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VNU eMedia, Inc. Feb 2006| [Headnote] |
| Leadership development can be tricky business-but these companies lead the pack |
| Training employees how to use new software, provide a new service to customers or more promptly answer client requests can be a straightforward process. Give them a presentation on the basics via computer or classroom, practice the skills and assess through testing and performance monitoring. |
When it comes to more abstract proficiencies such as gaining effective leadership skills, however, the task becomes a little more complicated. Since mastering leadership lessons means much more than understanding a formula or specific procedure or improving a particular job function, can it be taught? Or is it just one of those things people naturally learn over time? For some companies, the answer lies in a combination of specialized learning conferences and ongoing programs.
Getting in on the sales floor
A primer on the workings of the sales floor is the way it begins for Helsingborg, Sweden-based home furnishings retailer IKEA, says learning and development facilitator Cathy Blair. The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., finds that even for senior new hires, store-level experience is the perfect place to start. "When a manager comes on and goes through that initial training, we require them to go through a management rotation, so they would work in every area of the store," Blair explains. "We can't have them so disconnected from what we're actually about. It's meeting the customers' needs and expectations, and we can't have policies and procedures made by people who aren't familiar with that." Besides the time managers spend in stores during the orientation process, those who work in IKEA offices also are required to work on the front lines periodically throughout the year.
Completed in conjunction with the work the new manager is starting to do for his or her own department, the new manager also is given an overview of store operations, and how it impacts his or her particular company division. In tandem with this in-store experience, managers are required to complete a self-paced, e-learning program called "Managing at IKEA."
Implemented five years ago when the company realized managers weren't getting into facilitator-led training programs in a timely manner, the online class is designed to encourage interaction with co-workers. One part of the program, for instance, might instruct the student to set up a meeting with a colleague, such as the loss-prevention manager, to learn more about what that person does, and what his department requires of those working within the student's department. "That way they get the most timely information on the topic, as well as start to forge relationships and meet the people they need to go to in the future," Blair says. In addition, new managers may be required to do research, such as looking up the company's benefits policy, and answer questions and review them with their boss or a member of human resources.
The company follows up the online tutorials with instructor-led training that offers a more in-depth view of each new concept introduced. "The nice thing is, we know everybody who comes to those programs has gone through the online training, so they have the same baseline knowledge, so we can start that program at a higher level instead of [with] the basics," Blair says.
Once managers are in place, and each is fully oriented to his or her new role at the company, IKEA presents them with a bi-annual, three-day program, "Leadership and Management in Practice," based on management consultant Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership workshop. The 12 to 16 participants in each session are led through a discussion of various leadership styles and how each is best used. They also are asked to establish their own goals for improvement, Blair says.
Another program offered to IKEA managers is "Next Generation Store Managers," a combination of self-managed and structured learning, she says. Designed, as the title suggests, for employees who are ready to step into leadership roles at stores, it is the participants of these classes who decide what they want to learn. This self-directed content is also informed by the "360-degree feedback" completed by each student's co-workers. Participants are asked to organize themselves into groups as small as three to research the kind of training they've decided they need. That might mean simply attaining reading material and discussing it, or it could mean finding an expert on a particular subject to consult with. In addition, participants are divided to consider challenges they might encounter as store managers such as how best to develop those they supervise and how to establish effective commercial strategies. Higher-level IKEA staffers also are invited to the class for presentations on how their leadership styles evolved. Four participants in last year's program have since been promoted, Blair says. The company has a goal of promoting from within 75 percent of the time, she explains.
The latest addition to the company's leadership program is called "Future Assistant Store Managers." Topics covered in these classes include business planning and goal achievement. Students are separated into smaller groups that each are assigned a specific store as a project for improvement. They meet with the store's steering team to formulate business plans, which, Blair says, some of the stores actually end up implementing, and to participate in simulations of making business decisions on a global scale, focusing on how the decisions of one store can reverberate throughout the company. Like the "Next Generation Store Mangers" program, this class also provides an opportunity for co-worker feedback, an essential part of leadership development. "They receive feedback on their leadership style, their communication and how they present themselves, so they get a lot of, in some cases, straightforward and critical information about how they are perceived by others they work with," Blair says. "Based on that, they are then able to take a look at, 'What do I need to work on?' 'What am I willing to work on with my leadership?' and then create goals from there."
Hand picked
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based microprocessor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices is highly selective in choosing the employees who participate in its leadership development program, says manager of global leadership development Frank Edwards.
