acting like it. How much did you invest in your greatest asset this year?
• Start at the top. Get the CEO a coach and leadership development advisor.
• Have all the executive committee members who report to the CEO participate in a year-long leadership development program focused on their own development as leaders and identifies strategies for developing leaders below them in the organization.
• Have all senior leaders receive 360 feedback on areas of focus to become better leaders.
• Implement a thoughtful approach to “growing your own” future leaders by:
• Identifying high-potential employees early in their careers.
• Providing these future leaders with a mix of training and on-the-job experiences that progressively help them grow through mentorship, stretch assignments, formal training, and exposure to senior management.
• Read leadership books. There are a lot of great leadership books and extraordinary leadership research. The problem is that most managers don’t read these books or take advantage of the research. Can you imagine not paying attention to the best research available on your industry? That’s what most managers do every day related to their leadership function.

I could go on and on. The opportunities to be more successful through improved leadership and organizational culture are staring you in the face. Reach out and grab them before the competition does.