Developing Leadership Competencies - Essay Example

Developing Leadership Competencies Name: Institution: Executive Summary Development of future leaders is one of the most valuable investments that an organization can make. This responsibility lies with the executive team who must ensure that an organization has a standby team to replace the aging management team. Leadership development is a very important task as it ensures that future leaders possess competencies paramount for achieving to organizational strategy, inspire the workforce and one that an enhance the grow of the organization’s culture. Undoubtedly, senior leadership positions are increasingly becoming more challenging, and therefore, require a broader range of skills coupled with a long list of competencies. On top of what the majority believes to be leadership skills, the future generation of leaders must possess skills that will enable them to be internationally astute, coalition builders, fast learners, accommodate change, highly creative and most of all ability to deliver results rapidly in all areas. The present study discusses the methods used by modern organizations to develop leaders such that they can properly meet future leadership requirements. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 Description of methods used to meet future leadership needs 4 Justification of the methods chosen and how they work in practice 6 Training courses 6 Mentoring 6 Coaching 7 Company ‘universities’ or ‘colleges’ 7 Action learning 8 Partnerships with academic institutions 9 Sponsorship 10 Leadership development programs 10 Promotion 11 External recruitment 11 Conclusion 12 References 13 Introduction Leadership development is about reflection and action plans and both are paramount for developing critical skills including analysis, critical consciousness and strategic planning. Lack of space for reflection on one’s ability prevents development. Leadership development is more concerned with people’s experience and encouragement. As such, organizations should come up with mechanisms that can transform people’s aspirations into purposeful actions. This is because some workers may have excellent ideas, but if they lack an opportunity to actualize them, then they go to waste. Having said that, the following are a number of ways through which an organization can employ in order to meet its future leadership requirements. Description of methods used to meet future leadership needs Training courses: These are either in house or external courses that employees can enroll to acquire new leadership skills. Mentoring: Emerging leaders are taken not to be too much experienced in their line of work. As such they heavily rely on the senior managers to guide them in building on their leadership skills. The senior managers should use their leadership expertise to provide guidance to novice young leaders. Coaching: Coaching involves being taken through leadership training sessions whereby young leaders are taught leadership skills Company ‘universities’ or ‘colleges’: According to Long (1983), corporate universities are not a new initiative as can be seen with the establishment of General Motors Institute in 1927. In addition, General Electric followed suit by opening the Crotoville Management Development Institute in 1950’s, a period which many other corporate universities were started. Ideally, organizations establish learning institutions in which their staff can be taught leadership skills. Action Learning: As defined by Luthans, Welsh and Taylor (1988), action learning refers to learning on the bases of critically reflecting on past experiences. Young leaders can therefore, improve their leadership skills not only through theoretical teaching, but also by critically reflecting on the actions of successful leaders. Partnerships with academic institutions: With the recent proliferation of numerous academic institutions, corporations are increasingly growing worried about the quality of leadership training offered by various institutions. In this light, companies are now liaising with academic institutions that have a curriculum with the capacity to produce better future organizational leaders. Sponsoring: Sponsorship is a trend continues to gain popularity in modern organizations. It involves funding students to the best institutions where they impart the best leadership skills to enable them make good future leaders. Leadership development programs: These are programs which employees are from time to time required by their employers to attend in order to learn to acquire new leadership trends. Promotion: Organizations are presently using promotion as one of the ways to develop leadership skills amongst the youthful leaders. Promotion involves rising up the organizational hierarchy, and the high one moves, the more challenging the roles turn to be. External recruitment: External recruitment refers to hiring from outside the organization. The motivating factor why an organization may prefer to recruit from outside is to inject new blood with new ideas within an organization. Justification of the methods chosen and how they work in practice Training courses Presently, employees are not dictated on what to do. A leader should influence workers' choices by assisting them to achieve organizational goals. According to Mumford and Connelly (1991), a leader of modern organization no longer directs, but wins over employees to follow such leader’s views. Unlike the old autocratic form of leadership, modern leaders inspire and not dictate. A leader