Strategies for Effectively Implementing Corporate Leadership Programs

Strategies for Effectively Implementing Corporate Leadership Programs

A People Manager at a large company told me how hard it was to achieve impact with a limited leadership training budget. If she focused on the leaders so they could then work with their teams, the teams lacked the language needed to be in tune with the work the leader wanted to do. If she focused on the top performers (those with high performance and high potential on the 9-box), she felt the training had individual impact but didn’t extend to the rest of the organization. She considered voluntary training, but in the end she would be left with people from different areas, without the consistency needed to generate collective impact. How can this problem be approached strategically?

 

The Tension Between Depth and Reach

 

It is well known that attending a leadership workshop doesn’t necessarily translate into better skills the next day, and that taking part in a coaching workshop doesn’t necessarily make us coaches for our teams. The key here is sustaining the learning process over time, which allows us to progressively challenge our mental models and achieve the long-awaited behavioral change.

 

Now, the deeper the leadership program, the greater the likelihood of success, but the cost per person goes up. Conversely, with less depth, while the cost goes down, so does the likelihood of impact. What is the right balance between these variables?

 

While this decision must be evaluated case by case, generally speaking, a leadership program with several sessions, allowing participants to learn and apply what they learn in parallel, is more valuable in terms of impact, because it improves content retention, enables experimentation followed by reflection on those experiments, and leverages collective effort as a mechanism for behavioral change.

 

But what if I have a team of a thousand leaders and ten thousand employees? How do I create impact on them?

 

The Risk of Disconnect Between Leaders and Teams

 

Many organizations solve this dilemma through two strategies: the first is to use the 9-box to select the leaders with the best performance and potential and send them to an in-depth leadership course.

 

The second (often complementary) is to set up the famous training “academies”: all leaders from a certain level up take part in a cross-organizational leadership program, with less depth than the former.

 

Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages. The 9-box strategy allows highly qualified professionals to develop leadership skills in great depth and improves participants’ future employability. The downsides are that it is often seen as a perk rather than a new challenge, it tends to impact the individual more than the organization, and it tends to disconnect these professional leaders from the rest of the organization, particularly their teams. They acquire a completely different language and vocabulary.

 

The second strategy, cross-organizational training academies, gives leaders a common language; it is a way to promote development across all management levels and enables connections between people who may not have known each other before. As for the downsides, they often lack the depth needed to create impact, tend to be expensive to sustain over time, and generate the same disconnect between leaders and their teams, since the academies are aimed exclusively at people who manage others. This time, it is the teams who use a different language and vocabulary.

 

Choosing with a Strategic Lens

 

A third strategy for tackling the leadership training challenge is to use the identification of critical roles to focus the work, something many People departments at large companies already have in place. For a hospital specializing in orthopedics, for example, losing an orthopedic surgeon is not the same as losing a cardiologist. The former is a business-critical role. Training that person and their leader can be key to retaining them.

 

The advantages of this approach are that it works not only with the leader but also with their team, avoiding the disconnect between leaders and teams; training is focused on a smaller group, allowing greater depth without sacrificing reach; and it achieves direct impact on the organization’s core areas. Among the downsides, other professionals (usually the participants’ peers) don’t receive training, which can create a perception of inequity if not handled properly.

 

New Opportunities to Focus Training

 

A final strategy, which we believe is complementary and effective, is to focus training on those who need it most and/or want to put it into practice. In this way, leadership training is targeted at people who have the need or the challenge of applying these skills and, at the same time, have the time and willingness to learn. We often try to get all leaders to develop this skill when, in reality, there may be areas that, due to their current workload, lack of interest, an already acceptable level of development, or simply other priorities, don’t devote the time needed to learn, and the program’s impact fades away.

 

This strategy has the great advantage of letting us focus the program on those who need it most, and the disadvantage that we have to assess leaders and teams with the right questions to filter them. To this end, Almabrands has developed a study called the “Purpose Index,” which uses an online tool to assess the state of individuals, the team, and the organization in their leadership and purpose challenges, thereby focusing the work required to take the organization to the next level. Like any strategy, it has its drawbacks, including the inability to determine precisely who “really” needs the program. Being aware of the problem is already halfway to solving it.

 

Challenging the Status Quo

 

Following focusing strategies based on assessments of team status, such as the one provided by the “Purpose Index,” and on the identification of critical roles, means questioning some deeply rooted assumptions in organizations and, let’s be honest, in People departments too. Here are two we believe are key to address:

 

Leadership training only makes sense for people who manage others: a belief with no scientific basis. We can all drive change, regardless of our formal role in the organization, and doing so fuels our growth and sense of purpose. When driving change, having the role of “boss” can make things easier or harder, depending on what is at stake and who is involved.

 

Leadership training only makes sense for people who manage others: a belief with no scientific basis. We can all drive change, regardless of our formal role in the organization, and doing so fuels our growth and sense of purpose. When driving change, having the role of “boss” can make things easier or harder, depending on what is at stake and who is involved.

 

All leaders, especially our top performers, should receive leadership training: the truth is, not all leaders need leadership training. In fact, we dare say that top performers on the 9-box don’t necessarily need training, but rather new challenges where they can apply and refine the skills they already have. Besides, if a leader gets good results from their team and has a positive work climate, why not leverage them as a mentor to teach others instead of sending them to yet another leadership course?

 

All leaders, especially our top performers, should receive leadership training: the truth is, not all leaders need leadership training. In fact, we dare say that top performers on the 9-box don’t necessarily need training, but rather new challenges where they can apply and refine the skills they already have. Besides, if a leader gets good results from their team and has a positive work climate, why not leverage them as a mentor to teach others instead of sending them to yet another leadership course?

 

The resource-focusing strategy is key to maximizing the likelihood of success of a large-scale leadership program, and choosing the right one requires a case-by-case analysis of the organization’s stage of development. If you think your organization is ready to take leadership training to the next level, it may be time for us to talk.

 

1. The 9-box is a talent segmentation methodology based on current performance and future potential. More information is available at this link: https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/