Focus on the behavior that really matters, based on context
Jim Dowling, Co-Founder
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This series of blogs is inspired by an article published in McKinsey Quarterly in August of 2017, “What’s Missing in Leadership Development.” The authors offer the following from a Fortune survey, “only 7 percent of CEOs believe their companies are building effective global leaders, and just 10 percent said that their leadership-development initiatives have a clear business impact.” They identified 50 key actions that can be taken to improve leadership development from four to eight-fold. As with all “Best Practices” most are much more useful in combination with others.
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This installment addresses their “Focusing on the behavior that really matters, based on context” quadrant.
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- Focus on leadership behavior most critical to performance.
- Determine how mindsets and behavior need to change.
- Translate strategy into required leadership qualities/capabilities.
What’s at Stake?
At a minimum, less than desired ROI. Worst case, survival of the organization. Surely, without change, a few individuals will emerge as extraordinary leaders whose talents span both operational and organizational context. However, it is clear from this study and supported by more recent ones, CEOs will continue to be disappointed if development context is not extended.
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What’s standing in the way?
Theory of Leadership Performance. First, adopt a theory of leadership where helpful behaviors is a basic requirement and leaders who can operate their segment, operationalize new strategies and transform operations seamlessly are your outstanding leaders.
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What’s does the solution look like?
A leadership system that is Capability-based, where required leader qualities are selected to enable assigned operational outcomes. “What qualitative attributes of a leader would best enable teams to delivery these desired operational outcomes.” McKinsey says that adopting this intervention gives chances of success a 5.4x multiplier.
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A leadership system that explicitly defines, describes, and shapes shared mindset around what is most critical to performance at the individual and collective leadership levels. Purpose, Values, Methods, Tools, Objectives, Goals, Strategies form a consistent and actionable set of decision principles for leaders at all levels. This gets an 8.1x multiplier.
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Start with leadership and correlate dominant behaviors with performance. Then do the same for individual leaders. Design and activate your leadership development program to close the gaps. Note that this is not about education, it’s about organization transformation for a 5.5x multiplier.
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Contact Us to discuss how to fill in what’s missing in Leadership Development.