Leadership Development that Really Works

At ODI we’ve been concerned for some time about the effectiveness of New Zealand organisational leadership and we are not alone in that thought. We are also conscious of the variable quality of the response to that by the learning and development community.

At its simplest, sound organisational leadership is about influencing others in the organisation to act in ways that improve organisation results. Leadership’s purpose is resourcing and motivating people to respond in the ways that leaders want and the organisation needs. You can read more about our model that describes that here: Leadership Model

And we are in no doubt that leadership competency at all organisation levels is a learnable art. That is also a thought shared by the learning and development community.

Improving leadership competency seems simple:

  • Access new ideas, tools and methods, and
  • apply them at work as new leadership skills and behaviours
  • to improve organisation results.

However, many leadership training programes fail to achieve it. Why is that?

To achieve all three of these steps there needs to be:

  • clarity about which leadership skills and behaviours will improve organisation results (a framework of strategically aligned behaviours)
  • clarity about who needs to develop which skills and behaviours (an individual needs analysis and training plan)
  • application support at work (manager involvement, application opportunity, coaching, application tools)
  • measurement (of engagement, learning, application and improved results).

Leadership training programmes that do not incorporate all four of these elements will fail. Wise counsel suggests avoiding programmes that do not meet this test because they will not deliver leadership changes that improves organisation results. Without this improvement the organisation gets no value from its leadership training investment.

ODI’s Advanced Leaders Programme and First-time First-line Leaders Programme both pass muster for all four of these critical elements (and have proven to improve organisation results); both are scheduled for 2015 and both are now open for applications.

If you are serious about effective leadership development for you or your organisation, check us out. Kyran and Nicky are happy to hear from you on 0508 ODI ODI.