This is an overall leadership development (LD) blueprint that does not pretend to be all-inclusive but, if you do not have a clue where to begin, it will get you started in the right direction. I know it works because it was the same blueprint I designed and used in creating a LD program within a large Fortune 500 bank a few years ago.
Some unintended, but very favorable consequences, of our leadership program happened to the executive sponsor – our “Champion” – during a monthly meeting with the bank’s executive committee.
They were discussing the trend of the constantly improving metrics in the operations division when the chairman asked our executive to describe how he was doing it.
“I can account for about half of it”, he admitted, “but, beyond that, I don’t have any specifics.”
“What?” responded the chairman. “How can you NOT know everything about it?”
“Because we’ve empowered our leaders down to the line level to make decisions up to a certain financial threshold on their own without having to ask. So the numbers are getting better but I haven’t asked them how…and do not plan to. We have trained them to act and they are doing it. Much better than we ever expected!”
As additional incentive to use this blueprint, be sure to keep this fundamental organizational fact burned into your “memory chip” if you are a Human Resources professional: Human Resources, though its linkage to hiring, firing, training, performance management, benefits and compensation, has a unique and powerful influence on the greatest organizational expense: the workforce.
Therefore, HR has an opportunity UNLIKE ANY OTHER SEGMENT OF THE ORGANIZATION to impact the bottom line if it will consider this simple fact of business life: every dime saved in operations expenses goes directly to the bottom line; i.e., PROFITS.
And, the easiest way to make that profitable impact on the bottom line is to improve the leadership skills in the operations area. This is because employees are more closely tied emotionally to their leader than to their employer! If an employee has a good leader, they will have high morale, maximum productivity, and stay with them through stressful times. If they have a poor leader, they will do the least they can to get by, become clock watchers, and leave at the first opportunity.
It all comes back to leadership skills. Even if an organization could afford a full-blown, LD initiative provided by an outside vendor, many still could not easily send their employees to traditional classroom training because of staffing, workplace locations, or work schedule issues like we faced during the development and implementation of this program.
Therefore, we have modified this guide from the original to use a self-study approach that would allow participants to receive the training they need in spite of any scheduling, work, or training obstacles encountered.
Telephone conference calls, webinars, or web video conferencing can bring a widely dispersed audience together for meetings, sharing experiences, or updates on the program itself and should be a part of the program.
Although we are now using a self-study format as the foundation for this guide that makes it easier to deliver the training, no amount of training is worthwhile without support from an organization’s leaders to make sure the participant applies the skills learned on the job after the training and the participant has the opportunity to share lessons learned and network with peers.
Just as the leaders are expected to protect the organization’s investments in capital improvements, they should be just as diligent maximizing the return on investment in developing their workforce.
Much of what we describe in this guideline will need strong support from a training manager, HR representative, or some strong project manager to act as the primary connection point to answer questions, provide forms, or collect suggestions for improving the program. This person would also be the central keeper of the participant’s electronic development records while being able to send a copy to the participant at the completion of each item in the plan.