Creating Talent Champions...

Greetings,

I had a very interesting conversation this past week with a Senior Vice President of Talent at a Fortune 500 company. The intent of the conversation was to get a good understanding of how their organization developed talent and integrated it into the overall strategy of the organization. We focused on leadership development specifically during our conversation, but it was obvious that this organization's culture had the concept of talent and development embedded in its DNA.

As I reflected on that conversation this weekend, it became apparent that this organization didn't get to this point overnight. It is unlikely that it started with Talent Champions, but over time has created them and ingrained it into their culture.

The key for organizations in this new talent war is to create Talent Champions. In this new war for talent it is not just a Human Resources (HR)/Human Capital Management (HCM) or a line responsibility. It is a shared responsibility

Why is this important? Corporate Leadership Council research titled "Creating Talent Champions" explains...

"While few business leaders are Talent Champions, most business leaders have the skills necessary to become Talent Champions. HR’s role is not to develop a new set of skills in business leaders but instead to help business leaders apply their existing business skills to talent management. When accomplished, HR can improve business unit revenue by as much as 14%."

Additionally, CLC indicates that the HR/HCM-Line partnership accounts for 68% of talent management program effectiveness.

It is not about creating talent management programs for the sake of having talent management programs. They need to be connected to business strategy and positioned where line managers can leverage the programs to successfully meet their business needs. In many organizations, the partnership piece is missing. To get to that partnership requires healthy HR/HCM engagement. Leading and educating line managers that also helps build a climate and culture that creates talent that flourishes.

Our organization's success depends on it.

Cheers,
Keith

J. Keith Dunbar is a Global Talent Management Leader...Creator of Talent, Leadership Capability, and Culture Change...He can be found connecting and sharing knowledge on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter: JKeithDunbar
LinkedIn: J. Keith Dunbar
Blog: DNA of Human Capital

The opinions or views expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Leadership Development in a Funk...

DDI recently released their Global Leadership Forecast 2011 - Time for a Leadership Revolution. The good news is that the study points to the continued importance of leadership in organizations and on a global scale. Leadership is recognized as driving employee engagement, organizational performance, and creativity and innovation.

"Today’s leaders make decisions in an increasingly unpredictable business environment. In a recent IBM study of 1,500 CEOs worldwide, more than 60 percent believed that their businesses today were more volatile, uncertain, and complex (IBM Global Business Services, 2010). It’s no wonder that the quality of leadership can make or break the sustainability of any organization. The difference between the impact that a top-performing leader and an average leader has on an organization is at least 50 percent, according to leaders participating in Global Leadership Forecast 2011. This degree of difference is staggering, considering the hundreds (or possibly thousands) of leaders employed at any given organization. In fact, this research demonstrates that organizations with the highest quality leaders were 13 times more likely to outperform their competition in key bottom-line metrics such as financial performance, quality of products and services, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. Specifically, when leaders reported their organization’s current leadership quality as poor, only 6 percent of them were in organizations that outperformed their competition. Compare that with those who rated their organization’s leadership quality as excellent—78 percent were in organizations that outperformed their competition in bottom-line metrics."

The bad news is that we continue to think we are not good at developing future leadership capability. Whether organization leaders or Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs), most feel the same when addressing the dichotomy between importance of leadership and leadership development and effectiveness of creating leaders. I consistently ask these two questions at speaking engagements and had the same opportunity a couple of weeks ago. The importance of leadership development graded at a 4.62, while the effectiveness to develop leaders graded at 2.21 for this group. These are similar numbers from IBM's 2010 Global CHRO Study.

So we are still in some kind of funk.

Elliott Masie and the Masie Center's Learning CONSORTIUM just concluded his first LeadershipDev conference in Las Vegas last week where he brought leadership development people together to discuss assumptions, rituals, investment decision making and new models for development. Why is this important? It is estimated that just in the United States we spend $14B on leadership development. That is a lot of money not to be getting it right. To help determine some answers the current University of Pennsylvania Chief Learning Officer Doctorate Program is conducting a series of quantitative and qualitative data collection to understand how leadership development investment priorities and content decisions are being made to better understand what is driving this perspective. The results of this study will be shared in a series of white papers from my fellow Doctoral candidates and myself.

My hypothesis at this point about the consistent gap in Importance and Effectiveness is this...We are are making assumptions because we don't really know whether we are effective at developing leaders. How you respond to the Effectiveness question is almost totally dependent on what you know...when you don't know and are unsure...uncertainty creeps in and your answer is less confident.

I discussed this in a blog post last year on the lack academic research linking leadership and organizational performance and by default leadership development titled "Leadership and Organizational Performance...Lack of Linkage." I recently revisited it in February with this Corporate Leadership Council research that I also wrote about titled "Now We Know...Why CHROs Don't Think They Are Effective at Leadership Development."

