Leadership Development | Developingleadership

Leadership Skills

A great deal has been written about the nature of leadership and the skills and behaviours leaders need to have (Horner 1997). Horne and Jones (2001) in a strongly evidenced study found eight key characteristics of leadership of which inspiration was seen as both the most important and the most lacking. A considerable range of methods was considered effective for leadership development.

Characteristics of leadership

Horne and Jones (2001) found some key characteristics of leadership of which most commonly desired was inspiration, and was also seen to be the most commonly lacking. Managers rated the quality of leadership more highly if they were in organisations that have a clear and systematic approach to leadership development.

There was also a positive association between leadership development and financial turnover. Where leadership development was recognised as a priority, turnover was likely to be increasing.

The primary task for a good leader was seen to be to shape organisational goals and to unlock the potential of others to achieve them. However, it was also recognised that this model of leadership was not always appropriate and in some circumstances there was a need for leaders to be strong and directive. The methods considered most effective for leadership development were formal mentoring, action learning and 360-degree feedback. These findings suggest that a variety of methods are needed.

Leadership lies not only in the quality of the individual but also in the situation. There may be many effective styles of leadership. It follows therefore that in some cases rather than seeking to develop different leadership behaviours in people, a leader can instead be appointed to a position which suits their leadership style (Schein 1985). Organisational culture also matters. Leaders must be able to adapt to change and will be more effective in an organisation where the organisational culture responds positively to change than in an organisation where change is resisted (Baron 1995).

Leadership can also be transactional or transformational. In transactional leadership leaders use power to achieve task completion by followers (Burns 1978). In transformational leadership, the leader motivates followers and engages them in the processes of the work to be completed (Bass 1985).

There is widespread belief that interventions (training and development activities) will help to develop and improve leadership within organisations. On the other hand, trait theories show that there are significant correlations between personality traits and successful leadership (Stogdill 1974, Bentz 1990). As personality traits are stable over long periods of time, this suggests that innate personality traits are an important part of leadership capability.

Other recent theories suggest that leadership is no longer a process in which leaders are individuals who have followers. Instead, leadership is seen as a social process where it involves coordinating efforts and moving together as a group (Drath and Palus 1994). Whereas in the past, leaders used to direct and command, it is suggested that now they need to influence and support (Horner 1997).

How can leadership skills be developed?

The underlying assumption is that more effective leadership occurs through the development of individual leaders. It also assumes that leadership is something that can be added to organizations to improve social and operational effectiveness (David, 2001). Leadership emerges with the process of creating shared meaning, both in terms of sense making and in terms of value-added. From this approach everyone is considered to be a leader. Due to the credibility which lies at the heart of leadership alongside authenticity, determining and defining one’s own guiding beliefs and assumptions lie at the heart of becoming a good leader.

Leadership has been traditionally conceptualized as an individual-level skill. A good example of this is found in transformational leadership theory, which proposes that transformational leaders engage in behaviours related to the dimensions of Charisma, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration (Bass, 1985).

Development of a leader is thought to occur primarily through training individuals to develop in their skills and abilities (Stewart, et al. 1996). Leadership development consists of using social systems to help build commitments among members of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). According to McCall (1999), the major form of development of leadership skills is through the use of short courses where by staffs are sent on courses which run for more than two weeks. Leadership cannot be taught like a single skill, but requires time by staffs to gain experience, develop their intellect, allow reflection and increase knowledge (Bass, 1990). Because leadership development is not an event or a sequence of events, it should be an integrated process that supports and supported by business (McCauley et al.,1998).

Leader Development and Leadership Development

Leader Development

One of the main reasons why organizations invest in training and development for employees is to enhance and protect their human capital (Lepak & Snell, 1999). In the case of developing a leader, the emphasis typically is on individual-based knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with formal leadership roles. These acquired capabilities enable people to think and act in new ways (Coleman, 1988). In this approach, leader development results as a function of purposeful investment in human capital. The primary emphasis of the development strategy is to build the intrapersonal competence needed to form an accurate model of oneself (Gardner, 1993), to engage in good manners and develop one’s personality (Hall & Seibert, 1992), and to use that self-model to perform effectively in any number of organizational roles.

Some specific examples of the type of personal skills or capabilities associated with leader development plans (Neck & Manz, 1996) include;

Self-awareness. Examples are self confidence, emotional awareness.
Self-regulation. Examples are self control, trustworthiness, adaptability and flexibility.
Self-motivation. Examples are commitment, initiative, and optimism.