"This isn't a go-online-and-enroll kind of event," he says of the company's annual, weeklong "Experienced Leader Academy" for which 45 to 50 managers are selected by their bosses to participate. "They're hand-selected. They're glad to be there, they know it's a rigorous nomination process, and they know it's a subtle way the company says they're top talent," Edwards stresses. One of the ways this message is sent is through the interaction participants have at the conference with the company's senior management, he says, explaining that the CEO and his direct reports are key presenters throughout the event. "It's led by the CEO, so if they don't know when they first come, they'll know by the end of the seven days they've had something that singles them out as being top talent, and that the company is very interested in not only retaining them, but more importantly, we want to develop them."
In addition to developing leadership skills, exposure to company executives encourages retention, Edwards says. "We have discovered that you're more likely to retain top talent if they have the opportunity to interact with key executives within the company," he says, pointing out that such exposure also can play the crucial role of weeding out those up-and-comers who might, on second thought, be better placed elsewhere. "We've also had a couple who were sure they weren't going to fit in," Edwards notes.
"They may have a real passionate view about the direction of a particular division, or our business should be taking, and it's probably not clear before they come in [to the conference] because they don't interact with them [top executives] often, but by the end of these seven days they're going to hear the strategic direction this company is taking for the next three to five years."
Leadership at the center
For Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, a medical system specializing in pediatric health, leadership development isn't a luxury but a necessity, says vice president and chief learning officer Larry Mohl. The rate of growth at the hospital is so great, cultivating from within seems key to long-term success. The hospital, which currently has 5,500 employees, is planning a 20 percent increase capacity in beds, Mohl says.
"That requires a lot more of every kind of function in the organization," he notes. "As we add services, it adds up to a demand for both the number of positions we need, and, of course, the skills we need in the organization."
When the hospital has a job opening at the manager-through-vice-president level, around 40 percent of the time it is able to promote from within, Mohl says, leaving 60 percent of such vacancies filled from without. "Our goal is to flip that ratio at the manager-and-above level," he says. Mohl estimates the hospital spends a little more than 4 percent of its payroll on workforce development.
Highlighting its effort to nurture talent already under its roof is the hospital's Children's Center for Leadership. The program includes four major components, Mohl explains, including an initial assessment of the employee's major strengths and weaknesses.
| [Photograph] |
| Training will be key when Children's Hospital of Atlanta grows bed capacity by 20 percent. |
"People get to understand much more specifically, both in terms of their competencies and personality characteristics, what's driving them, where they have a lot of strengths, where they have some blind spots that they need to be aware of and what they need to do to develop themselves," Mohl says.
Top talent, or those the hospital has labeled "high-potential high performers," go through a full day of assessment that includes a trial "Day in the Life of a Leader" at the next level of leadership in which employees, observed by industrial psychologists, participate in a business simulation requiring them to pretend they're managing a division of a major company.
Employees are then given feedback about their behavior and a personality inventory. "All that data is synthesized into the story of who you are now as a leader, both as you're walking around in your everyday life and how you are under stress," Mohl points out.
The second piece of the center's program, he says, is a series of five two-and-a-half-day workshops spread out over the course of about a year. The sessions focus on topics such as employees creating a vision for themselves and their department based on the feedback they received during the assessment.
Other topics touched on during this stage of the program include leading change, business acumen, formulating business strategy and building the capability to deliver on strategy.
The center's third component, known as "action-learning," divides participants into three teams of five that are asked to work on a project that is "of strategic importance to the organization so they can apply what they're learning, and the system can get the benefit of their work," Mohl says. "The goal is to have implemented projects using your top talent," he emphasizes.
The center's fourth phase features personal coaching in which both outsourced as well as internally based coaches work with employees on an ongoing basis. Information gathered through employees' assessments are combined with consultations with the employees themselves and their supervisors to create long-term goals for improvement.
Part of the job of coaches, each of whom is also a psychologist, is to isolate the areas of an employee's behavior that can be changed, and what cannot because it's simply part of his or her personality.
"Things like motivation aren't really coachable, but do I have the tools needed to engage in a difficult conversation is an absolutely coachable thing" he notes.
Since the same group of 15 attends all the workshops together, Mohl says, the eventual goal is for these employees to form a community of practice after the year is over, in which best practices and challenges that arise are periodically discussed.
| [Photograph] |
| IKEA offers a program called "Next Generation Store Managers" aimed at employees who are ready to step into leadership roles. |
| [Sidebar] |
| IKEA requires managers to go through a rotation so they work in every area of the store. "We can't have them disconnected from what we're about." |
| - Cathy Blair, learning and development facilitator for IKEA |
| [Sidebar] |
| Children's Healthcare of Atlanta spends about 4% of its payroll on workforce development. |
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