Leadership Development Challenges:

• It is challenging to find a Leadership Development vendor that has trainers who actually also have business experience in senior roles, and who do not charge a fortune in fees like most of them, to develop and deliver a program. Besides, all vendors are offering the ‘same old same old’ – none of them stand out as offering anything different that could be useful to us.
• We send our High Potentials on Leadership programs, and one-by-one, they leave the organization within one to three years until there are few left.
• We want to switch from using a vendor to inhouse, but staff do not value inhouse as much as vendor-delivered.
• We would like to get our inhouse Leadership Development Program registered as ‘ILM Recognized’ ™ without spending a fortune, and would prefer that an L&D consultant who is experienced in doing this, can assist for a realistically reasonable fee. We want to be provided with all of the templates; policy documentation; processes and L&D team training that will be required in for the first year to pass initial certification, and then to be used for renewal of the registration annually ourselves thereafter without having to engage the consultant for renewal.
• Despite sending our High Potentials on Leadership programs, we don’t see significantly improved business or cultural results after years of doing this.
• The Leadership Development vendors do not really understand our challenges – both internal and external- nor do they understand our Corporate Strategy and how to link to it. They just deliver a one-size-fits-all program with just a little customization.
• We want to improve our organization’s leadership style to include a significant coaching orientation.
• There are so many Leadership models; how do we choose the correct one and implement it and measure the behavioral results?
• Line Managers seem detached from what we are doing to develop their future leaders – they don’t seem involved, and appear only mildly interested.
• How can we set up our Leadership Development program and market it to improve our EVP; Employer Brand and Talent Attraction?
• Settng up measures to slow the attrition of High Potentials who have attended programs.
• Certifying your inhouse program as ‘ILM Approved’.
• Mapping out and integrating a long-term career-plan into the program, for each individual selected to attend the program, prior to the program commencing.
• Psychometric and ability testing for each individual shortlisted as a participant.
• Offering fees that are more competitive than the prevailing market norm, and the option to conduct each module on just over half a weekend day comined with the next full working day, to reduce the affects of puling them out of the office. A further option for conducting a proportion of the modules remotely and live online.
• Crafting and integrating short Job Rotation cycles into the program if required.
• Optimizing your current inhouse program: content curation and instructional design.
• Crafting and incorporating an agenda of social bonding activities as a basis to ensure understanding and co-operation in what will become the future leadership team of the organization.
• Provision of elements and tools that widen the learner experience and interest factor of the program: business games / simulations; exchange day visits to other non-competing companies within the same industry (but not the same vertical market; for example: the Leadership participant cadre from a bank could visit the market-leading insurance firm); CSR involvement activities; Toastmaters ™ or TedX™ attendance.
• Creating a Vendor Selection Plan, and physical involvement in the Leadership Development vendor vetting meetings (RFI & RFP response presentations given by vendors), and in the selection process, and assessing of program outline and content.