These capabilities contribute to enhance individual knowledge, individual trust, and personal authority, which have been projected as the fundamental leadership necessity (Zand, 1997), at least from a traditional, individualistic leadership point of view.

Leadership Development

Unlike human capital which is the focus on developing individual knowledge, skills and abilities, the emphasis with social capital is on building a network of relationships among individuals that improve cooperation and exchange of resources to create value in organisations (Bouty, 2000). Social capital is defined more by its function than by its structure (Whitener, 2000). This social capital is based on relationships which are created through interpersonal exchange. Nahapiet and Ghoshat (1998) proposed that commitments, trust and respect matches roughly to three different aspects of social capital such as structural, rational, and cognitive.

The structural dimension relates primarily to social interactions and this structure is formed as a result of the commitments among all parties in a given social network (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998).

The rational dimension of social capital refers to functional assets that are rooted in networked relationships such as trust and trustworthiness (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998), which describe the kind of personal relationships which have been developed through record interactions.

The other aspect of social capital is the cognitive dimension which refers to those resources personified in shared representatives and collective meanings among people such as organisation culture or a shared vision based on a set of common values that produces and is the product of mutual respect (Bounty, 2000).

The major emphasis in leadership development is on building and using interpersonal competence. Interpersonal intelligent is defined by Gardner (1993) in terms of the ability to understand people, which are also a basic concern in building trust, respect, and also commitments. Its key components according to (McCauley, 2000) include social awareness (e.g., understanding, service orientation, and developing others) and social skills (e.g., teamwork and cooperation, building connections and managing conflicts).

Leadership development can be interpreted as a form of individual-based differentiation in terms of helping individuals enhance a unique self-understanding and construct independent identities (McCauley et al., 1998). It can help people understand how to relate to others, coordinate their efforts, build commitments, and develop extended social networks by applying self-understanding to social and organizational imperatives. In today’s practice helps people learn from their work rather than taking them away from their work to learn (David, 2001).

Attributes of a responsible leader

1. Integrity:

They have a high level of ethical awareness/moral reasoning.

They will not let dishonourable behaviour go unchallenged.

Being honest and trustworthy is their nature.

They are ever willing to explore ethical problems.

They are always willing to take ethical actions without a clear picture of the final outcome.

2. Open-minded:

These leaders are always willing to act on criticism from inside and outside the organisation.

They have positive minds on seeing things been improved.

They challenge others to adopt new ways of thinking by questioning business and being open to new ideas.

3. Taking a long-term perspective:

They believe that bottom line success can be achieved in a decent way.

Most of them do not focus wholly on cost and budgets during their long term plans.

They always have in mind that business does have responsibilities to the larger society.

They take strategic views of the business environment.

4. Demonstrating ethical behaviour:

They are willing to take the organisation beyond minimum legal standards.

They are willing to be a role model of ethical behaviour to their followers.

They show ethical behaviour rooted in personal actions in their day to day behaviour.

Leaders have the ability to change beliefs of their followers regularly with their own high values.

5. Care for people:

They make commitment to the growth and development of employees.

They respect employees and staffs at all levels.

They also have respect for diversity and offer equal opportunities for all.

They will not let their followers be under stress, especially being overworked.

They operate a management style of empowerment rather than control their followers.

6. Communications:

This is one attribute of a leader that makes positive impacts to its followers and the organisation.

With respect, they listen to others for their different opinions and views.

They are always honest and are free with staffs in the organisation.

Their principles can be based on the belief of accountability whereby they measure and publicly report on company progress considering social and environmental issues.

7. Managing responsibility outside the organisation:

They treat suppliers fairly.

They also have their interest on how to impact the business on the surrounding local communities.

They build relations with external stakeholders, and also try to engage themselves in consultation.

They also try to create strategic networks and alliances by building external partnerships.

Key qualities of Leadership

These key qualities or competencies of leadership all seem to be a combination of emotional and intellectual ability which some authors term as reflexive abilities (Hind et al, 2009).

1. Systemic thinking

All leaders require the ability to strategically think in order to understand the bigger picture and appreciate the various systems in which organisations operate. This concerns the ability to understand the interdependency of systems across the business and society. It requires a deeper understanding of the organisation’s internal relations and external social and economic environment, as well as the cultural dynamics. For leaders to be successful, they require undertaking tactical shift in the way they view the world, they need to understand that the company is not operating in a closed system. They are required to be able to read and understand the market so that they can respond appropriately to it and the actors in it (Hind et al, 2009).

