How to Resurrect Faltering Leadership Development

I’ve described in previous posts the plethora of research that highlights the sorry state of many leadership development efforts (see The Sad State of Leadership Development – and a Solution, January 2019). The solution offered to the “sad state” was a retooled model of leadership development called Strategy-Driven Leadership Development.

The component of the Strategy-Driven model that seemed to pique the most interest was the idea of “accelerating the development of mission-critical competencies through Intentional Leadership Development.”

So what the heck is Intentional Leadership Development? I’ll give an overview here and then will follow up with a series of posts that will cover the 10 Essentials of Intentional Leadership Development.

In short, Intentional Leadership Development can be described as:

• Establishing a strong personal and business case for development using an Impact Map,
• Identifying and targeting the critical few leadership competencies which will have the greatest payoff for the individual learner and the organization,
• Creating an Intentional Development Plan that is built into daily work and involves regular feedback, reflection and progress tracking, and,
• Assuring that new competencies are effectively applied in real-life situations so that developmental experiences are positive (additive) to a career, setting the stage for further development.

To simplify matters, my colleague, Richard Citrin, and I call these four components of Intentional Leadership Development Frame It, Name It, Claim It and Aim It or the It Formula.

There are 10 essentials that form the foundation of Intentional Leadership Development.

1. Have A Planned And Targeted Impact
2. Focus On The Critical Few Competencies
3. Build It In To Work; Don’t Bolt It On As Something Extra To Do
4. Reject “One Size Fits All” – Mass Personalization
5. Understand There’s More Than One Path To Development
6. Create A Cadence Of Development
7. Create A Feedback-Rich Environment
8. Match the Development Strategy to the Talent
9. Make The Development “Sticky”
10. Never Learn Alone

Watch here for follow up posts that will describe each of the 10 Essential in more detail.

If you’d like to read more about how we are retooling leadership, check out my article on Redefining Leadership Development.