The Lindmand Group - Optimizing Performance and Potential




The Lindmand Group - Leadership Development

Most people want to grow and develop. Most people have aspirations to do well. Most people have dreams and goals they want to achieve. Development is a three-part harmony.

Assuming an individual leader has Career Ambition, to know what they want from a career and to actively work on it. They also need Learning Agility. A significant difference between successful leaders and those whose careers falter, is the ability to learn new behaviors faster. This ability is know as Learning Agility, emotional intelligence, or just plain street smarts and common sense.

Learning Agility allows us to wrest more meaning from our jobs, to make transitions to new situations more easily and to perform better in new surroundings, where we have had no prior experience. And finally we need experience. Experience finishes what nature starts. Research on the development of leadership reveals that successful leaders go through at least three major leaps or transitions in their careers. Each of these transitions has with it a contingent set of critical lessons that effective leaders have to master. At each level these transitions become more difficult to learn, and the failure rate of leaders increases. The secret of success, over time, is to learn the behaviors and master the skills necessary for success at each level. This means that leaders must stop using old behaviors, and continue to learn and master new ones, in a process of continuous learning.



EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT


1. The emphasis is on leading others through complex situations

2. Major activities should continue to provide:

  • A broadening of perspective

  • Feedback

  • Ways to learn things differently

  • Derailment awareness and prevention

3. Most energy should be spent:

  • Setting Priorities

  • Managing Systems

  • Forming strategies for the present and the future

  • Activities should emphasize developing others

  • Key leadership skills are flexibility and resourcefulness


4. Activities should emphasize developing others

5. Key leadership skills are flexibility and resourcefulness



MIDDLE CAREER DEVELOPMENT (Managers & Directors)


1. Major activities should continue to provide:

  • A broadening perspective by involving strategic issues

  • Significantly different work (forcing the manager to learn something different)

  • Stress

  • The manager's involvement with the what but not try to do everything themselves

2. Most energy should be spent helping managers develop textured management skills. Assignments should include:

  • Line to staff, staff to line moves

  • Assignments as the leader in a fix-it or start-up

  • An assignment which involves a major leap in scope


3. Major activities should include:

  • 360 degree feedback

  • Learning from transitions

  • Derailment awareness and prevention

  • Development of an individual learning plan

4. Most energy should be spent helping leaders become non-expert leaders of expert subordinates. Critical behavior which must be learned:

  • Joint determination of problems

  • Basic persuasion skills

  • Being a quick study (Learning on the fly)

  • How to get decisions implemented

  • How to delegate

5. A supportive boss is critical



INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS


1. The primary focus at this level is to help people understand two basic themes:

  • Most people don't get up in the morning saying, I can hardly wait to get to work to irritate everyone around me.

  • Nor do they check their brains at the door when they come to work.

2. Most energy should be spent aligning individual behavior with the tactical and strategic focus of the team, unit and organization

3. Activities should include:

  • Skills training

  • Performance management and appraisal

  • Development of an individual learning improvement plan