Executive leader’s key areas of focus are:

• Growing the business
• Maximizing profitability and performance
• Retaining the best talent
• Maximizing opportunities related to globalization, emerging technologies, shifting regulations, and other trends impacting their businesses.

Savvy executives do whatever is necessary to forward these and other important results.  Yet, there is an area that magnifies an executive’s focus and impact that many times is undervalued – if not overlooked. That is the executive’s emphasis on strengthening their approach as a leader.
Certainly, many organizations invest at some level in leadership development initiatives.  Yet, an organization’s leadership development focus is usually centered on the emerging leadership population and/or on spot needs where there are performance issues or where there is a request for support.  Such initiatives are typically not focused on those executives who have the greatest impact on the organization’s success and rarely do such efforts support the senior most executives who have the ultimate accountability for leading the organization.

Recent and very compelling research is showing that this oversight is costing organizations a great deal.  This research reinforces the value of sustained investment in leadership development – from the top of the organization down.

This research, done by John Zenger and Robert Folkman, clearly shows that executives with extraordinary leadership skill will generate up to four times the impact than do good leaders .  Further the research shows that poor leaders cost organizations.  The graph on the left illustrates, in summary form, Zenger and Folkman’s research.  They looked at aggregate 360 scores of thousands of leaders and found that those who scored the highest in leadership competencies generated the most positive results on profitability, employee commitment and customer loyalty, etc.

If you really get your arms around this data, it quickly dawns on you the power of enhancing leadership in yourself as well as those who are in key positions in your organization.

Organizations, such as Booz Allen Hamilton, who have sustained long term executive development programs, have seen a difference.  In fact, Booz Allen Hamilton’s own research shows a 650% return on investment for their executive coaching program alone!    Not only does this reinforce Zenger Folkman’s research – it also indicates sustained efforts have impact on organizational results.

Yet, with all of this, organizations still tend to promote stellar individual contributors into leadership positions without providing them leadership development support.  Many executives assume with a bit of mentoring and motivation these individuals are up for the challenge of leadership.  Again, this blind spot has a tremendous downside for organizations.

Few who get into leadership positions have studied leadership or thought about consciously developing themselves as a leader.  Given what has been said earlier, investing in the development of high impact leaders is a leveraged move for organizations looking to improve overall performance.

Questions to consider:

• What kind of leadership do you need to succeed given your mission and strategic objectives?
• What is your strategy for developing the leadership necessary to succeed?
• What is your plan for supporting yourself and your senior team so that you will   maximize leadership impact?
• How are you supporting recently promoted executives in building leadership skills necessary to succeed in their new positions?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Leadership Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.