Great Leadership is Key to Talent Development

If I could change one thing about talent management...

The Grapevine magazine recently asked Simon Hayward, CEO of Academee, what one thing he would change about the talent management industry...

“If I could change one thing about the industry, it would be to change the focus from 'managing' talent to leading and developing talent.

There is a strong emphasis in the talent management industry on attracting and recruiting talent, yet still too little emphasis on long-term talent development. The key to successful long-term talent development is great leadership. Talent development also needs to be closely aligned with the organisation's overall strategic aims.

Leaders need to develop talent by supporting individuals to meet their true potential. It is also essential to implement effective succession planning and to develop a pipeline of leadership talent to meet the future needs of the organisation.

Earlier this year, Academee designed a leadership development programme, 'Take the Lead,' for UniChem, one of the UK's leading distributors and wholesalers of pharmaceutical, medical and healthcare products. The company was keen to discover and nurture future leaders within UniChem, rather than relying entirely on external recruitment to fulfil key leadership roles. Although UniChem is a very people-centred organisation, there was limited formal succession planning or leadership development in place. UniChem's aim was to identify high potential managers within the organisation, and then provide challenging learning opportunities for them. This learning needed to equip these individuals with the capability to deliver the core requirements of the organisation and, in the words of UniChem, 'bridge strategies to outcomes.'

'Take the Lead' has succeeded in achieving its core aim of developing future leaders from within the organisation. The first cohort completed the programme in April 2007 and 80% of the participants have already been promoted to new roles within UniChem.

Another area that the industry needs to focus more on is 'talent enablers' - tools that support talent management and enable individuals to take control of their own talent development. For example, Fujitsu Services is meeting the challenge of talent management with a unique, innovative, user-friendly online career development solution, developed in partnership with Academee. The Career Mapping Tool is an interactive online application that presents career planning information in a clear, visual format. It guides employees through the various stages of planning their next career move by allowing them to see potential career paths and map possible routes from one job role to another.

For Fujitsu Services, this is a significant development in allowing its people to plan and steer their own careers. It represents a major contribution to overall talent management, taking the innovative approach of empowering individuals to take control. Fujitsu Services now feels confident that it is providing career development approaches to enable people to fulfill their potential and ambition - while at the same time supporting its talent development strategy and overall organisational aims.

Both UniChem and Fujitsu Services are taking a strategic, long term approach to developing and leading talent - an approach which brings lasting benefits as well as immediate results.”

Source : www.academee.com

Leader in You

Awaken the Leader in You

Ten easy steps to developing your leadership skills
by Sharif Khan

.The miracle power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave determined spirit.. . Mark Twain

Many motivational experts like to say that leaders are made, not born. I would
argue the exact opposite. I believe we are all natural born leaders, but have been
deprogrammed along the way. As children, we were natural leaders - curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted, were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted, and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?

As children, over time, we got used to hearing, .No,. .Don.t,. and .Can.t.. .No!
Don.t do this. Don.t do that. You can.t do this. You can.t do that. No!. Many of our
parents told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn.t do and what was possible. Then many of us got hit with the big one .institutionalized formal education known as college or university. Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesn.t teach students how to become leaders; it teaches students how to become polite order takers for the corporate world. Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant, and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.

Developing the Leader in you to live your highest life, then, requires a process of
.unlearning. by self-remembering and self-honoring. Being an effective leader again will require you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart. Based on my over ten years research in the area of human development and leadership, here are ten easy steps you can take to awaken the Leader in you and rekindle your passion for greatness:

1. Humility.
Leadership starts with humility. To be a highly successful leader, you must first humble yourself like a little child and be willing to serve others. Nobody wants to follow someone who is arrogant. Be humble as a child . always curious, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge. For what is excellence but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge - always wanting to better yourself, always improving, always growing.
When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people because you
want to learn from them. And because you want to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener, which is the #1 leadership communication tool. When people sense you are genuinely interested in them, and listening to them, they will naturally be interested in you and listen to what you have to say.

2. SWOT Yourself.
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Although it.s a strategic management tool taught at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools and used by large multinationals, it can just as effectively be used in your own professional development as a leader. This is a useful key to gain access to self knowledge, self-remembering, and self-honoring. Start by listing all your Strengths including your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses and what needs to be improved. Make sure to include any doubts, anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic. By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see available to you for using your strengths. Finally, write down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking you or that you think you will encounter along the way to achieving your dreams.

