Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, teaches up and coming leaders at the company’s famed management development center. In Fast Company’s, April 2004 issue, Immelt outlines his Top 10 Leadership Tips. Although all ten tips are worth reading, my favorite is tip #6, “Stay True to Your Own Style.”
Immelt says, "Leadership is an intense journey into yourself. You can use your own style to get anything done. It is about being self-aware. Every morning I look in the mirror and say, “I could have done three things better yesterday."
Many executives are only somewhat satisfied with their performance as leaders. They frequently feel there is more they could do, if they only had time to think about it, to consistently deliver to their fullest potential. Employees back this up with numerous stories showing just how far an executive’s efforts have fallen short of meeting their expectations as well.
Many organizations over the last few years have taken on “Leadership Development” as a core initiative for building bench strength, succession planning, and developing top talent. As the dot.com era taught us, great products and great ideas do not ensure success in the market place, you have to know to build and lead an organization that it is sustainable over time.
However, the degree of success achieved with Leadership Development initiatives varies greatly among companies and is primarily dependent upon the following four factors:
Self-awareness and a willingness to learn new things about yourself. A willingness to say, “I don’t know” to question your behavior, actions, and reactions to events and people. The relentless pursuit of self-development and self-discovery. The continual search for new ways to increase your effectiveness and impact. And giving someone permission to be your mentor, teacher, or coach. Self-awareness is the first step to enhancing your own performance and raising the bar for your own leadership effectiveness and increasing your impact organizationally.
Senior leadership support. Senior management’s consistent commitment and support has an enormous impact on the development of individual leaders in an organization. They must commit to spending time with the individuals who are working to develop their leadership skills and give them feedback and coaching on what’s working and what isn’t. The leadership initiatives’ success also depends heavily on senior management’s willingness to publicly communicate their support of these activities, the process, results, and impact of the development work within the organization at staff meetings, all employee meetings and any other meetings where discussing leadership development will set a foundation and context for people asset management.
Continuous improvement. It’s not a one shot deal, it takes time and it’s an on-going process. We never stop looking for ways to improve our products or services. Why would we stop looking at ways to improve our effectiveness and impact? It is therefore important to have a long-term vision for continuing to improve the impact of our leaders and to measure results.
Measuring Results. Most companies have difficulty quantifying their leadership development initiative. It has been a hot topic of conversation for years among human resource professionals. Companies who are trying to measure these improvements in their employees have identified various contributing factors and linked them with the business results and individual levels of satisfaction. One example of this type of measurement would be answers to the following questions: “So what difference has the leadership development initiative made in your business? What percentage of the impact was related to the initiative? Can you assign a dollar amount to the answer to the previous question? Did it save you money or generate any money?” More work needs to be done in the industry to measure initiatives like leadership by assigning a dollar value to the results produced. This will increase the viability of the initiative to a wider audience, especially those who rely heavily on facts and figures to make decisions.
Leadership Coaching Newsletter is written and produced by Wendy Capland. To learn more about our leadership development programs call us at 978-692-4454 or email: wcapland@visionquestconsulting.com.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: wcapland@visionquestconsulting.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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