Leadership Development Program ? The key accelerator

Posted by Abhishek Kumar on January 25th, 2018

There is no substitute for a strong leadership team that can provide vision and drive to the organization. Even the most engaged and self-motivated of teams start lagging behind in absence of a charismatic leader. The kingdom is lost the moment the king loses his head, literally and figuratively! So, what is the secret ingredient of a good leader? Are the born or they made? These are classic questions that have been answered in many different ways at different times by many successful leaders who transformed the world they live in; the answer is, leaders are created by circumstances, developed by need and nurtured by drive (ambition). Leadership is seed that’s lying in hibernation in all of us and it needs an awakening.

Organizations frequently face the issue of having knowledgeable subject matter experts, efficient executors, charismatic client relation experts and talented performers in their organization who are incapable of moving beyond the realm of personal or personnel management. Despite being extremely good at what they do they are unable to inspire the same quality and/or quantity of results from others. Organizations prefer to have people within their industry, with adequate business acumen and a good understanding of the organization dynamics to take on the leadership roles rather than to hire established leaders from the market and then allow them to form their opinion and understanding of the business. Developing leaders within the organization brings is career advancement opportunities for employees, increased interest and healthy competition in the organization. Leaders developed internally show greater passion for the organization. Even the born-leaders benefit from these programs as the trial and error way of figuring out what works is eliminated thus enabling them to be faster and even better. This is why organizations find it meaningful to invest in leadership development programs for their high potential and high performing individuals who are well poised to take on leadership roles or are already playing leadership roles within the organization.

What is a leadership development program (LDP) and how does it help?

Leaders are those who facilitate execution of the company’s strategy by building alignment, winning mindshare and growing the capabilities of others. Leadership roles may be formal, with the corresponding authority to make decisions and take responsibility, or they may be informal roles with little official authority (e.g., a member of a team who influences team engagement, purpose and direction; a lateral peer who must listen and negotiate through influence).’ A good leadership development program aims at helping the leaders expand their horizons and take on the challenges of growth and change head on. Some of the key ingredients of a good leadership development program are:

  • Tailor-made approach – No one size fits all and such is the truth for leadership development programs too. While some industries need their leaders to drive innovation and creativity, other industries need their leaders to foster discipline and adherence to set systems. Depending on the nature of work, organization culture, employee profile, age and stage in which the company is, local and international laws, business goals and many other factors, the developmental needs of leaders change. Hence creating an LDP that best suits the needs of the organization is a must
  • The concept-experience mix – Leaders and prospective leaders are usually experienced people who have considerable amount of knowledge on a variety of subjects. Most times these are insights gained from the various experienced they have had. Hence it is important for a program to be the right mix of concepts and frameworks along with plenty of experiential elements like case studies, role-plays, simulations, strategy games, exercises, action learning projects, etc.
  • Coaching and mentoring – It is important to have a sustained learning platform for leaders so that the pressure of day today activities does not kill their learning. For this organizations must accompany their leadership development programs with a coaching plan for specific learning areas and a mentorship program to prepare leaders to take on specific roles.
  • Recurrent and regular interventions – Putting leaders through one exhaustive program of ten days is not sufficient. It is important to time the learning and release it in spurts such that the learning can be absorbed and applied immediately thus internalization is possible.

Ripples Leadership Development programs at a glance:

  1. Lead Talk – Interactions are the life and soul of leadership. Be it delegation or feedback orknowledge sharing or setting goals, leaders have to interact with people to get their objectives met. This critical and fundamental aspect of leadership is addressed in this program in such a way that the participants can take away not just the various key techniques but also the common underlying principles that govern each of these interactions
  1. Walk the Talk – A first-time leaders program which helps participants understand the key differentiators and drivers of leadership while being able to see the subtle and hard differences between an individual contributor and a lead. This program is exhaustive and covers several aspects of leadership both visible and the deeply embedded ones. The methodologies in which this program can be offered are workshop, outbound experiential learning, gamification and simulation based session.
  1. Good to Great – This is a senior leadership programme intended for those who manage managers, devise strategies and drive change in the organization. This programme is highly experiential and is filled with intense topics and triggers for discussions, debates and inferences. This program can be run as a workshop, simulation based session and/or an outbound learning program

 John C. Maxwell said, ‘A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.’ It is therefore imperative that organization help leaders learn and know leadership so that they can lead organizations to successful attainment of goals.

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Abhishek Kumar

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Abhishek Kumar
Joined: December 27th, 2017
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