Setting leaders up for success

Having the right leadership in place is more important than ever and the demands on our leaders are growing. How do you find the type of leadership you need to future proof your organisation? And how can you work to ensure a pipeline of these leaders to ensure long-term success? Below we discuss how leadership development initiatives can be key and how the talent review process can be a cornerstone to help provide leaders with the support they need.

Leaders in today’s dynamic and fast-paced business landscape are expected to traverse a myriad of complexity and duality. Technological disruptions, global market uncertainties, and a rapidly changing workforce demands an understanding of one’s industry, but also the agility to adapt to constant change. Often faced with paradoxes, instead of problems that come with one solution, leaders today have to navigate the best way forward to deal with opposing polarities that are ongoing and without straightforward solutions. Having the right leadership in place is more important than ever [1]. With trust in politicians, authorities and NGOs having dropped drastically in recent years, people instead place their hopes for the future and solutions to the larger societal problems in the hands of businesses and company leaders.

The right leadership

In the pursuit of identifying and promoting the right leadership for our clients, those exceptional leaders who thrive on modern-day challenges, we at Alumni have identified some fundamental traits in leaders that play a pivotal role in success. These are: humanity, agility, authenticity, and an unwavering drive for growth. The modern business leader must blend strategic vision with empathy, adaptability, and a commitment to values. They must have the ability to foster effective collaborations across their organisation, as success or failure today is less about the performance of a single individual and more about how people work together.

Finding future potential

Being able to assess and identify these essential traits, we can better predict a successful outcome. Using assessments can add value in development initiatives and can be a key in appraisal processes and talent reviews. Having a model and framework provides a common language around the type of leadership an organisation desires and can be the foundation on which to base development plans and track progress. Working with our clients in identifying and developing good leadership to future proof their organisations, we see that being able to identify potential leaders and prepare succession plans is becoming a strategic differentiator.

“In identifying and developing good leadership to future proof organisations, we see that being able to identify potential leaders and prepare succession plans is becoming a strategic differentiator. ”

The annual talent review process has long been a cornerstone of effective talent management within organisations. Traditionally, this process primarily focused on assessing past performance, offering a retrospective view of a leaders contributions. In today's dynamic and rapidly evolving business landscape, there is growing recognition of the need to not only evaluate historical achievements but also to identify and nurture future potential. Taking a structured approach to talent management and working with an appraisal process in a way that promotes development and continuous improvement can be key to achieving a long-term outcome that helps secure the good leadership that will set your organisation up for success.

Securing a successful outcome

Effective succession planning requires laser sharp objectivity because job performance is a theoretical construct, just like happiness, sincerity, or selfishness. We can at best recognise its indicators or manifestations, but to observe these accurately requires more formal processes, and reliable evaluation tools. It is not uncommon that succession plans are left to the gut instincts of company reporting managers, who do their best but can easily mistake performance for potential. They are also likely to promote leaders who resonate with their own personality, are sited close to headquarters and whose opinions they like. This type of personal bias restricts diversity, encourages groupthink, and can risk excluding those key traits defined by HR and executive management, to help safeguard and future proof the organisation.

“To make sure valuable potential does not go overlooked, working with more data-driven assessment frameworks will help remove bias, increase diversity and secure the type of future leadership needed.”

To make sure valuable potential does not go overlooked, working with more data-driven assessment frameworks will help remove bias, increase diversity and secure the type of future leadership needed. Establishing clear competency frameworks helps define the skills, behaviours, and attributes required for success in specific roles. It should also help guide reporting managers to identify those individuals with the potential to develop these competencies. Continuous dialogue is needed to help shape the desired behaviours within the organisation., to bring about change. Just as our business environment requires agility it also demands this type of continuous dialogue to make sure that everyone is aligned with organisational goals.

With increasing demands on company leaders this is a great time to help set them up for success by providing the support, training and professional development they need to be the sustainable leaders we look to help turn things around. Using appraisals or your talent review process is a great place to start.

Alumni

Alumni are experts in the field of Leadership Assessment and Development, and we understand how important succession planning is. We have used our years’ of experience to develop a proven, structured methodology that accurately measures the performance of your talent pipeline whist identifying their true potential. We are happy to help if you are looking to create a solid succession plan through the selection or development of sustainable leaders that will boost the success of your organisation into the future.

References

[1] https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer