Only 6% of employees feel that their company is excellent at enabling internal mobility (helping employees move from role to role within the organization), according to a 2019 Deloitte survey. 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.
Creating a leadership development framework and deploying a solid leadership development program can help employees see a clear career path forward. It can create a more well-trained workforce and can help to align individual performance to organizational goals. However, not all companies have leadership development experts. How can you create a leadership development framework with no experience?
Let's talk about a framework that can allow a small group of company stakeholders to create a successful leadership development program.
Core Values
Core values are the beliefs that drive your organization. They can be few or many, but they provide insight to the most desired competencies of the workforce and to the culture of the organization.
For example:
Microsoft has three core values: respect, integrity, and accountability. They keep it short and sweet, but their values align with their mission.
Gitlab has six core values: collaboration; results; efficiency; diversity, inclusion, and belonging; iteration; and transparency. Together, these spell out CREDIT. Gitlab even has sub-values that help to define values for their employees.
Core values should align with your company's mission and organizational goals. This is why starting a leadership development framework with your core values aligns your leadership development program to everything you do.
Key Behaviors
Once you've identified your company's core values, you need to create a list of key behaviors that define each core value at each level of leadership throughout the organization. Key behaviors are the duties, responsibilities, and expectations you have for all employees at that level of the organization. The number of key behaviors will depend on your core values, but a manageable number is between 12 and 15 total key behaviors across the core values for one level of leadership.
Why do you need separate key behaviors for different levels of leadership? Because the vice president of the entire marketing department is going to have responsibilities that are very different than an individual contributor. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a great resource that includes examples of key behaviors for different core competencies.
Leadership Levels
Depending on your organizational structure, you may or may not have each of these levels of leadership.
Leading Yourself
You are an individual contributor at a company, but you are still responsible for meeting deadlines, managing projects, and pursuing a career development path.
Leading Your Team
You are a manager, team lead, or supervisor, in charge of a group of individual contributors.
Leading Your Program
You may not lead other individuals, but you might have a title that includes "manager." You are responsible for managing a function or a program within your organization.
Leading Your Leaders
You lead those who lead teams and programs and have multiple teams that report to you.
Leading Your Organization
You might also be known as a C-suite executive, but the organization's success is on your shoulders.
Learning Materials
Once you've established the key behaviors for every level of leadership within your company, you will want to find the learning materials to develop these behaviors. If you can find material that covers more than one behavior, even better!
Don't limit yourself! Learning materials can include:
- Videos
- Courses (in person, e-learning, or mobile learning)
- Books
- Podcasts
- Conferences
- Workshops
- Participation in associations
- Self-assessments
- Case studies
- and MORE!
Launching Leadership Development
Finally, a quality leadership develop program should be:
- Achievable - Your employee should be able to reach the goals of the program without difficulty, considering their work schedule and responsibilities.
- Available - People should be able to access the material when and where they need, regardless of the device they use.
- Appropriate - The learning materials should align with the employee's job description and should align with the organizational goals and culture.
Don't forget that Verasana helps to make your leadership development program achievable, available, and appropriate. We help to design your training materials for mobile so that your employees can learn from anywhere! We work with you to help you choose relevant learning materials, and we give your leaders the ability to quickly and easily see their team's progress, so you can ensure your leadership development program is a success!