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Dialog We’d like to know more about your views on leadership development. What do you consider the key attributes of a successful leader? What do you feel are the biggest challenges in developing leadership skills? What approach would you adopt to leadership succession to ensure your organization identifies individuals with the appropriate skills to lead effectively? If you want to share your experiences and comments, please use the Dialog response email link below. We protect the privacy of all contributions and only use them anonymously to continue the dialog in future postings to our site. Please note that we will never share your name or email or contact you by email without your permission. Dialog response e-mail link I would like to receive e-mail updates. |
EOC Perspective
Topic: Developing Hidden Leadership Potential Is there a leadership gap? How well are we doing at developing the next generation of leaders? According to several sources, not very well, or certainly not fast enough to replace the anticipated departure of key leaders in government, industry and in the professions due to retirement. This gap may seem puzzling given the thousands of guides and growing number of training programs devoted to leadership development. However, it can be daunting to sort through the leadership mythology, numerical formulas, successful CEO templates and sophisticated training options to identify the best development models for our respective organizations. How can we develop future leaders? After many years of coaching and mentoring young professionals, I have reached two key conclusions about leadership development. First, we need to establish a clear distinction between effective leadership skills and the trappings of leadership—power, position, titles. Second, if we begin early enough with a phased approach to leadership development, we cut our costs, boost morale and productivity, and produce a broader pool of future leaders by fully cultivating individual hidden potential. This approach acknowledges that our best leaders may not necessarily be our “star” performers, that different competencies may be involved. READ FULL ARTICLE>
For a good read and practical inventory of key leadership skills, try Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from Great Antarctic Explorer, by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, Penguin Books, 2001. The authors tell the story of how Ernest Shackleton managed to rescue every man on his expedition to Antarctica in 1914-1916 after their ship, Endurance, became trapped and later crushed in the ice. Highlights of the leadership skills Shackleton used to accomplish this feat appear throughout the account, along with illustrations of modern applications of their relevance. This is one of my favorite leadership resources because it demonstrates how effective leadership is timeless and how an observant leader can develop the hidden leadership potential of others, as Shackleton did among his crew. |