2. Embracing diversity

In this situation, leaders tend to build business teams which reflect the diversity of the societies in which they operate. It is also seen as the resolution to difficulty. Therefore, individuals and organisations need to value diversity by recognizing and accepting it, building connections across different groups and seeking common grounds without enforcing any agreement. Leaders who involve in decision making process help in structuring relations to exchange the ideas and learning across groups inside and outside the company (Hind et al, 2009).

3. Meaningful dialogue

Leaders are endowed with the ability to maintain a meaningful dialogue with others by listening, enquiring and also responding properly. Developing new forms of meaningful dialogue offers opportunity to explore assumptions, ideas and beliefs that notify individuals and organisational behaviours as well as their actions (Hind et al, 2009). This way, it helps avoid clashes that can occur due to cultural differences between groups.

4. Emotional awareness

This is the ability to understand how extensive the implications of making decisions and actions on others are. The ability to be able to identify the connection between thoughts, behaviours and emotions is considered fundamental in operating successfully in today’s business environment. It is also important that leaders have the ability to be tolerant to unusual approaches when talking or making decisions. In order to deal with uncertainty and complexity, leaders need to adopt personal approaches to tackling the competing demands different stakeholder groups place on the business.

Strategic Leadership initiative

Business leaders today face a marketplace characterized by change and growing complexity. Unfortunately, many leaders have discovered in the midst of this deep change that they are ill-prepared to respond to the change, let alone lead the change. Senior leaders will hardly be able to rely on the top-down command-and-control tactics of the past, for this work only when the organization’s environment is relatively stable and when directives can be well defined.

Leaders at all levels in an organization must be able to create a strategy and lead the change. Leadership development serves a dual purpose which is building critical capabilities while at the same time achieving real-time business needs.

Some Leadership roles

Leaders in general work to achieve two basic objectives which are; to come up with the strategies or solutions needed to overcome organizational challenges and to implement those solutions efficiently and effectively.

In the socialization process, leaders play a dual role. On one hand, they influence the socialization of all those below them, but on the other hand they too must be socialized to the organization’s vision and to their role in bringing the vision to fruition.

Leadership Development in the Workplace

If managers are asked where they learned their leadership abilities, they will often say that the highest contribution came from their job experiences and bosses which they interact and work with. Rarely will they mention organisation training despite the number of programs being designed and implemented. This can be attributed to the fact that organisations fail to cultivate leadership talent in their junior managers.

Leadership would not be needed in organisations, only with a strong team of leaders with interpersonal skills would change the scope and magnitude needed to possibly transform a major corporation.

Leadership development has become more broadly defined and no longer applies on individual manager’s ability to lead but also to the development of a “leadership mind-set” for the entire organization (Conger & Benjamin, 1999).

A variety of practices have been developed and implemented in organizations for reasons other than leadership development. These practices were primarily intended to improve performance management (e.g., 360-degree feedback), facilitate corporate socialization (e.g., mentoring), or enhance productivity (e.g., job assignments, action learning). These practises form the backbone of modern leadership development systems (David, 2001).

Practice	Description	Development Target	HC	SC	Strengths	Weaknesses
360-degree feedback	Multi-source ratings of performance, organized and presented to an individual	Self-knowledge Behavioural change	✓	x	Comprehensive picture; broad participation (A)	Overwhelming amount of data; no guidance on how to change; time and effort (C, S)
Coaching	Practical, goal-focused form of one-on-one learning	Self-knowledge Behavioural change Career development	✓	±	Personalized; intensive (C, S)	Perceived stigma (remedial); expensive
Mentoring	Advising/developmental relationship, usually with a more senior manager	Broader understanding. Advancement catalyst. Lessons learned/avoid mistakes.	✓	±	Strong personal bond (S)	Peer jealousy; over dependence; (A, C)
Networks	Connecting to others in different functions and areas	Better problem-solving. Learning who to consult for project help. Socialization	±	✓	Builds organization (S)	Ad hoc; unstructured (A)
Job Assignments	Providing “stretch” assignments in terms of role, function, or geography	Skills development. Broader understanding of the business.	✓	±	Job relevant; accelerates learning (C)	Conflict between performance and development; no structure for learning (A, S)

Note: HC=human capital; SC=social capital; ✓=intended developmental target; x=not an intended developmental target; ±=possible developmental target; A=assessment; C=challenge; S=support.

360-degree Feedback

Overview

360-degree feedback is a term used to describe the method of analytically collecting perceptions of an individual’s performance from the entire circle of relevant viewpoints (Warech et al., 1998). It is also known as multi-rater feedback, multi-source feedback, or multi-source assessment and it’s a feedback that comes from members of an employee’s immediate work circle. 360-degree feedback is strong on assessment but typically weak on challenge and support.

