How to Create a Successful Leadership Development Program
by Bob Shively, Enerdynamics President and Lead Facilitator
"A positive company culture should promote leadership by inculcating such skills in each generation of talent."
~ Zain Jaffer, Founder and CEO, Zain Ventures writing in the Training article titled 6 Tips to Train and Cultivate Great Leaders
It was once thought that great leaders came to their success naturally, but now it is common knowledge among businesses that leadership development is a critical part of corporate success. Indeed, corporations spend billions attempting to develop leadership teams. According to a recent article in Forbes magazine, many leadership programs often fail to deliver the desired results due to lack of focus on the right set of soft skills and through ineffective program design.
What should leadership programs focus on? A recent survey of over 28,000 business leaders performed by Chief Learning Officer magazine, identified the following key components:
What are key criteria for successful program design? These include the following:
- Don’t skimp to save money: Find the top team of trainers, whether internal or external.
- Focus on the right content: Pay to develop it if it isn’t available off the shelf, and work in partnership with your education partners.
- Ensure industry and corporate culture knowledge in trainers: All programs must focus on your company and your business, otherwise credibility with participants is lost rapidly.
- Develop leaders by having future leaders lead: Design your program to require leaders to actively lead as part of their development process.
- Develop a common leadership language: Ensure all your future leaders have a consistent framework for thinking about leading.
- Provide a “toolbox” of influencing skills: Prepare your future leaders with a variety of soft skills to complement their business competencies.
- Ensure business acumen: New leaders often come from a silo of one area of the company where they were successful without understanding the rest of the business, sadly this is a sure way for new leaders to rapidly lose credibility with key stakeholders.
Through Enerdynamics work with various companies in the energy business, we have found that programs that utilize of team of quality providers ranging from internal to external vendors have high levels of success. A key to success is to identify the right team and to work from the beginning as a partnership between corporate learning professionals, learning providers, and a representative group of participants. As an example, Enerdynamics worked with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) as one of the team members developing the program titled "Leading the Energy Network of Tomorrow." Our development took almost a year including two pilot implementations. The program recently won two Brandon Hall Excellence in Leadership Development awards: a gold medal for “Best Advance in Leadership Development” and a bronze medal for “Best Unique or Innovative Leadership Development Program.”
Good leadership development isn’t easy and takes significant work. But when done right, it can provide significant benefits. When done wrong, it can waste a lot of time and money!
Are you developing an energy leadership program that requires business acumen in the electricity or natural gas industries? If so, Enerdynamics can help you develop your own award-winning training. Visit www.enerdynamics.com and contact us at 866-765-5432 or info@enerdynamics.com.
