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Developing competent leaders

Published:Sunday | September 26, 2010 | 12:00 AM
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Yvonne King (third from left), acting vice-principal at the Porus High School in Manchester, seems fascinated by strategies presented by James Earl Davis, professor and chair in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia, in the United States, to assist boys in attaining academic success. Also paying keen attention is Dawn Sewell-Lawson (right), assistant programme manager of the Mutual Building Societies Foundation's Centres of Excellence project, and Natalie Thompson, an integrated science teacher at the Green Pond High School in St James. Professor Davis was the main presenter at a workshop organised by the Centres of Excellence project to address academic underperformance in boys. The workshop was held at Churches Teachers' College in Mandeville on March 17. - Contributed
Participants at a recently held leadership conference. From left: Sam McCook, senior pastor of Hope Fellowship Ministry, Everod Davis, coordinator of Maximum Impact, Juliet Henry of COK, and Sheree Martin, senior assistant general manager, group marketing and communications division, NCB. - Rudolph Brown/Photographer
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Paulette Dunn-Smith, Contributor

AT A recently held business development conference, I made a presentation on leadership and succession planning. I asked participants to indicate by a show of hands how many were from companies that had engaged in leadership and succession planning. Not surprisingly, none of the over 50 participants raised a hand. This is one area that individuals at the management level should be interested in, not only to ensure the continuity of their business, but to agree on and share the mission, vision, and strategic vision of the company at all levels in the organisation. This week, we look at developing leaders as one important strategy towards improving workforce productivity.

How would you describe the leaders in the workplace? Those who are involved in all the company activities? Those who plan and deliver on time all the time? Those who believe that they know and do everything right? Leaders are individuals who have the ability to develop a vision and a strategy, develop a broad-based support system for the company's mission and plans, champion the cause, communicate, and motivate staff. Some persons are born leaders, however, many leaders are created out of necessity, and in these circumstances, should undergo special leadership training.

Unfortunately, many firms are unable to develop leadership skills in potential leaders as they take a cookie-cutter approach to training, regardless of the desired outcome. They end up spending large amounts of money which eventually goes to waste as the individuals cannot apply what is learnt to their jobs. We, therefore, need to adopt a new approach to training by starting at the desired outcomes and working backwards to develop successful training programmes which will have a positive impact on the individual.

A one-size-fits-all approach has resulted in the transfer of learning to the workplace as being extremely low. Therefore, unless training is tailored to meet the needs of the identified individual, a lot of time and money will be wasted.

Persons who are identified and trained as leaders need a tailored training programme. Everybody starts from a different place when they are learning leadership skills. All have separate experiences, different values, different beliefs, and various opinions. People learn differently, they retain varying amounts of information, the rate of understanding differs in individuals, and their speed of learning and recall are also special to the individual. Given this lack of uniformity among people, similar training programmes will not develop competent leaders.

Behaviour change

Developing competent leaders requires a change in their behaviour. We alter our behaviour most effectively when we design our own plan for learning. The reason for this is that our plan for learning will take into account our own lives, experiences, interests, resources, and objectives. People who develop their own learning plan grow from their own starting point. In an ideal situation, people who aspire to leadership roles should be given the opportunity to discover what they need to develop. They should select from a list the competencies and techniques that will help them in their personal development training programme. A prepackaged, ready-made training package is inappropriate because a general approach is normally used, which makes it very difficult to apply in the workplace. In fact, the standard one-size-fits-all training programme has been described as the worst return on investment for training. But giving people the power to design their own learning plans overcomes many of the problems created by traditional training.

What, then, are the skills that a leader in the workplace should have that must be developed? Here are a few:

1. Leaders should have a deep understanding of the business. You can't fake it. People will know.

2. Leaders are required to have vision, a clear sense of where they want the business to go, and how they intend to get there.

3. Leaders are required to be honest, develop trust, inspire, and motivate others. In doing so, staff will work towards a common goal, achieving things they never thought possible.

4. Leaders should be continuously learning, and keeping up with trends and new ideas to remain current.

5. Leaders must be able to communicate effectively,

Keep sending in your comments and questions you wish to have answered. I look forward to hearing from you. Paulette Dunn-Smith is an international trainer and workforce development expert. She is the executive director, Dunn, Pierre, Barnett & Associates Ltd. & Chairman, Caribbean Career and Professional Development Institute. Contact her at pdunn@dpbglobal.com or www.dpbglobal.com.