Anyone who has children knows that they go through a series of developmental stages which are not just physical (such as learning to ride a bike) but are also emotional (managing their feelings), intellectual (finding solutions to problems) , moral (knowing right from wrong) and behavioural (social skills). What is true for children is also true for adults. There are well-defined levels of adult development.
It is not uncommon for the leaders in an organisation to be highly educated, technically minded and extremely knowledgeable individuals. These people have a vast amount of learning behind them and yet they can still struggle to cope with the fast pace of and sheer complexity of the modern business environment. They are effectively “stuck” at a level of their development.
Leadership development is all about increasing an individual’s level of maturation and sophistication. Unfortunately, a lot of what goes on in companies under the name of “leadership development” is not development at all, it is old fashioned training and it will not move leaders up the levels of maturation and sophistication.
So how can organisations support true leadership development? It is a real problem because the sad fact is that left to their own devices most leaders are unlikely to change. Indeed 89% of leaders have at least one blind spot - an area where they think they are more skilled than they actually are.
The solution is to provide specialist development programmes, such as our executive leadership programme, coupled with executive level coaching from an expert coach who knows how to develop leaders up from the level they are currently at.
Such coaches are rare and so many organisations find they have to seek specialised outside help in this area if they are to help their leaders truly develop.
If you would like help developing your leaders then contact us for a no obligation discussion.
