When was the last time you thought, “Yup! That’s me. I’m just like everybody else.” Right. Never. We want to be seen as unique individuals because we are unique individuals, and unique individuals make unique leaders. (I’m going to stop saying “unique” now. You get the idea.) Leadership development is not a cookie cutter assembly line. We each bring a different combination of strengths, weaknesses, skills, talents, and aspirations to our leadership. When we try to push leaders through a cookie-cutter development program, we do not prepare them to successfully leverage their core strengths to lead through a dynamic, unpredictable landscape. Cookie cutters are good for producing star-shaped cookies, but they won’t develop star leaders. Outdated development programs will not just waste our time, money, and talent, we’ll lose our market share to hungrier, faster, more innovative competitors driven by more adaptable, resilient leaders. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: Am I okay with being left behind?
Tailored Leadership Development Is a Team Sport
Tailored development is more difficult than building an assembly line. But the greatest rewards are also the hardest to achieve. Otherwise, everyone would do it. To win, we must work together as a team. Not a team where people stay in their respective lanes, but a team of interdependent collaborators, constantly in motion, and focused on our goal. Everyone owns leadership development: top executives, team leaders, HR & talent development, and, most importantly, the leaders themselves. We must work together to win.
- Top Executives set the vision and strategy for the company. They invest and actively engage with development to build exceptional leaders who will execute the strategy to achieve the vision.
- Team Leaders build their bench strength, identify successors, and engage and retain top talent to ensure smooth, continued leadership growth.
- HR & Talent Development partner with other leaders across the organization, provide expertise, and orchestrate tailored programs to develop high-performing leaders.
- Leaders drive their development. Development is not a passive journey, and motivation is something no one else can give us. We choose whether and how to engage with the support and resources offered to us. We are the captains of our own ship.
There are no spectators in Leadership Development. We win or lose as a team.
How Do We Tailor Leadership Development?
We can tailor a simple cup of coffee with over 100,000 options, but how do we tailor something as complex and important as leadership development? To tailor leadership development, we use core building blocks. The building blocks below are not new. But rather than looking at them as static stations in an assembly line, imagine them as moving integrated parts constructing, deconstructing, mixing, and matching opportunities to build a tailored development experience:
Assessments: Where are we today? What information will help prepare me for my journey? Assessments do not assign people to boxes, although they have been misused and abused for doing that. Assessment results are the start of a conversation. They collect information about how we see ourselves and how others see us: our communication, behaviors, values, strengths, weaknesses, and more. Which assessments we choose from the myriad options depends on the information and insights we want from them. They are tools in our toolbox, and the tools we choose depend on what we want to build.
Individual Leadership Coaching: One-on-one leadership coaching is tailored to the strengths, blind spots, challenges, and career goals of the individual. Coaches help leaders gain insights, make adjustments, and build on the leaders’ strengths. Leaders take what they gain from coaching back to their job to experiment, stretch, and grow their leadership. Coaches have different focus areas, and leaders may need more than one coach throughout their development journey. Leaders must also choose coaches they trust and with whom they feel a connection. Without trust and connection, coaching will not be successful.
Foundational Skills and Role-Specific Training: There are foundational skills that help leaders to be successful, including communication (up, down, around, and outside their organization), presentation skills, strategic-thinking, providing feedback, etc. There are also skills specific to a leader’s role, not just their current role but also future roles. For example, sales, operations, finance, HR, etc. Where does the leader need more development? What are their priorities for growth? What is the best way for the leader to combine the building blocks to achieve their goals?
Stretch Assignments & Mentoring: Developing leadership is like learning to swim. We can’t do either sitting in a chair in a conference room or in front of a computer. Leaders must put knowledge into practice. We need to push ourselves, make mistakes, fall on our “butt,” and achieve wins to grow. Get out of the chair and do it! What do we need to lead our function? What do we need to lead beyond our silos at the enterprise level? How will Sales leaders gain experience in Operations, Finance, or HR? How will Operations and HR leaders develop experience in Sales? We have to stretch outside our silos, increase our experience, and expand our perspective. Mentorship is critical in this process. Not only will mentors help develop leaders in their current function but will support the leaders as they take on stretch assignments and job rotations. Moreover, mentors do not have to be someone higher up in the organization. Mentors may be peers, leaders outside the company, and even people with lower titles in the organization. We all have something to learn, and we all have something to teach.
A leader and their development team –their managers, coaches, peers, mentors, etc.—continue to review and evaluate a leader’s progress and strategy along a dynamic development path. If the development plan isn’t supporting a leader’s progress, then take a pause, and ask What’s working? What’s not? How do we adjust?
Recipe for Success
We are each unique individuals and leaders. (okay, one final “unique”) The most impactful and successful leadership development plans are intentional, flexible, and tailored to the leader: the core of who they are, what they need to be successful, and where they are in their journey. When we invest in leadership development tailored to the individual, we develop stronger leaders who create a stronger, more resilient organization. Don’t use cookie cutters to develop leaders. Use cookie cutters to shape your cookies. Build strong leaders to shape your future.
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Rachel Burr is an executive and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience working with CEOs and the C-suite across all industries, in organizations of from 200 to 10,000 employees. Rachel holds dual master’s degrees in Organization Development and Clinical Psychology, and numerous certifications in the field of executive coaching. Rachel is a “people expert” who works with clients to unleash their leadership potential. If you would like to learn more about leadership development training, please contact us.
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