Leadership Development
Leadership Development Benefits
Build "Bench Strength"
Turnover happens. Whether voluntary or involuntary, and despite all efforts to reduce turnover, it still happens. The best thing to do is to be ready for when it does.
Building a leadership pipeline through Leadership Development is crucial to any company striving to achieve and maintain sustained success. Leadership skills development gives employees and managers the tools they need to succeed in the present and the future. That way if your team faces departures, the question you’ll ask is “who do we choose out of these qualified candidates” rather than scrambling and struggling to find a suitable candidate.
Elevate Employee Retention and Internal Promotion Rates
The dream for any company is to hire the perfect candidate, develop them, and watch them ascend inside your organization. You made the investment to hire and train them, why should you not reap the rewards?! Do you know the true cost of employee turnover (hint: it's expensive).
Well, what’s the opposite of employee turnover? Employee retention! Even better than employee retention? How about internal promotion? High-performers tend to leave if not engaged, developed, and supported. This forces your organization to hold onto less than stellar talent who may erode the overall performance of your organization. Our methodologies have helped companies achieve as much as a 66% increase in internal promotion rates. We’d love to do the same for you.
Keep High Performers Engaged
The name of the game is Employee Engagement. It’s the the game where you can win higher levels of discretionary effort by creating a heightened emotional connection to your organization. Quick note: Employee Engagement isn’t free coffee and pizza parties, it’s investing in your employees.
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” - @Richard Branson
According to Ceridian, 38% of High-Performers and 23% of workers overall are actively looking for their next job. Are yours?
Reduce Turnover
Turnover is expensive. There’s the obvious costs of searching for and training them, but there’s the not so obvious costs of decreased team productivity, errors made by new employees, and other impacts on the team. To reduce turnover is akin to building a strong foundation to continue building your business on.
Foster a Culture of Opportunity for Advancement
Culture is key. Culture is what separates companies like Google from AltaVista (Who?). Culture is what causes employees to work smarter, harder, and innovate with their team. The wrong culture is like an infection slowly eating away at your organization. The right culture is like a strong regiment of exercise, nutrition, and rest; a challenge to cultivate, but the gains are immense.
Our Revolutionary 7 Step Leadership Development Plan
1. Identify Leaders
Depending on the organization, we may recommend utilizing a Certified Trainer program. These programs teach candidates how to facilitate appropriate formal and informal training, and empower candidates to demonstrate their understanding of the necessary curriculum for their soon to be direct reports. We find that candidates who go through this program are much more successful, but we realize not every organization is immediately ready for this.
2. Selection Phase
Once the initial pool of talent is identified, we run a series of assessments based on the necessary Core Competencies (Knowledge & Skills) for the role.
Based on each assessment, the pool is condensed until the final team members are selected for the program. Those not selected may be invited into a future group of participants.
3. Foundational Development
Multiple knowledge & skill development modules are launched with recaps and self-assessments throughout to crystalize knowledge, skills, and develop self-awareness. This process typically spans 9-12 months.
4. Assessment Centers
Participants complete a "real world" Case Study Project in which they assess the Actual Performance of a District/Region, etc. and develop a Business Plan to present to a Cross-functional Assessment Team. This team rates the participant in each of the competencies for the next position-level. The Assessment Team is made of of Key Operations, Loss Prevention, and Human Resources executives that we train on the Assessment Evaluation process. Over time, additional Assessors can be developed, further strengthening your organization’s ability to identify top talent for future consideration.
This demonstrates their ability to apply what they’ve developed over the leadership development program and serves as a practical assessment.
5. 360 Assessment & Career Development Plan
The 360 Assessment looks at their leadership style from the perspective of their current supervisor(s), peers, and direct reports. The ideal candidate is flexible in their leadership style dependent on the situation.
The Career Development plan is conducted simultaneously to set each team member up for success by playing to their strengths. For example, if boosting sales is their specialty, they may be a better candidate for an under-performing region.
6. Transition & Team Building
As the team members are transitioning into their new role we assess the learning styles of their new reports. These reports present what they see as the strengths and weakness of their stores or areas. This helps break down the initial barrier between direct reports and the new supervisor while installing the underpinnings of a team-oriented environment.
7. Continuous Development
Once they’ve been transitioned into their new role, it’s time to support/develop them in their role and proactively prepare them for the next step in their career development plan.
This cycle repeats as the A). Your organization needs to fill leadership roles, B). The employee ascends through your organization.