The age-old question has consistently been how do we measure learning investments. Typically we perceive it as too hard to do,,,I am here to tell you to get off your butt and just do it. I am not talking about Return on Investment, because quite frankly...I find that a huge waste of time. No one else has to prove ROI...why should we? Read my concept of measuring leadership capability here...

Studies indicate we have been in this funk for at least the last 5-10 years. Time to get out of it and meet the expectations that leaders have for our efforts.

Nuff Said!

Cheers,
Keith

J. Keith Dunbar is a Global Talent Management Leader...Creator of Talent, Leadership Capability, and Culture Change...He can be found connecting and sharing knowledge on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter: JKeithDunbar
LinkedIn: J. Keith Dunbar
Blog: DNA of Human Capital

The opinions or views expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Creative Leaders...Are We Biased Against Them?

Greetings,

Last year IBM's Global CEO Study titled "Capitalizing on Complexity" was released. It discussed the concept of creative leadership and CEO's perspective that it would be very important in the future to have creative leaders in the organization based upon an uncertain and complex future. I wrote about the implications of the study in this blog piece late last year...Are CEOs and CHROs Aligned on Leadership?

I personally think that the CEO and CHRO studies brought the important and salient points of what kind of leaders we need to develop in our organizations.  During the recent recession, this type of leader really had the spotlight as the economic environment required new ideas and ways of conducting business in constrained resource situations that many organizations found themselves.  Additionally, creating growth opportunities then and now require leaders with the creativity and ability to manage the innovation process.  In fact, I would say having this type of leader actually positioned to lead the organization in the future might be something that organizations may want and strive for...

Guess what...that assumption may be incorrect.

Academic research conducted by Jennifer S. Mueller (University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School), Jack A. Goncalo (Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations), and Dishan Kamdaris (Indian School of Business) is shedding light on what we really think about creative leaders.  The same ones that CEOs think they need for the future.  You can read the research here "Recognizing Creative Leadership-Can creative idea expression negatively relate to perceptions of leadership potential?" or a synopsis of it here at Knowledge@Wharton - "A Bias against 'Quirky'? Why Creative People Can Lose Out on Leadership Positions" 

But here is the gist and some highlights from the research...

Basically...we say we value creative leaders, but after three experiments that is not really the case.

"By integrating attributional theories of creativity and prototypical theories of leadership, we demonstrate that the expression of creative ideas can trigger impressions which, at least for leadership potential, are not automatically positive. Unless charismatic leadership is brought to mind or is chronically accessible, creativity might not necessarily signal leadership capability."

So if we don't also consider creative leaders as charismatic or transformational leaders in our organizations...our initial impressions are these people are not the kind of leadership potential we are looking for in the organization.

Additional findings included the following...

"Our findings also suggest that organizations may face a bias against selecting the most creative individuals as leaders in favor of selecting leaders who would preserve the status quo by sticking with feasible but relatively unoriginal solutions. This may explain why in their analysis of scores of leaders, IBM's Institute for Business Value found that many leaders expressed doubt or lack of confidence in their own ability to lead through times of complexity. Our results suggest that, if the dominant prototype of leadership favors useful, non-creative responses, then the senior leaders in the IBM study may have been promoted based on this prototypical perception of leadership and now find themselves in a world that has vastly changed, one that requires much more creative responses and thinking. Indeed, this bias in favor of selecting less creative leaders may partially explain why so many leaders fail and why so many groups resist change, as the leaders selected may simply lack the openness to recognize solutions that depart from what is already known."

So what are the implications to organizations, Human Capital Management (HCM) leaders and creative leaders themselves? For organizations...you might want to rethink your position on creative leaders and their overall potential to lead your organization...not just the creativity and innovation efforts. You also have to keep in mind that you want leaders with different strengths, so creativity is just one strength, but you should take a measured approach from a succession planning approach to look at the whole leader and not bias decisions on just one strength.

For HCM leaders, your job is to help organizational leadership identify these leaders in the organization and make sure your organizational leadership is not just asking questions, but asking the right questions about their contribution to the organization. Additionally, think about the creative leaders that are on your team...how do you think about them from a leadership potential perspective? This research may change your ideas about what these creative leaders bring to your team.

For creative leaders, you may not want to hang your hat just on your ability to be creative and innovative...particularly if you have aspirations to be the CEO one day. You have to sell the collective you and ensure that your bosses know all of your strengths. Think of yourself from the actor perspective...do you want to be typecast as a creative leader or a transactional leader?

Cheers,
Keith

J. Keith Dunbar is a Fearless Transformational Global Leader...Creator of Talent, Leadership Capability, and Culture Change...He can be found connecting and sharing knowledge on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter: JKeithDunbar
LinkedIn: J. Keith Dunbar
Blog: DNA of Human Capital

The opinions or views expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the Defense Intelligence Agency.