360-degree feedback processes has made a strong mark on organisations in recent years and has been cited as the most management innovation of the 1990’s (Atwater & Waldman, 1998). London & Beatty (1993) argued that 360-degree feedback is a source of competitive advantage to organisations, while Waldman et al. (1998) sees its growing popularity as a function of imitation and political concern. One of the advantages is that it directly acknowledges differences across sources in the opportunity to observe various aspects of an individual's performance. The use of 360-degree ratings helps to capture the variety of behaviour and perspective among individuals in an organisation (David, 2001).

Executive Coaching

Overview

This involves practical, goal-focused forms of one-on-one learning and behavioural change (Peterson, 1996). The aims of coaching are focused on improving individual performance and personal satisfaction and aims at improving and enhancing the effectiveness of organisations (Kilburg, 1996). Coaching may be used to improve individual performance, enhance careers, or settle organisational issues such as cultural change (Katz & Miller, 1996). It can also be a short-term activity aimed at improving specific leadership skills or solving specific skills (Tobial, 1996). It increases trust, mutual respect, and emotional commitments (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999). Using executive coaching to provide the challenge and support in combination with the assessment provided by 360-degree feedback may be an effective means of linking leader and leadership development by building both human and social capital (David, 2001).

Mentoring

Mentoring has programs which occur in a formal and informal form. The formal, planned mentoring programs are assigned, maintained, and monitored by the organisation (Kram & Bragar, 1992). The informal, unplanned mentoring is usually encouraged by organisations, but not initiated or administered by it. A challenge facing any organisation is how to find the most appropriate combination of these factors. A typically implemented, monitoring programs are heavily tilted toward support, with some attention to challenge, but little assessment concern (David, 2001).

There are indications that there is more positive benefit associated with informal mentoring (Chao et al., 1992). In the attempt to understand the common characteristics of an ideal mentor, results of qualitative analysis suggested that a number of different dimensions of ideal mentor characteristics such as listening and communication skills, patience, knowledge of organisation and industry, ability to read and understand others, honesty and trustworthiness occur (Allen & Poteet, 1999). These skills and characteristics could provide the foundation for a mentoring categorization for future researchers. When a mentor is seen displaying such behaviours and characteristics, a more beneficial mentoring relationship among staffs is predicted (Allen & Poteet, 1999). According to Scandura and Schriesheim (1994), improving the quality of mentoring would also improve the quality of leadership experienced.

Networking

An important goal of networking plans is to develop leaders beyond merely knowing what and knowing how, to knowing who in terms of problem-solving resources. Networking is also about expanding one's definition of what and how through exposure to others' thinking, which can challenge basic assumptions about what we think we know. It is also a means of encouraging organization members to form commitments with others outside of their immediate work group. In this way, networking is about investing in and developing social capital with a primary developmental emphasis on building support (David, 2001).

Networking involves the interaction of groups such as managers and executives who have common training or job experiences. In order to improve on self, these groups try to meet regularly over lunches or through electronic dialogue to share their mutual challenges and opportunities, with the goals of applying their learning or making their learning relevant to present leadership challenges on an easy, ongoing basis. Enhancing individual networks is believed to be an effective way to increase managers' innovation and problem-solving capacities.

Result

Networking is thought to be beneficial to professional and personal development because it fosters peer relationships in work settings. Peer relationships offer unique value for development because of the degree of mutual obligation and the duration of the relationship. Research has shown that peer relationships can span an entire career and longer (Kram & Isabella, 1985) compared with mentoring relationship or an executive coaching relationship that lasts for few months (Levinson, 1996). Organisations should consider peer relationships as a potentially valuable component of an overall leadership development system.

Job Assignments

It has long been recognized that experience is among the most important teachers, including the development of leadership. Development through job experiences pertains to how managers learn, undergo personal change, and acquire leadership capacity as a result of the roles, responsibilities, and tasks encountered in their jobs (McCauley & Brutus, 1998). Job assignments have been identified as mostly helpful to managers in learning about building teams, how to be better strategic thinkers, and how to gain valuable persuasion and influence skills (McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988). The main developmental experience, however, is that of providing challenge and, occasionally, support.

An example of where job assignments play important role is in a situation where professionals and managerial staffs are transferred to new countries under a leadership development program. It prepares leaders to encounter the kinds of challenges that contribute to ongoing developments (Clark & Lyness, 1991).