The Process of Leadership
The Process of Leadership
The Process of Leadership
leadership is not a role, it's a process involving how an individual or a group influences others toward a particular goal or objective. Leadership development occurs across one's life span. Some people qualify that process, and what it means by adding words like inspiring leadership or directive leadership. I look at it as a social-influence process. Many leadership development programs don't come close to what life does to produce outstanding leaders. So one of the most important elements on leadership development is the focus to take on sustaining the development experience over an extended period of time, keeping in mind our impact points on performance. There are five essential steps include of the leadership process: Step 1: Leadership Orientation and Commitment Leadership orientation and commitment is normally a one to two-day orientation session in which key leaders from the organization learn about High Performance. In this session participants go through an organization simulation to experience the difference between traditional and High Performance work systems. As they learn and discuss principles of High Performance, they will learn about the transformation process, explore the level of trust within the organization, and identify change needs driving their organization. Step 2: Assessment of The Business and Organization The purpose of this step is to complete a comprehensive assessment of the organization, creating a common understanding of the current state of the business. Key leadership, with a cross-section of people from the organization, analyzes a business case study to learn how to use the Transformation Model as a framework for organization analysis. Then, applying the Transformation Model to their own organization, they systematically analyze seven key elements: current results; the business environment; the current strategy; current core processes, current structure; and coordination and development systems. Following their analysis, they summarize key issues to address and identify organization strengths, weaknesses, and alignment issues. Armed with comprehensive assessment data, they can develop a list of change initiatives for improving the organization and moving toward High Performance. The assessment process can be modularized into half-day sessions spread over a nine to ten week period, or it can be accomplished more quickly in a single three-day session. This step often surfaces significant problems within the organization, creating a sense of direction and momentum for needed changes. Every participant will come away from this dynamic session with a greater sense of responsibility, know-how, and enthusiasm for making the business succeed.
Step 3: Development of Strategy and Vision In step three, key leaders develop and/or adjust the business strategy and direction of the organization. During this process they review their strategy and vision based on current business realities, refocusing and redefining their strategy to fit marketplace and competitive demands. Specifically they will accomplish the following during the process: 1. Understand the demands of the current business environment; 2. Forecast the future business situation 3. Clarify a mission that motivates and inspires 4. Identify the principles by which people will conduct themselves 5. Define future customers and how they will deliver value to them 6. Identify core competencies needed to succeed in the long run 7. Create a long-term business focus and identify anchors that distinguish them from competitors 8. Set short-term performance goals 9. Identify performance initiatives and establish a master plan to implement the strategy The strategy development process often requires several in-depth exploration and discussion sessions which may be accomplished over a period of weeks or months, depending on the size, motivation, and complexity of the organization. Clearly, the process must be tailored to the individual needs of each organization. We are confident that senior leadership will emerge from the strategy development sessions being very clear about their strategy and united in their commitment to implement it throughout the organization. Step 4: Chartering The Change Process During this step, senior leadership determines the need for organization redesign to address organization weaknesses and alignment issues identified during assessment. They create a design charter, outlining the expected outcomes and the scope and parameters of the redesign process. They assign resources, establish time frames, and identify a design team to participate in and guide in-depth process analysis and redesign of the organization as necessary. They also determine the scope of the development process, identifying leadership training, employee orientation, team development, technical skills development, interpersonal skills development, and other projected training and development needs. These plans are factored in with strategic initiatives and change opportunities identified during strategy development and assessment to create an overall change plan. The charter is then shared with employees to communicate the need for change and explain how the transformation process will work throughout the organization. Step 5: Integrated Management of Business
Management of business performance, especially in todays complex and rapidly changing environment, can be extremely challenging. Consequently, management behavior can be shortterm and crisis-oriented. Managers and supervisors alike often react to demands which seem urgent, but may only be symptoms of deeper causes related to flawed processes or systems. A further problem is that work may be segmented into functional areas, promoting poor communication, turf battles, lack of problem ownership, and general inefficiency. In step five, Integrated Management of Business Performance, leaders develop a common plan and establish management processes to proactively manage the short and long-term performance of the business. One of the first tasks here is to help leaders begin to work as a team as they share responsibility for the overall management of the enterprise. During assessment, the organization identified key results areas and current performance in those areas. During strategy development, the leaders identified ideal key results areas, how they will measure them, and what their goals are. Armed with this data, the leadership team outlines a process for how they will monitor, track, and integrate performance throughout the organization on an ongoing basis, including common initiatives, clear expectations, and consistent performance metrics. This may lead them into discussion or readjustment of recognition, reward, or performance management systems as well.