seeks to inspire the employees by focusing on the leadership team development. Leadership development is more important as it enables a leader to fully take control of the workers. Leadership training can be conducted either internally or externally. Internal training involves where an organization identifies leadership needs of its managers and then hires an expert to come and conduct training within the organization. Such form of training is critical since employees are able to acquire new leadership skills as they go about their usual duties. On the other hand, external training involves enrolling staff in institutions outside the workplace to train and acquire leadership skills. The great advantage concerning this form of training is that employees get an opportunity to interact with other employees from different organizations, and as such, have an opportunity of exchanging leadership ideas. Therefore invest in leadership development and training helps in building a work team leadership fundamentals thereby leading to a bright career path for an employee. Mentoring Leaders work goes beyond problem solving. According to Morgeson (2005), leaders attract followers although which they are able to achieve great things through the efforts of others. For this reason, leadership development program must comprise mentoring and training of prospective leaders on how to coach others, how to assess performance feedback, inspire and motivate others. According to McHenry (1986), mentoring is a long-term relationship in which a senior official of an organization supports both personal and professional development of a junior executive. It is through this arrangement through which a junior executive achieves the skills paramount for leading the future generations. Coaching Coaching helps leaders nurture their leadership skills. According to Manz and Sims (1987), it involves as a collaborative effort that seek to clearly understand the constraints and challenges the couching party is faced with at the time of exploring new possibilities. A coach may apply multi-faceted approaches to make future leaders understand both their weaknesses and strengths which at the same time experiencing personal growth. Feedback intensive coaching program involves helping a person to foresee a given pattern of behaviors more clearly in order to understand the motivations and attitudes underlying such patterns in order to understand the motivations and attitudes underlying such patterns. This, in turn, helps to assess the factors that make an individual less or more effective in meeting the goals that one desires to attain and evaluate alternative ways of meeting such goals. Company ‘universities’ or ‘colleges’ Workers are said to assume five to seven different types of roles within their working life which is necessitated by technological dynamism among other factors. With such workplace demands, traditional universities and colleges cannot manage to handle such fluctuating training and educational needs of different workers. Nevertheless, companies must try to meet the challenge of retaining and meeting the work place demand of having in place a competitive labor force. According to Lau and Pavett (1980), emergence of the knowledge economy is presently helping firms understand their responsibility of providing employees with opportunities to evolve with a view of meeting different business needs such that a business can sustain itself. As such, corporate colleges and universities are on the rise to help meet learning needs of different individuals in an organization. Mumford and Connelly (1991), defines a corporate university as an educational establishment that serves as a strategic tool to assist its parent organization to achieve its goals by engaging in activities that not only foster organizational, but also individual learning. More so, corporate universities are involved in educating customers, employees, suppliers with a view of meeting organizational business strategies. According to Mahoney, Jerdee and Carroll Jr (1965), corporate university transmits and creates awareness of the three 3C’s of organizational life, including; contextual framework, corporate citizenship and core workplace competencies. Therefore, corporate colleges and universities plays an overriding role in communicating the vision of the organization to the entire workforce while at the same time helping the organization understand the company’s culture and values such that they can properly understand what the company is pursuing in order to succeed. It is worthwhile noting that executives in corporate universities seek to build both organizational and individual competencies in order to improve the company’s overall performance. Action learning According to McCall and Lombardo (1983), a leader cannot harness leadership skills by merely attending classes or going to school. This means that the most appropriate way to develop leaders is by allocating them challenging roles with the capacity to enable them reach their full potential. Therefore, prospective leaders should be given real business challenges to tackle in the process of their day to day work contexts. As echoed by Long (1983), for a leader to develop leadership qualities, one has to get about and out. This is the point at which one can get an opportunity to try new behaviors, thinking and skills. Notably, reflection takes place through trial and error method, group discussion, learning from each other and through discovery. As such, it can be said to be the way in which people