3. Follow Your Bliss.
Regardless of how busy you are, always take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital person vitalizes others. When you are pursuing your passions, people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your presence.
This will make you a charismatic leader. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing, be it
writing, acting, painting, drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking, or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities. Believe me, you.ll find the time. If you were to video tape yourself for a day, you would be shocked to see how much time goes to waste!

4. Dream Big.
If you want to be larger than life, you need a dream that.s larger than life. Small dreams won.t serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and be Bold! Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites you the most. Remember, don.t be small and realistic; be bold and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Oscar, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field. After you.ve written down your dream, list every single reason why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why you can.t.

5. Vision.
Without a vision, we perish. If you can.t see yourself winning that award and feel the tears of triumph streaming down your face, it.s unlikely you will be able to lead yourself or others to victory. Visualize what it would be like accomplishing your dream.
See it, smell it, taste it, hear it, feel it in your gut.

6. Perseverance. Victory belongs to those who want it the most and stay in it the
longest. Now that you have a dream, make sure you take consistent action every day. I recommend doing at least 5 things every day that will move you closer to your dream.

7. Honor Your Word.
Every time you break your word, you lose power. Successful leaders keep their word and their promises. You can accumulate all the toys and riches in the world, but you only have one reputation in life. Your word is gold. Honor it.

8. Get a Mentor.
Find yourself a mentor. Preferably someone who has already achieved a high degree of success in your field. Don.t be afraid to ask. You.ve got nothing to lose. Mentors.ca is an excellent mentoring website and a great resource for finding local mentoring programs. They even have a free personal profile you can fill out in order to potentially find you a suitable mentor. In addition to mentors, take time to study autobiographies of great leaders that you admire. Learn everything you can from their lives and model some of their successful behaviors.

9. Be Yourself.
Use your relationships with mentors and your research on great leaders as models or reference points to work from, but never copy or imitate them like a parrot. Everyone has vastly different leadership styles. History books are filled with leaders who are soft-spoken, introverted, and quiet, all the way to the other extreme of being outspoken, extroverted, and loud, and everything in between. A quiet and simple Gandhi or a soft-spoken peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who became president of the United States and won a Nobel Peace Prize, have been just as effective world leaders as a loud and flamboyant Churchill, or the tough leadership style employed by .The Iron Lady,. Margaret Thatcher.
I admire Hemingway as a writer. But if I copy Hemingway, I.d be a second or
third rate Hemingway, at best, instead of a first rate Sharif. Be yourself, your best self, always competing against yourself and bettering yourself, and you will become a first rate YOU instead of a second rate somebody else.

10. Give.
Finally, be a giver. Leaders are givers. By giving, you activate a universal law as sound as gravity: .life gives to the giver, and takes from the taker.. The more you give, the more you get. If you want more love, respect, support, and compassion, give love, give respect, give support, and give compassion. Be a mentor to others. Give back to your community. As a leader, the only way to get what you want, is by helping enough people get what they want first. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, .We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.. ■
_________________________________________________________________________
Sharif Khan is a professional speaker and author of highly acclaimed, Psychology of the Hero Soul, an inspirational book on awakening the Hero within and developing peoples.leadership potential. You can reach him at sharif@herosoul.com or visit www.HeroSoul.com

Leadership Is Everyone's Business

James M. Kouzes
The true heroes of leadership are the ordinary people who get extraordinary things done. They are the men and women from all over the globe, from all walks of life and of all ages, and from a variety of organizations, public and private, government and NGOs, high-tech and low-tech, small and large, schools and professional services, who daily struggle to lead us to greatness. They're not the public figures, the famous people, or the mega-stars. They're the people who might live next door or work in the next cubicle over.

We've focused our 25 years research and writing on everyday leaders because leadership is not about position or title. Leadership is not about organizational power or authority. It's not about celebrity or wealth. It's not about the family you are born into. It's not about being a CEO, president, general, or prime minister. Leadership is about relationships, about credibility, and about what you do.

