4: Creating a Leadership Development Framework

Heidi Kirby  0:27  
Hello friends and welcome to the BLOC, the building learning, and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Kirby. On this episode I'm going solo to summarize and provide insight on a blog post I recently wrote for the Verasana website. This blog post is about how to create a leadership development framework for your organization. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about. I've worked on similar leadership development frameworks during my career and my research interests are about leadership competencies used by instructional designers in practice. I hope this will give you some ideas on how to get started with your own leadership development program. I'll include a link to the blog post on the episode summary notes so you can follow along. Enjoy this episode after a brief word from our sponsor Verasana. 

Verasana Narrator  1:27  
Your business needs a better way to train. The better that your team needs is training that leads to performance. Verasana is interactive and repeatable, so your employees can return to lessons as many times as they need to. And we optimize the training, so they and you can review their progress. The power of mobile makes it possible. Our team has decades of experience and expertise. We do it because we've been where you are. Verasana - the better way to learn. 

Heidi Kirby  1:56  
Did you know that according to a 2019 Deloitte survey, only 6% of employees feel that their company is excellent at enabling internal mobility. Internal mobility is how we help employees move from role to role within an organization. 36% of employees felt that their company was inadequate at helping internal employees change roles. Respondents said the number one obstacle to internal mobility is a lack of processes to identify and move employees.

So how do we solve this problem. Well, creating a leadership development framework and deploying a solid leadership development program can help employees see that clear career path forward. It can create a more well trained workforce and can help to align performance with organizational goals. However, not all companies have leadership development experts. So how do you create a leadership development framework when you don't have any experience? Today we're going to talk about a framework that can allow a small group of internal stakeholders to create a successful foundation for a leadership development program. 

So, we start a great leadership development framework with your company's core values. The core values are the fundamental beliefs that drive your organization. You can have a few, or you could have a lot, but these are going to provide insight to the most desired competencies of your workforce and to the culture of your organization. For example, Microsoft only has three core values, respect, integrity, and accountability. They keep it short and sweet, but their values, align with their mission and everything they do.

Gitlab, on the other hand, has six core values. Collaboration; results; efficiency; diversity, inclusion, and belonging; iteration; and transparency. Together, these intentionally spell out the word credit. Gitlab even has subvalues that help to define those core values for their employees. So whether you have three whether you have six, whether you have 16... your core values should align with your company's mission, an organization's goals. This is why starting a leadership development framework with the core values, then will align that leadership development program to everything else you do as an organization.

Once you've identified those core values, then you're going to create a list of what we call key behaviors. Key behaviors are the duties and the responsibilities and the expectations that you have for all employees at a certain level of the organization. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to create a set of key behaviors, for each core value for each level of leadership throughout the organization. 

Now what do I mean by level of leadership? Well, depending on your organizational structure, you might have different levels of leadership right, so you'll probably have individual contributors, you might have managers or supervisors who just supervise a team of individual contributors, you might have director levels who manage multiple teams and multiple other managers. And then you're going to have some sort of executive level, or C-suite. So, the idea is to have between 12 and 15 total key behaviors, no matter how many core values you have for each level of leadership.

You might be saying, well, this IT person who is an individual contributor should not have the same key behaviors as this supply chain warehouse person. They work in completely different fields - they have completely different day to day responsibilities. Key behaviors are not to be confused with the job role and responsibilities. These are expected competencies that you hold for everyone in the organization. So for instance, a key behavior might be to be able to prioritize tasks successfully. Good time management skills. That's something that both the IT person, and the supply chain warehouse person should be able to do.

Now, the expectations will vary depending on the level of leadership. The expectations for a director level or vice president, are going to be a little bit different than the expectations for an individual contributor, even if they're in the same department.

So that's why we want to have separate key behaviors for each level of leadership that are able to be connected back to your core values on the Verasana website, on the corresponding blog post to this podcast, we have a great resource from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln that gives you examples of different key behaviors for different competencies. 

So we talked a little bit about leadership levels already but just remember that depending on your organizational structure, you'll want to make sure that you address all levels of leadership. This doesn't just include leading people. So, you might even have a separate set of key behaviors for someone who leads programs. They may not lead individuals, but their title might include the word manager, and they're responsible for managing a function or a program. 

So, once you've established key levels for each level of leadership within your company, and you've tied each of those key behaviors to core values, now it's time to find the learning materials to develop these behaviors. If you can find material that overlaps and covers two key behaviors, three key behaviors... even better. Don't forget the vast array and variety of learning materials that are out there. There are videos... courses - and when I say courses I mean, you can do in-person courses, e-learning courses, mobile learning courses, microlearning courses, gamified courses, the list goes on, right? Books - you can have people read short books, or a chapter in a book.

You can provide links to podcasts. You can sign employees up for conferences and specific conference sessions that apply to those key behaviors. You can have them attend workshops. You can have your employees participate in associations that may highlight or specialize in some of the key behaviors you've identified. You can have employees complete self-assessments to reflect on their own key behaviors and to see where they have an opportunity to improve. You can also use case studies and just provide examples of what this looks like in practice. And there are so many other learning materials and resources. Do not let this be the end-all, be-all list for you. I just wanted to get the wheels turning and give you some ideas. 

Once you're finished doing all these, you should really think about your leadership development program as a whole. It should be the three "As". It should be achievable. Your employees should be able to reach the goals of the program without difficulty, considering their work schedule and responsibilities. You don't want a bunch of employees working after hours just to try and complete a leadership development program. It should be folded into their other responsibilities, and they should be given enough time to focus on the key behaviors that you've identified and highlighted.

It should be available. People should be able to access the material when and where they need it, regardless of the device they use. So, if you have people working remotely, they need to be able to access the material from their laptops, whether that's requiring a VPN or an intranet. You should provide your employees uninhibited access to these learning materials so that they can complete the leadership development program. If they have a tablet or phone that is provided by the company, or you have a mobile-use policy for your company, they should be able to access the material through those devices as well. They also should not have to pay out of their own pocket for any of the materials that you're requiring. I think that kind of goes without saying, but is always a good reminder. They should not have to pay. They shouldn't have to pay for parking to attend a workshop. They shouldn't have to pay for their membership to an association. These resources should be readily available to your employees. 

They should also be appropriate. The learning materials that you suggest - and this is where you can get some variance, right? So, learning materials for your IT person should align with their job description. They should align with the organization's goals and culture. There shouldn't be anything in these materials that would make an employee pause and say, "Wait, that doesn't fit with what our culture promotes." So, it's important to vet these learning materials as well to make sure that they're appropriate to make sure that they are speaking the message that you want others to hear. 

One more quick reminder. You don't want to go this alone. You don't want to be the only person creating a leadership development framework in your organization, even if it's just one other person, you need another set of eyes on this. And in fact, a small group of people from those different leadership levels throughout your organization is probably going to be your best bet. You want to be careful you don't get too many cooks in the kitchen. This is not going to be designed by committee, but it's also not going to be you on an island creating a framework. You need a solid group of maybe five to 10 people within your organization, who are not only going to help you develop a successful framework, they're also going to be those change champions - those inside connections who are really going to help support and promote a leadership development program within your organization.

Thanks again for joining me on the BLOC. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai