Speaker 1: Leadership development. You don't always notice when it's there, but you definitely notice when it's not there. Leadership development is the process of creating a structured plan to move leaders through a growth process as they stay with your organization. It's an amazing way to retain incredible talent by giving people new hurdles and new responsibilities. But it's also an amazing way to reflectively challenge and train your leaders inside an organization. Today we're going to break down a couple of the key elements of every leadership development program. We're going to talk about some organizations who have done leadership development really well. We're going to talk about why we recommend a leadership development plan for every organization that we work with at Management Consulted. I'm Jenny Rae. I'm a former Bain consultant, and now at Management Consulted, I work with former Bain, McKinsey, and BCG consultants to help organizations transform. One of the ways that we do that is to help to define training and a leadership development process that will retain amazing people and get results for your organization. So I'm going to break a few things down today that will make this really handy. First, I'm going to talk a little bit about internal consulting and leadership development programs and a few companies that have done it really well. Then I'm going to talk about what leadership development is exactly. After that, I'm going to talk about the five elements of a great leadership development program. And then finally, I'm going to talk about shaping a leadership development program because of its importance inside your organization. So first of all, what's an example of an organization that has done leadership development incredibly well? I'm going to pick on one today that we've worked with for years. That's GE or General Electric. General Electric has a leadership development program that involves rotations between usually four different divisions inside GE over a two-year period. So there are six-month rotations. They often involve an actual physical move to a new location. And it's working on different functional areas and different business segments inside the business. What this leadership development program does is give unparalleled training. It's a recruiting tool. It gets people to come to GE that otherwise might not be thrilled or excited about GE's overall business. And it builds in them the skills and the abilities to be immediately effective when they, after the two-year period, move into one of the organizations that they worked for. It also gives the organization the opportunity to see more talent in a working capacity than they would otherwise. They don't just have to hire people blind. They have a tryout over a six-month period. So it's good for the staff. It's good for recruiting. And it's good for the organization. So what is leadership development overall? GE demonstrates it. It's having a structure, a strategy, and a plan to have people who are high potential actually get rewarded for that potential with interesting assignments, with more responsibility, and with accelerated growth. There are five key pieces to every form of leadership development when it's done effectively inside an organization. Number one is applied learning. For example, taking a group case study and working trainees through it. This doesn't mean that they are learning only on the job. It means that they're learning by simulation or through practice. Deloitte is actually a very effective user of applied case studies in its training methodology. The second is one-on-one mentoring or coaching. When I was at Bain, I actually had an advisor and a mentor. The mentor was non-evaluative and the advisor was. Having both of those was incredibly dynamic because it enabled somebody to give me criticism and someone else to give me advice. And when we separated the two of those, it led to more growth for me personally. Number three, a leadership development program gives regular and extended exposure to more senior leaders in different functional areas. It moves people beyond the window of their current experience to think higher and to think wider. And giving that exposure and experience builds aspiration, encouragement, and also a tangible pathway to get from where they are to where they want to go. When I was at Columbia Business School, some of my favorite experiences were hearing from CEOs of firms that I would never work for in industries that I've never had interest in, but I still could gain insight, aspiration, and encouragement from their work and experience. And a great leadership development program will do that internally inside your organization. Number four, a leadership development program involves tangible inclusion and a cross-organizational initiative. What does that mean? It means taking somebody into a new learning experience outside of their own work. Now this could be something as basic as taking five managers from five divisions through a communication training. In that communication training, they're going to have to communicate and share about the work that they're doing, and that will provide information and cohesion across the organization. Or it could mean actually working on a tangible project like a supply chain problem-solving project across a cross-functional group. The reason that you do it inside a leadership development program is that you give people a micro-promotion, not a paid promotion, not a responsibility promotion that's permanent, but a project-based promotion where they're able to work on something high profile with other top performers inside the organization. The fifth piece of a leadership development program is both self and 360 degree assessments. That means that people that work above you, with you, and below you all are assessing your work. Having that reflective process in a very structured way drives leadership development inside an organization. It gives people a very clear sense of where they are, it leads to no surprises when it comes to bonus time, and it also ensures that someone has a really clear trajectory for how they need to get from where they are to where they want to go next. Having all five of these elements inside a leadership development program will help you build clarity, structure, and aspiration inside your organization. Now, why is leadership development important? Without it, you assume that people develop themselves. Organizations have proven over time that this doesn't happen. When people stop learning, they start leaving. And so having a leadership development plan and play in process builds succession planning, builds a sense of future, and also continues personal growth, which is one of the primary motivators in the workforce today. What they're looking for from a job is the ability to grow. Finally, how do you build a leadership development program if you don't have one? Well, we're super happy to help. At Management Consulted, we can help you review your current leadership development process, and we can help you build new tools, tips, and techniques into the process. But also, we can help you train inside that process. We can help create cross-functional experiences, work on case studies inside your organization, or help your managers and leaders build toward a future that they might not even know what that looks like today. We're so excited to partner with you. We have an amazing team standing by and ready. So if you've got questions about what we can do for your organization to help build leadership development, or if you just want to be a solo person who's pursuing leadership development on your own, please reach out to us, team, at managementconsulted.com. You can also find us on our website, managementconsulted.com, and you can definitely subscribe to this channel where we've got lots of other great information about how to become a more effective leader inside your organization. Thanks again for listening. We're so glad that you came.