By Judy Chartrand, Written Exclusively for TrainingIndustry.com, May 2010
How recently have you taken a serious look at your organization’s leadership? With the ongoing challenges of doing business in today’s economy, it benefits even the savviest of companies to ensure the management team is capable of successfully navigating the organization through ever-changing conditions and challenging turbulence.
Beyond bolstering the leadership skills of current management teams, forward-thinking organizations are also turning to the valuable training resources at the fingertips – current managers of course – to help develop the abilities of future leaders. And for good reason: With fewer potential leaders available from a smaller GenX pool and an unseasoned GenY, Baby Boomer retirement could leave many organizations facing a bit of a leadership gap with a new generation of leaders who are not yet ready to lead.
A recent leadership trends survey asked senior executive development pros about the strengths and weaknesses of tomorrow’s leaders. Respondents shared that they believe the next-gen leaders do possess many talents including a high integrity mindset, ability to deliver results and prioritize multiple demands, operational mastery and advanced technology skills. But respondents also identified several key competencies many emerging leaders lack. The top five are:
- Strategic thinking
- Leading change
- Ability to create a vision and engage others around it
- Ability to inspire
- Understand the total enterprise and how parts work together
Strategic and critical thinking skills directly impact an organization’s bottom line. Top-notch critical thinking skills enable employees to:
- Avoid miscalculations and costly errors in judgment
- Find cost savings that others don’t see
- Develop successful sales, IT, and operational strategies
- Make good decisions when time is short
In addition, understanding the total enterprise presents an interesting challenge that’s come to light in the past few years. In a survey of business leaders, 67% of respondents indicated that employees lacked the business acumen and requisite knowledge to effectively operate outside of their area of expertise.
Other findings from the survey include:
- 83% of respondents said their organizations were likely to require business skills training to support employee career-pathing.
- The perception that having an MBA serves as a differentiator among top performers in their organization was shared by 58.6% of respondents.
- Despite believing training would be needed, 81% of respondents did not currently measure management competencies through independent testing and continuing education.
It’s clear that the professional training landscape is changing. An MBA is not the differentiating factor that it once was. And while organizations value business skills training, only a small percentage actually uses it as a means to measure management competency.
Many professions have a qualifying exam to certify that professionals all meet a certain benchmark of skills and knowledge. To date, there hasn't been a similar test in the business world. New business certification credentials are now available to enable candidates to demonstrate proficiency in every key functional area of management. What better way to help your managers gain a better idea of how all the parts of your organization work together?
The good news for bolstering the effectiveness of your company’s management team is that there are opportunities now available to assist in enhancing current management’s skills as well as preparing the next generation of leaders. Competencies in critical thinking and business acumen are addressable through assessments, blended learning and interactive training. Accelerating the development of your organization’s emerging leaders could be what potentially sets your company apart from the competition.
Judy Chartrand is chief scientist for Pearson's TalentLens. The Pearson TalentLens group publishes scientific assessments (like 2009/2010 Trends in Executive Development) that are used globally to hire and develop the 21st century workforce. For more information on the research cited here, visit http://leadershipdevelopmenttrends.com.