Barry Z. Posner

You Are the Most Important Leader in Your Organization

If you're a manager in an organization, to your direct reports you are the most important leader in your organization. You are more likely than any other leader to influence their desire to stay or leave, the trajectory of their careers, their ethical behavior, their ability to perform at their best, their drive to wow customers, their satisfaction with their jobs, and their motivation to share the organization's vision and values.

If you're a parent, teacher, coach, or community leader, you are the person who's setting the leadership example for young people. It's not hip-hop artists, movie stars, or professional athletes they seek guidance from. You are the one they are most likely going to look to for the example of how a leader responds to competitive situations, handles crises, deals with loss, or resolves ethical dilemmas. It's not someone else. It's you.

The leaders who have the most influence on us are those who are the closest to us. We have to challenge the myth that leadership is about position and power. And, once challenged, people can come to see leadership in a whole new light. Yukari Huguenard, an everyday leader we interviewed, told us how much he had changed his view of leadership after he had examined his assumptions:

I used to think leaders had to be at the top level of a large organization. With that view of leadership, the chasm between where I am and being a leader was uncrossable. Now, I see leaders leading a group of people of any size and leading at any level. You are a leader if you employ these five leadership practices because people around you want to follow. In that sense, I feel that I'm already a leader.

There's no escape. Leadership is everyone's business. No matter what your position is, you have to take responsibility for the quality of leadership your constituents get. You—and that means all of us—are accountable for the leadership you demonstrate. And, because you are the most important leader to those closest to you, the only choice you really have is whether or not to be the best leader you can be.

Leadership Is Learned

The notion that leadership is reserved for only a very few of us is reinforced every time someone asks, "Are leaders born or made?" Whenever we're asked this question—which is almost every time we give a speech or conduct a class or workshop—our answer, always offered with a smile, is this: "Yes, of course, all leaders are born. We've never met a leader who wasn't. So are all accountants, artists, athletes, parents, zoologists, you name it." We're all born. What we do with what we have before we die is up to us.

It's just pure myth that only a lucky few can ever understand the intricacies of leadership. Leadership is not a gene, and it's not a secret code that can't be deciphered by ordinary people. The truth is that leadership is an observable set of skills and abilities that are useful whether one is in the executive suite or on the front line, on Wall Street, Beijing Financial Street, or Main Street, in any campus, community, or corporation. And any skill can be strengthened, honed, and enhanced, given the motivation and desire, along with practice and feedback, role models, and coaching.

We've been fortunate to have heard and read the stories of thousands of ordinary people who've led others to get extraordinary things done. And there are millions more. It's not the absence of leadership potential that inhibits the development of more leaders; it's the persistence of the myth that leadership can't be learned. This haunting myth is a far more powerful deterrent to leadership development than is the nature of the person or the basics of the leadership process.

The experience of Juan Gonzalez is typical of the leaders we've worked with around the world. Juan told us that taking the view that leadership was a set of practices was a good start for understanding that leadership was everyone's business, and this approach offered him a new perspective on the world of human interaction by demystifying the notion of natural born leaders and, if anything. The fact that leaders can learn to be leaders though self-awareness and effort opens the possibility that individuals have a choice about pursuing or ignoring the calling of leadership. Not everyone will be a leader of historical proportions; however, we all can and should assume leadership roles in our regular activities more often than not.

Certainly, we shouldn't mislead people into believing that they can attain unrealistic goals. However, neither should we assume that only a few would ever attain excellence in leadership (or in any other human endeavor). We do know that those who are most successful at bringing out the best in others are those who set achievable "stretch" goals and believe that they have the ability to develop the talents of others. We know that effective leaders are constantly learning. They see all experiences as learning experiences, not just those sessions in a formal classroom or workshop. They're constantly looking for ways to improve themselves and their organizations. Even if some people think that they're not able to learn to lead, you must believe that you and they can. That's where it all starts—with your own belief in yourself and in others.

Does emotions affect your Leadership ?

Hello,

Emotions are something which one should have complete control of. Else we will have difficulty in handling teams and thereby it reflects poorly on our leadership capabilities. There are many a situations where we act in the fit of anger and repent later for the behaviour. Can this be tolerated by your team members. Often times they may not be matured enough to understand your pressures.



