The quality of leadership, or the lack thereof, is all the rage these days.
It ought to be!
In a recent Forbes article, contributor Dan Pontefract reviewed results from Development Dimensions International, Inc.’s (DDI) 2023 Global Leadership Forecast.
PS: - Thanks to Jeannie Coyle, Board Member at The Rejuvi Venture, Inc., and our thought leader, mentor, guide, and friend for sharing the Forbes article 😊!
The assessment that caught my attention was, "The results showed a 17% drop in the number of leaders who reported their company had high-quality leaders.” When I double-clicked into DDI’s 2023 Global Leadership Forecast data for more clarity, I was even more alarmed (no pun intended 😊)!
Let me explain why.
That trend reading is accurate; there was a 17% decline where the “Percentage of leaders who rate their organizations’ leadership quality as very good or excellent” dropped from 48% in 2020 to 40% in 2022.
However, where my alarm comes from, what needs to be discussed is that this number was 38% in 2011 and took nine years to grow to 48% in 2020, only to fall back to approximately the same level in 2 years! Think about that for a second – the best this metric ever got to was where only 1 out of every two leaders rated their organizations’ leadership quality as very good or excellent!
If that was not enough to cause angst and heartburn, another finding in DDI’s forecast just baffles me. This was related to the bench strength as estimated by HR experts. The current
level of HR experts who say they have a solid bench to fill leadership positions is 12%, i.e., 1 out of every 10! Once again, should this alarm us, yes! What is even more alarming to me is that the number was just 18% in 2011!
We should be alarmed that these numbers have declined significantly. We should be even more concerned that these fell from very low levels, to begin with!
These statistics, and everything they reflect, is a stinging indictment of the leadership development industry! Don’t get me wrong – I am part of this fraternity now, so take full responsibility.
We must ask how we blow past these numbers and do it fast. How do we do this without spending another decade achieving marginal improvements? Also, how do we progress in a way that doesn't let these numbers slide back at the slightest signs of stress?
Fundamental mindsets need to shift regarding what upgrades are required to leadership development models, whom it is delivered for, and how one delivers it. We at The Rejuvi Venture, Inc.. refer to this as #modernleadership.
Let me give a quick overview of this thinking. When upgrading the leadership development model at The Rejuvi Venture Inc., we were preoccupied with zeroing in on the behaviors that predict excellence in Leadership for individuals and the practices they need to exercise to drive differential, sustained performance for their business. These two factors, leadership behaviors and business practices, are what we refer to as Modern Leadership attributes. In addition, our vision created a platform where we can measure these attributes continuously and correlate changes in these leadership attributes to differences in business outcomes. In other words, we can deliver a ROLS (Return on Leadership Spend) metric for every leadership initiative. Pretty crazy right?
If that was not pushing the boundaries, then give this a listen. Traditionally, leadership development has been focused on developing and driving the engagement of employees. This is critical to inspire and motivate teams to achieve their goals and deliver high-performance levels. We at the Rejuvi Venture have a passionate belief, and empirical evidence, that focusing on ‘alignment’ in addition to ‘engagement’ is critical for effective and outstanding leadership.
Alignment, in this context, refers to the alignment of individual goals and objectives with those of the organization. The simple way to lay this out is the process in which leadership development involves aligning individual and team goals with the organization's goals and objectives and then working towards achieving these goals. This is hard work and requires commitment, consistency, and evidence-based applications.
This approach will require leaders to focus on creating a clear vision and strategy for the organization and then communicate this vision to peers, cross-functional partners, and team members. It will require organizations and leaders to provide the necessary resources, support, and development opportunities to identify, nurture and grow this capability. This will require a data and technology-driven implementation of leadership development that is affordable, scalable, and modern to achieve this vision.
The Rejuvi insight and intelligence platform provide capabilities for the organization to measure leadership capability and capacity and quantify how improvements in these attributes improve business outcomes. This is the only way to ensure that leaders, their teams, and organizations are on track to achieving their goals and progressing toward the organization's objectives. We must evolve our leaders to be innovative and disruptive while focusing on execution and delivering results.
We must make it cool again for leaders to focus on creating long-term value for their organizations. Our approach is pioneering a method where we incorporate strategic, financial, operational, cultural, and behavioral attributes and data into our leadership development models that deliver sustained and superior performance for leaders and their organizations.
I refer to this as raising our collective leadership development consciousness from building ‘engines’ to developing ‘frameworks.’ In the parlance of the software industry, ‘engine’ and ‘framework’ refer to tools that provide structure for developing and continuously improving applications. These sit on a spectrum of ‘lower-level’ to ‘higher-level’ abstraction.’ To put it simply, the ‘lower’ the level of abstraction, the less the ability to make changes without affecting the whole system. The ‘higher’ the level of abstraction, the more the system is flexible and modular.
To unpack this even more, a ‘framework’ for leadership development means that we can provide a set of capabilities that organizations can build upon and customize to fit specific organizational needs. In other words, the ability to be agile addresses all ‘jobs to be done’ in the leadership development space. This makes deploying and scaling modern leadership development models faster and more affordable vs. the current paradigm of leadership development ‘engines.’ The ‘engines’ approach has limited functionality and focuses more on the topical/episodic HRD and OD needs. In summary, ‘framework’ thinking and approaches build leadership development ecosystems that provide long-term value for organizations and leaders; At the same time, an ‘engine’ mindset creates leadership development projects and delivers short-term value at best.
I will vote for frameworks any day!
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