Leadership development in Europe

By Inger Buus, Director of Mannaz, London and
Scott Saslow, Executive Director of The Execsight Institute of Executive Development

Based on recent study “Leadership Development in European Organisations: Challenges and Best Practices”

This article was published in Strategic HR Review Volume 4, Issue 2, January/February 2005

The role of leadership development in the modern corporation is evolving. Traditionally more subject to economic cycles or a particular organisation’s fortunes, leadership development activities, budgets, and its overall visibility are increasing. HR and Development professionals have asserted for many years that all corporate development, and especially leadership development, is a key driver for corporate success; management is not only listening but starting to take action and participate, invest, and make leadership development a corporate priority.

Leadership Development in European Organisations examines the practices in 51 of Europe’s largest corporations. As the data shows, for leadership development professionals, there is no one single path to managing leadership development effectively in an organisation. In “best practice” organisations across the globe, the variety of practices is fairly wide, and certainly within Europe one notices clear differences as well. These regional differences are discussed in detail in the complete survey.

As we look specifically at the key findings of Leadership Development in European Organisations, a few themes do emerge:

I. Importance of leadership development
The importance of the HR & Development functions, as well as the extent to which leadership development is blended in with the critical business development function (almost 30% of survey respondents stated that these two functions are “extremely” integrated), demonstrates a strong level of importance which is placed on leadership development. Additionally, the level of commitment at the CEO, Board, and Senior Management team is quite strong (54% cite the CEO’s commitment to leadership development as “extremely” strong). There is no doubt that leadership development is an executive management issue.

III. ROI measurement and use of technology
Despite the high level of importance and investment in leadership development, companies examined in this survey are not measuring the return on impact of leadership as much one might expect, especially given the importance it plays and the size of the investments they are making. Despite utilizing a variety of metrics to track the effectiveness of leadership development solutions, a full 63% reported that they “never” measure leadership development ROI. Similarly, they are not using technology to a great extent, neither on the delivery side nor for programme evaluations, while their transatlantic counterparts in the U.S. do find such use of technology very helpful and more common.

Select Best practices in measuring and maximizing ROI in leadership development solutions
Adapted from the Interview, “Practical Applications of Measuring Impact and ROI in Executive Development Programs” by Scott Saslow and submitted to The Academy of Management Learning & Education Journal. Expected publish date: Summer 2005.

• Link development to strategy Start with the organisation’s key strategies, conduct a “gap analysis” to determine the shortfall in needed talent to execute the strategy, and from this create the developmental plan for executives. Many executive developmental programmes are still “bottoms-up” - they start the design process on the individual level and ask, “What else does the participant need to be a well rounded executive?” rather than start with the organisational needs and then determine which skills and perspectives are needed to drive programme design.
  
• Real time feedback and modifications Ensure that they capture feedback during the programme and have the ability to act on it, especially relevant for week-long programmes which represent a significant time and cost investment. Nightly electronic based surveys help to capture the day’s experience, and (sometimes anonymously) allow for praise or constructive criticism on the part of the instructors, content, etc.
  
• Custom, action learning Design programme content based on the specific organisation’s current challenges, and allow opportunities for integrating the developmental activity into the ongoing work of the participants.
  
• Support buddy programmes Buddy programmes pair two participants together and allow them to discuss the programme content together, and test each other’s content absorption in a non-threatening setting. Many exist beyond the programme on a voluntary basis. Create informal pairs of participants and create time in the schedule when they can discuss privately the components of the programme during a lunch or coffee break.
  
• Audit impact Utilise outside specialists to track programme effectiveness on occasion to confirm internal findings. The credibility and new processes of outside specialists can help produce novel findings.
  
• Results sharing Determine the relevant metrics to share with various stakeholders in the organisation, and proactively update them on programme effectiveness.
  
  

Changing Nature of Leadership Development
It is critical that corporations understand their own needs for leadership development (a “moving target” as new individuals and new strategies are introduced all the time) and customise in a proactive fashion a solution based on these needs. Gone are the days of having a fixed competency wheel for an organisation’s leaders and simply trying, reactively, to build skills to match against its talent model over a several year period. Top performing organisations take this proactive approach to building leadership talent, as it is now recognized that leadership development is not just a tool to help the organisation achieve its strategy, but rather a process by which it can develop a strategy in the first place.

