How it works

Leadership Development is an effort designed to prepare key leaders to better manage their organizations and role requirements. It typically involves an investment commensurate with their level. This often means a higher cost per person than normally seen with training for other employees, as there are fewer incumbents with a high impact on the company meeting its goals. As such (and at a minimum), the top leaders (CEO/President and their direct reports) are included in the group. Depending on the number of total leaders in that cadre and the type of learning events under consideration, it might make sense to add other senior leaders or contributors to make up a sufficiently sized cohort. 

looks_oneDiscuss requirements with top leadership

An initial step is to discuss the strategy and purpose of the learning with the CEO/President (and/or Board of Directors if appropriate). That discussion should start with a high-level assessment of the strengths and opportunities of the leadership team(s) in general to provide clarity regarding the group’s development needs. One method is to discuss the top team's aggregated weaknesses relative to the competency model - for example, a CEO might offer that the team as a whole struggles to see past current issues and envision a future state ("strategic thinking"), lacks the ability to motivate creativity with the teams below them ("managing innovation"), and exhibits handling uncertainty ("managing ambiguity").