When you step into a new leadership role there are great expectations as to how you will perform. These expectations are both expressed and unspoken. A new set of leadership promises emerge from your consciousness and from those you will lead; that you will perform at the highest level of leadership! Understanding and living up to these promises and expectations will define your leadership and the success of your organization.
A key promise you are responsible for is developing your leaders individually and collectively to be the best performing team they can be. Along with vision and holding team members accountable there is no more important promise that must be fulfilled.
Why is leader development so important? There has been a lot of research measuring the impact of leadership development to business performance. The Leadership Circle conducted a study which showed a strong correlation between leadership effectiveness and business performance (revenues, profits and market share). The study confirms that by improving leadership effectiveness, the business has a 38% probability of seeing higher business performance. This means leadership effectiveness is a 38% lever for business performance and success. Look at the graph below taken from The Leadership Circle study. The results are impressive and thought provoking! You can read more from Bob Anderson and Bill Adams book called Mastering Leadership.
This research by The Leadership Circle is consistent with the Zenger-Folkman research that indicates when leadership becomes extraordinary the leadership effectiveness scores go beyond the 80th percentile. In their book, Extraordinary Leaders, they conclude, leaders who are evaluated with an effective 360-degree leadership assessment and are rated above the 80th percentile will produce twice the results of those who are rated in the 60th percentile.
Finally, studies have also proven effective leadership is a lever to greater employee engagement, retention, customer satisfaction and productivity.
The conclusion for all this research of leadership effectiveness is a primary contributor to organizational sustained performance and success.
As a leader, you need to develop and strengthen your skills, competencies and attributes. If you are not growing and developing your talents, I would say you are not leading! You need to take time for your own personal development and make it a priority! Your success as a leader depends on it. The success of your team and organization depends on it. Individual leadership development is necessary, but insufficient for extraordinary business performance. It also requires collective leadership development from the top leadership team down. Simply, your organization can only operate and perform at the level of your collective leadership effectiveness.
As a leader you need to ask yourself some thought provoking questions:
- How effective is your personal leadership? How do you know?
- How effective is the collective leadership of your senior team? How do you know?
- How does your leadership effectiveness compare to your competition?
- How are you tracking the leadership effectiveness over time to gauge improvement?
- Is your leadership development a competitive advantage or disadvantage?
- How critical is leadership development to help achieve your strategic priorities now and 5 years from now?
Seek answers to these questions by doing some self-reflection and then meet with your leadership team to discuss. Your answers to these questions will tell you what you need to do. You see, making leadership development a competitive advantage needs to be a strategic priority and it needs to be owned by you. It is part of your promise as a top leader in your organization to elevate the performance of your team. Your success and the success of your team and organization depends on your passion and commitment to fulfilling the leadership development promise.
Contact me at clay@executiveleadershipperformance.com or on my LinkedIn profile if you would like to learn more.