CorpU Weekly Digest: Leadership Development (2012-Apr-30)

Topics: Leadership

Here are this past week's headlines in leadership development: 

• (1) How can you connect your leadership development efforts to help promote effective attitudes about leading? Some thoughts and reflections, on an Inc article by Geoffrey James ;  
• (2) Executive training may not make a leader out of a follower, but it certainly can make a promising leader better. Is your leadership development effort helping? ; 
• (3) Helping leadership transitions through effective leadership development programs: a review of what is known about personality traits and their impact on perceptions of leadership ; 
• Books: Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders and Leverage Leadership ; 
• Webinars ; and
• Conferences

 How can you connect your leadership development efforts to help promote effective attitudes about leading? Some thoughts and reflections, on an Inc article by Geoffrey James.
According to an informal study of great leaders, by well-respected commenter Geoffrey James, there are 8 beliefs shared by great leaders: 

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
3. Management is service, not control.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

Many leadership development texts published over the last decade tend to agree with a good number of this list, so it ought to raise the question, how are you evaluating whether your leadership development program is creating the leadership culture your organization needs? CorpU's initial research of the companies that have placed high in Aon/RBL Group's 2011 Top Companies for Leaders suggests that efforts to measure the culture using a variety of tools and to connect leadership competency development thoughtfully  to address gaps and needs (not only with succession planning and growth needs, but also for longer-term company health). In a large portion of our polls, we found that it all began with a healthy conversation about what makes for extraordinary leaders and how that could be connected to competitive advantage. One article you may want to have ready if you can arrange that chat would be Geoffrey James' "8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses.".

 Executive training may not make a leader out of a follower, but it certainly can make a promising leader better. Is your leadership development effort helping? 
According to years of research by two of INSEAD's leading experts on leadership, much of what makes a good leader is not necessarily bred, but born. And leadership training capitalizes on that. Individual executive coaching takes an investment of time (6-12 months) and the desire to change, claims Jarrett. It is not "therapy," but it does focus on who you are and how to carry out your role effectively within the organization. The research suggests that, for the right candidate getting the right coaching approach, this investment does seem to have an impact. People do change their behavior and do have an impact on the organization. Simple self-assessment can be a delusional activity due to the desirability factor that makes for a distorted self-image. To receive feedback from others helps people to have a more accurate look at themselves — and the data is mixed about the mix of feedback sources, whether superiors, subordinates, friends, family members. Read the INSEAD article "Leadership today: An inward journey"

 Helping leadership transitions through effective leadership development programs: a review of what is known about personality traits and their impact on perceptions of leadership.
As many leadership development professionals have learned, the traits that serve an executive well in one leadership position often do not work well in another. Moving up the hierarchy into new roles or environments, executives may find they need to play up or rein in different facets of their personality. What were strengths can become weaknesses. Fortunately, as this extended article from MIT/Sloan Review outlines,  advances in personality research can provide executives with a much richer picture of their personality. Psychologists have identified countless traits that distinguish individuals from one another. Research in recent decades has converged toward five broad dimensions, each comprising a cluster of traits. These dimensions appear so robust that they have been dubbed the Big Five. 

1. Need for Stability: How Much Stress Is Too Much?
2. Extraversion: How Much Company Is Too Much?
3. Openness: How Much Newness Is Too Much?
4. Agreeableness: How Much Confrontation Is Too Much?
5. Conscientiousness: How Much Focus Is Too Much?

Figure 1: Chart from article identifying the big five personality traits (need for stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness) and how they can be perceived as positive and negative.

Read the MIT Sloan Review article, "How to become a Great Leader"

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 The Business of Learning: New Major Products, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships

No major news in mergers, acquisitions, or product releases.

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 Books To Read

The sinking public trust in contemporary institutions is a multifaceted phenomenon with political, sociological, economic, and psychological antecedents and consequences. Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders is the first volume to adopt the multidisciplinary approach required to understand this decline and to propose and assess remedies. Editors Roderick M. Kramer and Todd L. Pittinsky have assembled contributions from leading psychologists, sociologists, economists, and organizational theorists. In response to such blows to public confidence as the scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, numerous corporate accounting frauds, widespread retirement insecurity, the inadequacy of many school systems, and the failure of politicians in the United States and Europe to come to grips with the economic crisis, Restoring Trust offers a compelling and mind-opening mix of theory, examples, and practical prescription for the critical social problem of restoring public trust in organizations, institutions, and their leaders. Buy Now

In the book Leverage Leadership, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it. Aimed at all levels of school leadership, the book is for any principal, superintendent, or educator who wants to be a transformational leader. It also has a lot to say to those who run corporate training units as well. The book's companion DVD includes 30 video clips of top-tier leaders in action. These videos bring great schools to you, and support a deeper understanding of both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. There are also many helpful rubrics, extensive professional development tools, calendars, and templates. The book will be released on June 26, 2012. Buy Now

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 Webinars 

E-learning: Más soluciones, Menos costos, Más resultados
Date: Friday, May 11, 2012, 9:00am CT
Presenter: N/A Register now 

Measuring the Impact of Training, Performance and Turnover
Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 2:00 pm ET
Presenter: Jeff Higgins Register now

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 Conferences

First International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Education and Training
Date: May 7-10, 2012
Location: Tunisia Register now

1st Annual People Effectiveness @ Work Conference
Date: May 8, 2012
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa Register now

HR Summit 2012
Date: May 9-12, 2012 
Location: Singapore Register now

The Mining and Resources Accelerated Learning and Workforce Development Conference 2012
Date: May 15, 2012
Location: Australia Register now

Corporate University Xchange's Global Leadership Congress
Date:  May 15-17, 2012
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Register now 

Social Recruiting Strategies Conference
Date: May 22-25, 2012
Location: Chicago, IL, USA Register now

National Institute on the Assessment of Adult Learning
Date: June 6-8, 2012
Location: Atlantic City, NJ, USA Register now

2012 International Conference on Knowledge and Education Technology
Date: June 7-8, 2012
Location: Paris, France Register now

Leading Across Generations: Workforce Challenges and Opportunities
Date: June 13-15, 2012
Location: Berlin, Germany Register now

The Talent Management Summit
Date: June 14, 2012
Location: London, UK Register now

Gamification Summit
Date: June 19-21, 2012
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA Register now

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