approach workplace issues and challenges from different perspectives based on the complexity of the situation. Allocating challenging and more meaningful assignments is quite engaging and motivating. In addition, search for workable solutions to challenges or problems facing an organization exert pressure on prospective leaders from their comfort zones. As such, they are made to increase their organizational awareness by becoming more responsible. Such an experience takes them through the organization’s future while at the same time allowing the senior management establishes the cause of such risks and also understanding their leadership roles. Interestingly, involvement of emerging organizational leaders in sorting out company’s problems improves their creativity, knowledge, resiliency; a commitment which is then used by the senior management to gauge if such leaders have the needed qualities for future leadership. Partnerships with academic institutions The global adoption of new technologies has realigned the pace at which social economic expression is changing. According to Morgeson (2005), for an organization to fit in such environment, new teaching methods and competencies becomes paramount. Likewise, educational institutions must re-invent their educational programs in order to remain relevant in today’s dynamic market. Most organizations are partnering with academic institutions with a view of enabling potential leaders develop the capacity to handle present and future business challenges in a responsible and more ethical way. Mintzberg (1973) highlights how academic institutions continue to undergo the process of institutional reform and innovation. Acquiring new leadership skills enables leaders to withstand the change process. As such, future leaders are able to nurture their institutional strategy making, change management, organizational development, policy reform and proper administration of academic processes. Sponsorship Sponsorship according to McHenry (1986) refers to the act of paying partial or full fees for an individual to enroll for leadership development courses. Notably, nowadays many organizations are sponsoring their employees to go back to class to acquire additional skills that can enable them cope with present challenges in the workplace. Leadership development programs Leadership development programs are mainly undertaken in the heart of post graduate studies. In most cases, these programs put much emphasis on hands-on learning and experiential leadership programs. Besides, offering leadership curriculum, these programs avails other options that seek to develop leadership styles on the basis of building and analyzing one’s strengths from a point of challenging leadership venture. According to Manz and Sims (1987), leadership development programs seek to develop leaders who carry out their role with a deeper understanding of not only their organization, but also themselves, their communities in order to positively contribute to the growth of each other. Many leadership development programs provide students with executive coaching hence engaging students in individualized leadership development that comes in terms of invention and regular support and coaching. In addition, such programs provide students with opportunities leadership potential through the development of concrete strategies and practical tools applicable in every area of our lives. Promotion Job promotion according to Mahoney, Jerdee and Carroll Jr (1963), refers to rise from a lower cadre to a higher cadre position in an organization. Promotion in a work place entails more responsibilities and challenges, and therefore, an employee must develop appropriate skills to measure up to such challenges. For an individual to be promoted, the management assesses such person's qualities that are paramount to leadership, and as such, a person with good leadership qualities ends up being a charismatic leader who rather than using force or coercion uses influence to determine the direction the employees takes. External recruitment Firms may either recruit internally or externally. Internal recruitment takes place when a vacancy arises, and it is filled by a person sourced from within the organization. On the other hand, organization sometimes prefers to fill open vacancies by individuals sourced from outside the organization. The main purpose of external recruitment as argued by Lau and Pavett (1980) is to inject new and fresh blood in an organization. New entrants in an organization bring in fresh ideas and offer different approaches to solving challenges facing an organization. Many organizations prefer to source their labor force from outside the organization in order to enjoy the benefits of new ideas. However, not all recruits source externally bring about the desired effects within a firm. Conclusion Undeniably, the role of developing future organization leaders lies with senior management popularly known as the C-level suite. Senior leaders are best placed on identifying any possible leadership gaps after which they devise means to fix them. Nevertheless, recognition of leadership development as a key ingredient for organization success begins with the senior leaders who should create an environment favorable for learning and development of future leaders. The present study has extensively discussed various methods employed by modern organizations to produce future leaders and as such reduce the number of followers who rely on others for decisions. 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