5 Steps to create a successful leadership development plan

The leadership development plan is a vital component of successful organizations as it directly impacts business growth, innovation, and retention. Creating a leadership development plan may seem like a daunting task at first, but it’s achievable. 

In this article, we help you to understand how a leadership development plan can be created to meet the unique needs of each individual, and measurable results.

What is a Leadership Development Plan?

A leadership development plan is a development tool that helps to improve leadership capabilities. 

Why Leadership Development Plan is important?

Creating a leadership development plan is important because of these reasons: 

• Provides clarity on a subjective and complex topic.
• Makes long term goals achievable.
• Uncovers areas of opportunity.
• Gives a clear path to advancement. 

Leadership development goals

Before starting the leadership development plan, one must have clear goals, some of them are: 

1. Personal responsibility

Personal responsibility as a leader is a must! A true leader is responsible for his actions, whether good or bad. They are also responsible for the outcomes of their decisions and appreciate the lessons that both success and failure teach.

2. Self-discipline

A good leader always makes decisions that benefit the team or organization, rather than for himself.

3. Listening skills

A good leader always listens to his team members as many of them might have valuable input and experience that they can share. So listening skill is very important for a true leader. 

4. Expand your knowledge

Leaders need to be well-rounded, with different skills and should be better at handling issues as they arise in a creative and agile fashion.

5. Focus on time management

A leader should do proper time management and set an example for their team.

Also Read: Leadership Theories that every manager must master in 2021

Why is leadership development important?

Leadership development benefits an organization in many ways.

• It drives better business results
• Skilled leaders are more agile
• Good leadership drives innovation
• Skilled leaders attract and keep employees
• Improves employee engagement and communication inside and outside the organization
• Improves Customer retention
• Increases employee loyalty
• Proper leadership development strategy fuels business strategy

Leadership development skills

The following lists highlight which leadership skills is crucial for two groups — executives and managers.

Leadership Development Skills for Executives

• Strategic planning
• Business acumen
• Business intelligence
• Leading innovation
• Coaching

Leadership Development Skills for Managers

• Coaching
• Communication – verbal, written, and nonverbal
• Employee engagement
• Business acumen
• Critical thinking

Also Read: 10 Leadership Qualities that Make a Great Leader

Leadership Development Plan

These 4 things to keep in mind when building an leadership development plan: 

Outline the most important leadership qualities and identify talent

This is the first step to the executive leadership development plan, write down the list of leadership skills, abilities that ought to be embodied by a great leader and take feedback from senior leadership management about the drafted list. Ideally, you should select High Potentials, Stars, and High Performers for a leadership development plan.

Tips:

• Draft a list of skills that you want to see in a good leader. 
• Create an assessment such as anonymous, email, and face-to-face feedback to assess where your leadership is and can develop a clear idea of where the leadership currently is.
• List out current employees who demonstrate an interest in management roles and can take up leadership roles.

Create leadership skills 

As discussed above, you need to identify the precise skills and talents that need to be cultivated at your organisation and conduct a leadership skills assessment as this is one of the important parts of the development plan strategy. 

Tips:

• Create these goals and make sure it is achieved, measured with the key business objectives. 
• Create a list of goals and skills required for each individual or role.
• Define a clear timeline for each goal and motivate people to act.
• Be clear about that goal, the clearer this list is, the more successful employees will be in reaching their goals.

Identify the best methods to achieve your leadership action plan objectives

Some things you should consider when deciding upon your preferred method of execution of your leadership plan objectives include: 

• Mentorship programs
• Formal training
• Volunteering
• Task forces
• Changing the way the responsibility is taken

Some companies will develop these methods in house, while others bring in a third party company.

Tips:

• Create a separate leadership plan for each role or individual and make it more personal and role oriented.

Measure the effectiveness

You must have measurable goals, concrete criteria, feedback from employees, and data in place for measuring the eventual effectiveness of your leadership plan. 

Likewise, your employee’s feedback analysis will help you determine the overall progress of the departments in which the execution plan has been adopted. 

Tips:

• Set timeframes and review results frequently.
• Communicate with employees, their feedback will be really important.

Other leadership development plan 

• Self-paced micro-learning – Similar to Great Learning and Google Grow.
• Complementary leadership mentoring – This program helps potential leaders to understand their weak and strong areas. 
• Professional development course – These are usually 2-3-day training for a particular skill or competency.
• Professional certifications – Employees may need to acquire and maintain professional certifications to perform in certain roles. Check out great learning professional certification courses for your employees. 

Challenges in creating a leadership development plan

Some of the challenges are : 

• Limited resources.
• Lack of commitment from the organization in general not having a culture of learning.
• Inability to create solutions fast enough to meet the evolving skill needs.
• Ineffective succession management programs.

The above steps help you to can create a leadership development plan and establish a positive development plan to achieve success. If you wish to learn more about leadership, join the Future Leaders Programme, delivered by NUS Business School in collaboration with Great Learning.

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