Here is a wonderful article on how not to affect your leadership skills be blurred under the influence of emotions.



Happy Reading



Raghav

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Don't Let Emotions Affect Your Leadership

Ram Charan
The product launch was just six weeks away, and the team's spirits were high -- until Dave, the business unit manager, turned his attention to Jill, the head of sales. She was in charge of training the sales force to sell the new product.
Wishful Thinking
Two months before, Dave had asked Jill to map out the percentage of the sales force that was getting trained week by week, by region. He hadn't yet seen any of the numbers.
"We're kicking off our sales training this week," Jill explained. "I think we'll be able to get all the reps through by launch date."
Dave stiffened and furrowed his brow. He thought to himself, "You mean no one's trained yet?! What have you been doing for the past two months? Where are the percentages I asked you for?"
A Missed Opportunity
That's what he thought. What he said, very calmly, was, "OK. Let's get them trained as soon as possible."
The engineering chief couldn't contain himself. He burst out, "We killed ourselves to get ahead of the competition with this product. Now it sounds like our reps won't be trained in time and we'll miss our window."
Jill offered some mild reassurances, and the meeting adjourned with just an ounce of the boundless energy it had started out with.
A Very Human Failing
There are plenty of warning signs that deadlines and targets might be missed. Leaders too often ignore them for a very simple and very human reason: they need to be liked.
They know what they should do or say, they just have trouble doing it or saying it. They avoid the awkward conversations and skirt the sensitive issues for fear of offending someone.
Do you have a deeply etched need to be liked? If you do, you have a serious threat to your leadership. Unless you can overcome the emotional responses -- the sweaty palms and nervous stomach when you're about to challenge someone -- you can't be an effective leader.
For one thing, your team will eventually crumble, because the non-performers will cause resentment and distrust. What if Dave's product launch ultimately fumbles? His team will resent Jill -- but also Dave for not holding her accountable. And the others might start to wonder, "What is he not telling me?"
Your whole social system will also slowly corrode. Leaders establish the ground rules largely through their own behavior. If you can't be candid, others will think they can't either. Problems get buried when "niceness" is more important than realism and honesty.
Stealth Tactics Don't Work
Some leaders pass the buck when they have to give someone negative feedback. They ask a subordinate to put the pressure on or deliver the bad news.
Others procrastinate. They let frustrations simmer until the non-performance becomes chronic. Then tempers boil over and the leader does something rash, like fire the person. Those paths of least resistance create more problems in the end.
It's far better to confront any slips in performance on the spot, and it's the leader's job to do it. People generally appreciate honest feedback. The sooner they get it, the easier it is for them to make corrections and get back on track.
If they continually don't improve, well, at least there are no surprises.
Taking the Right Steps
To lead others, you have to overcome your visceral reactions to situations that have some degree of conflict or negativity. It is possible. These approaches can help:
• Be conscious of your gut
When a CEO repeatedly wasn't getting reports on the results from a new ad campaign, he stopped asking the vice president of marketing and made the request to a person one rung down.
He didn't think of it as letting the VP off the hook. It just seemed easier to go around him. Easier, because the CEO would unconsciously avoid the complaints and hassles the volatile VP could create.
If you're taking an action because it's more expedient, that's one thing. But if you're doing it because of an unconscious desire to avoid unpleasantness, watch out. Your inability to hold people accountable will bite you. Be sure you know the difference.
• Rehearse
Preparation can relieve the stress of difficult conversations. Even CEOs rehearse when they have to have a serious talk with one of their direct reports. By practicing, you can set the right tone and find words that are strong but perhaps more palatable.
Don't sugarcoat your comments, but you could start by saying something positive: "You've been doing really well with X and Y, but I owe it to you to tell you my concerns about Z."
Rehearsing also gives you time to think things through and prepare for possible reactions. You'll be less likely to back off from what you really think when you're in the heat of the situation.
• Don't wait
Most big problems start out small. That's the time to address them, not at an annual performance review.
If you can't give yourself a pep talk to face up to a person who's not performing well, find a coach to give you the psychological boost you need. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable, but have the conversation anyway. After a while, you'll no doubt be more spontaneous.
Remember, people will really like you better and respect you more if your feedback is honest and ongoing -- and comes directly from you.
Source : yahoo.com