It is equally important that leadership development professionals understand the global business drivers in their organisation, as these drivers are the basis from which all solutions are ideally designed. Development professionals no longer train leaders to have a well rounded set of skills; they develop leaders to achieve business results. The global aspects are highly relevant as leaders need to know how to manage across boundaries, penetrate foreign markets, and do so with a diverse employee base.

Leadership development today and tomorrow
Adaped from Transforming Corporate Leadership: Best Practices in Executive Education, Execsight, 2004

	Present	Future
Goal	Develop skills and competencies for general management	Increase ability to execute current organisational strategies
Style	Bottom-up and top-down	Integrated with Business Unit leads
Human Capital Management process integration	Limited	Integrated
BU Perspective on Development	Service provider	Partner
Corporate View on Programme Costs	Overhead; try to minimise	Part of doing business; Investment
Use of Technology	Minimal, mostly administrative uses	Standard across programme management - assessment, design, delivery, measurement, follow-on development
Measurement	Level 1 Reaction typical; Level 3 Behaviour Change (via 360) infrequent	Level 4 - Business Impact measurement using development analytics
Primary Supplier Roles	Design and Delivery	Design, co-delivery, Auditing and Reporting

Recommendations
As we have witnessed, there are several types of leadership development solutions, and a variety of ways in which they are deployed. Leadership development professionals have many resources at their disposal to create and manage top quality solutions. In addition to internal resources, there are speciality providers, both large and small, which assist in the overall process of developing leaders. Among the many recommendations to leadership development professionals based on the work presented here are the following items:

1. Keep a global perspective
The one certainty of business is the increasingly global nature. Leaders in corporations need to learn how to learn of and work with a variety of different worker types and customer markets. Leaders with no global perspective, or skills such as language and market understanding, cannot lead their own teams and organisations in an effective manner. From a tactical perspective, overseas assignments, diversity training, and external market education programmes will become more and more common for top leaders who plan on conducting business in new markets and with a diverse employee base. Ensure that your leaders have this global perspective.

2. Invest in your own knowledge
Leadership development professionals have the task of knowing much more than their own job in the organisation. They need to invest heavily in knowing the job and challenges of those whom they serve. Some suggest they need to understand the challenges, nuances, customers, and market dynamics better than those who they serve in order to be able to create effective developmental scenarios. As “development” is increasingly a “business” issue for top management, developmental professionals need to think and act in such terms and learn the vernacular. It is critical that they also understand their own limits, and augment the needs of the organisation with other internal and/or external resources. Leadership professionals should systematically think about their own growth and development as they do for the others in the organisation.

3. Leverage internal and external partners
Leadership development professionals need to understand and leverage the resources of many different constituents. These constitutes can be categorized into three key groups, all with unique needs and elements which they contribute to the collective efforts. Leadership development professionals run one of the most important and simultaneously challenging virtual organisations. They report and rely on many different groups, many of which are far outside their own domain. It is critical for them to have many deep relationships with others across the organisation. It is also important for developmental professionals to stay abreast of all the changes in the field and be aware of new providers, as the ultimate culmination of planning and execution efforts depend on how well the network is leveraged.

As the modern organisation is more and more dependent on people assets to perform, the stakes of corporate learning and development function are higher than ever before. At the same time the leadership of people as an increasingly important resource is becoming evident across regions, industries, and individual organisations, and leadership development’s strategic role is increasing beyond where it is today.

About The Study
Leadership Development in European Organizations was produced by Mannaz and The Execsight Institute of Executive Development. In the spring and summer of 2004, both organizations conducted in-person and telephone interviews with 51 European-based corporations, interviewing Heads of Management Training, Chief Learning Officers, and Vice Presidents of Executive Development. In addition to the primary research, a vast collection of books, articles, and industry presentations on the topic were included in the overall research process. In total, 51 organisations with HQs across 9 different countries were included: Belgium (2); Denmark (7); France (7); Germany (9); Luxemburg (1); Norway (1); Sweden (1); Switzerland (5); United Kingdom (18).

About the Authors

Inger Buus is Director of Mannaz London office. Mannaz is one of Europe’s largest leadership and management development organizations with offices in Copenhagen and London.
Scott Saslow is the Executive Director of The ExecSight Institute of Executive Development, a professional association of executive development practitioners, service providers, and academic members from throughout the world. To learn about The Institute of Executive Development, please visit: www.execsight.org.

Shortcut to this article:
http://www.mannaz.com/Mail.asp?MailID=62&TopicID=584