Leadership Development ~ Daria Williamson

If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go further, go together

African proverb

Leadership is one of the biggest drivers of organisational culture and effectiveness.

It can mean the difference between an engaged, happy, and productive team, and a disengaged, unhappy, and unproductive one.

Have you ever developed your leaders?

The most common pathway to leadership, especially in New Zealand organisations, is by being great at your job. You get promoted because of your skills and experience.

But technical expertise is no guarantee of leadership success. Doing the work, and leading people who do the work, are completely different skillsets.

If your organisation has promoted people to leadership roles based on their technical competence, they may not have had the chance to develop their leadership skills.

Does your organisation need leadership development?

Signs that your organisation could benefit from leadership development:

You’re a newly-formulated team, or team membership has changed significantly.
Your front-line staff are confused about what’s really important.
You know that your people aren’t yet achieving their potential.
Your organisation’s mission or strategy has changed, or needs to change.
Your leaders are busy doing the work, rather than leading their people.
Time, resources and effort are wasted on the wrong things.
Your customers are unhappy with the products or services they receive.
Individuals or teams are “stuck” and not moving forward.
Patterns of unhelpful behaviours go unaddressed.
Some of your best people are leaving the organisation.
Your leaders and managers lack confidence.
People are reactive rather than proactive.
There is a culture of blame and siloed thinking.
You just know that things could be so much better.

Benefits of leadership development

The benefits of leadership development are wide-reaching. Some of the key results my client see are:

Closer alignment of senior leaders
Increased staff engagement
Improved leadership effectiveness
Clear strategies and action plans
Reduced staff turnover
Improved morale
Better productivity
More teamwork
Enhanced loyalty
Happier customers
Improved service/product quality
Better communication
Enhannced innovation and creativity
Everyone focused on the right things
Proactive problem-solving
Increased collaboration

What's involved?

Unlike a recipe book, there’s no one right way to do leadership development. But there are some common threads. You’ll need to:

Invest time, money, and energy in upskilling your leaders.
Provide your people with regular, useful feedback (both affirming and constructive).
Create opportunities for your people to try new ways of leading.
Establish new cultural norms that support effective leadership practices.

A "typical" leadership development programme

I offer tailored leadership development programmes for individuals, teams, and organisations. These can be coaching-only, training-only, or a blended model of training and coaching.

While every client requires something a bit different, some of the most common elements of the programmes I deliver are:

Defining leadership
Organisational strategy
Values
Organisational culture
Communication
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Strengths
Feedback
Goal-setting
Courageous Conversations
Coaching
Motivation
Recognition
Conflict management
Persuasion and influence

Leadership development investment

Typical engagements range from a handful of workshops over several months, to multi-year programmes where your leaders continue to grow and develop as your organisation grows and changes.

Many organisations find the “sweet spot” lies in an intensive first year (5-6 full-day workshops over 12 months), and in following years, a 100-day cadence (i.e. 3 workshops each year, to launch the year, review and adjust, then celebrate and refocus).

Group and/or 1:1 coaching can be added into the programme to accelerate results and ensure your leaders are best-placed to hone their leadership skills and practice.

The design of the programme is based on your context (time, budget, capacity) and understanding where you want to get to, where you are today, and what will help you bridge the gap.

It’s a point of pride for me that I only recommend what I think is necessary for you and your context. You’re not going to be sold a grandiose ten-year plan if all you need is a handful of workshops or a couple of coaching sessions.

The investment formula, recommended by experts

As a general rule-of-thumb, learning and development experts recommend you invest the equivalent of at least 3% of a person’s annual remuneration in their training and development each year, to maintain their skills. If you want to grow and develop your people for the future, that investment figure should be around the 5-6% mark.

So for a 8-person leadership team on an average salary of $130,000, you should be investing $30-60k in the team’s training and development per year, depending on whether you want to maintain the status quo, or significantly grow your people’s capability.