At the end of last month’s blog post, “Building a Leadership Development Pipeline,” I promised to share the 10 differentiators that propelled our client DexKo’s leadership development program to success. This award-winning program has become an important contributor to DexKo’s ability to keep pace with business growth. Several characteristics of the program can be applied to leadership development programs that share the goal of being highly effective and successful.

Here is What We’ve Learned:

1. Integrate learning and development language and metrics into the language and metrics of the business. Never forget that your leadership development program exists to solve a business need. So when designing your program’s success metrics, use language that directly speaks to your business objectives. Whether that is to improve throughput, reduce defects, improve innovation, or retain customers, make sure your program is designed to intentionally solve a key business need.
2. Garner a sufficient budget—starting with a Cadillac per person model. As DexKo’s global director of talent, Chuck Jozwiak, confided to me, “Talent development leaders often make the mistake of not asking for what they need to do their jobs properly.” He went on to say, “Always shoot high to start, asking for a top-end budget to create robust programs that deliver desired results. You can always go down from there.” It’s important to set the expectation that the work requires a level of investment to do it right, no different from technology or R&D investments.
3. Involve senior leadership. Include senior leaders at both the strategic and program level—from program content input to attending workshops to tell their story to following up with program participants between sessions for coaching and to reinforce the learning. This attentions signals to your high-value participants that they are important. It also adds to the learning with real-life examples and stories of overcoming hardships and achieving success.
4. Create a true partnership with external expertise and resources. If you want to be strategic, stay out of the classroom. Choosing a partner that can run all aspects of your leadership development program not only saves you time and money in program management but provides an important consistency for your learners.
5. Show the business outcome. If you did #1 well, this will be easy. Report out the results of the program in ways that show value to the business. Push beyond participant evaluation and measurement of behavior change and show a hard dollar return. DexKo was able to show an 83 percent retention rate and 50 percent promotion rate of program participants. Next, the company identified and highlighted the hard dollar costs avoided by promoting someone from within the organization. The company determined that each promoted person returns 30 percent of their annual salary, which is partially used to fund future years of their leadership development program. Brilliant!
6. Brand the program. Naming and branding your leadership development program does more than just create clarity about what the program is and is not. Creating a logo and a comprehensive communication plan will help you create an elite brand that signals the importance of the program.
7. Remind the C suite that employees expect their company to provide quality professional development opportunities. Make sure your C-level executives understand that programs like this are not a “nice to have” but a requirement for attracting and retaining high-quality employees. Similar to a safe workplace or employee benefits, leadership development should be an ongoing standard offering.
8. Make your program so elite that it raises the employer brand for exceptional leadership behavior. Branding won’t be enough to make your program elite. Ensure that the participants you choose at the start of your program are elite employees who are up for the developmental challenge. Don’t allow managers to send their problem employees to a high-potential program, for example. Be clear about the programs goals and make sure the participants fit the criteria. Then execute a program where the participants become your best advertisement. In our experience, after a cohort or two of well-run programs, organizations don’t have any trouble filling classes with willing participants.
9. Nurture and encourage relationship and network building during your leadership development program. Truly effective leadership development programs are not just a string of disparate training classes. They are well-orchestrated learning experiences in multiple modalities. This includes peer learning, intentional time to network and work on projects inside and outside the classroom, and opportunities for participants to get to know each other personally. Study after study consistently shows that having a friend at work is an important retention factor. In the DexKo examples, we found plant managers halfway around the globe from each other partnering to solve technical and operational challenges because of the relationships they built in their leadership development cohort.
10. Put effort and intentionality into the participants’ learning experiences between training events. When experiences are as impactful as training, your program becomes very “sticky.” While solid leadership training models and classroom practice are the bedrock of a solid leadership development program, the work participants do between workshops is where exponential learning happens. Employ leadership coaching between sessions to enhance learning in personalized, one-on-one setting. Provide enrichment and practice activities between sessions that are reflected on at the start of the next workshop. These can include having that difficult conversation with a direct report, writing a change management plan, or some other action that takes learning from the classroom to the meeting room or shop floor.

Please Reach Out Anytime

I’d very much enjoy discussing your organization’s approach to leadership development and leadership coaching or other leadership pipeline-building strategies. I am happy to share my experience with you.