How many of you have experienced the frustration of dealing with one or two-day workshops that provide a lot of great content but you have no idea how to apply it?
Executives, how many of you have experienced the frustration of paying for that and not knowing what you got in return?
Our industry contains a lot of noise that requires emerging leaders and companies to navigate all of these different short-term opportunities and create some solutions that may or may not work.
Since 2003, we’ve been in the business of helping individuals and organizations reach their next level of success. Over the past two years, we extensively studied the industry and examined the practices that made our client partners and individuals highly successful.
What we consistently found through that research was the best organizations and individuals did not stop with their leadership development. They were constantly learning, constantly challenging themselves, constantly growing. Plus, they aligned their leadership development initiatives with the strategic goals of the company.
Here were two specific examples from our research:
- At Cornhusker Bank, President Barry Lockard, and Senior Vice President HR/Talent Development Sherla Post, invested in multiyear development for their front line leaders. These and other key initiatives help them achieve record growth year after year and they were named to Lincoln’s Best Places to Work in 2013 and 2014.
- John Oestreich, Managing Principal Waddell & Reed, Inc. took an aggressive and non-traditional approach to management. He rallied the independent advisors through a strategic plan, created an extreme dream, invested in a series of on-going development and continuous coaching for key leaders. John and his team continue to be among their firm’s leaders year after year in almost all measurable categories.
I’d like to say this is just a Leadership Resources thing, however, we know it is not. When firms invest in their people and make it a long-term cultural process great things happen.
Interested to see how your leadership development practices stack up to the best that we studied? Take one of these simple assessments and get instant feedback:
- Are you investing in leadership development wisely?
- How effective is your succession and development plan?
We look forward to helping you achieve your next level of success in 2015.
