1. Does
leadership quality play a significant part in the success of the organisation?
·
Absolutely
yes. Several years ago Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger and I wrote a book called
Results Based Leadership that looked at the connection between leadership
qualities (or competencies) and results. We believe that leaders should start
by identifying the needs of their stakeholders (customers, investors,
employees, the community, etc.) and then build their qualities so that they can
add value.
2. What
does research show and what is happening in practice?
·
We
have done research and written several books and articles on the connection
between leadership and investors (How Leaders Build Value and the Leadership
Capital Index), leadership and customers (Leadership Brand), leadership and
employees (HR from the outside in) and so on. In practice, most organisations
don’t start with their stakeholders they start with the leadership qualities
that they think they should improve.
3. How
do you measure the quality of leadership in an organisation? What are the
indicators we can track?
·
In
publicly traded companies, we look at Price to earnings ratio over a ten year
period of competitors in same industry who have faced same challenges during
the same time period. Two companies can have the same earnings but have very
different market values depending on their multiple e.g. company A and B both
have earnings of 10. Company A has Price to earnings of 10 and company B has
price to earnings of 15. Company A has market value of 100 (10 x 10) and
company B has market value of 150 (10 x 15). The logic is that company B has
higher levels of investor confidence in the future because of quality of
leadership.
·
In
non-publicly traded companies, I’d recommend that you do some interviews of internal
and external stakeholders, especially customers to get a view of how they
perceive the quality of your leaders.
4. Does
succession planning work? If so how do you make it work?
·
Succession
planning does work. Senior leaders of a company should form a team that reviews
succession on yearly basis. This process is typically supported by information
from HR. Many companies use the 9 grid which looks at performance and potential
i.e. is performance low, medium or high and is potential for future, more
senior roles, low, medium or high. Candidates are placed within this grid.
·
The
best companies for developing talent also utilise a concept called corporate
talent which means that a group of high potentials careers is owned not by
their current geography, business or function but by the company. In this way,
the best talent can be moved and can’t be held onto leaders in their current
area.
5. What
do you think is the role of HR in leadership development?
·
Line
managers should “own” leadership development and HR should support them to
develop leaders. We see six elements that HR can help to build a capability of
leadership: 1) build the business case for why we should invest; 2) clarify
what effective leaders should know, be and do (their qualities); 3) assess
leaders; 4) build the plan to invest in leaders through job assignment,
training and development and building a culture of leadership; 5) Measure the impact
of the investments in leadership (much easier if there is a business case; 6)
communicate with internal and external stakeholders about how what we are doing
to improve leaders will also improve our results.
6. Is
organisational culture real? If so how do you build a culture that supports the
business?
·
I
talked about outside in leadership that starts with customers and external
stakeholders. Same holds true for culture. A high performing culture exists
when employees resonate with customers at every touch point. To do this well,
need to clarify the customer value proposition and the firm brand identity (why
customers buy from us) and to make that real to customers and to employees.
This can be done by mapping every touch point and embedding the value proposition
at each touch.
7. How
important is coaching with regard to developing effective leaders?
·
I
believe that coaching is an essential component to developing leaders. There
are many kinds of coaches: coaches that can help me stay on track, coaches that
give me feedback on my interpersonal skills and help me improve them, coaches
that give me insight into my strategic priorities. These coaches can be
external or internal. But, having someone help to hold me accountable to what I
said I would do is a key to becoming an authentic leader who does what s/he
promises to do.
In
2000, Norm co-founded The RBL Group with Dave Ulrich. Norm has co-authored
eight books: Real-Time Strategy, Results-Based Leadership, How Leaders Build
Value, Change Champions Field Guide, Leadership Brand, Leadership Code, and
Leadership Sustainability. Harvard Business School Press published his latest
book, Agile Talent, coauthored with Jon Younger in February 2016. He has published more than a hundred articles
in leading journals and newspapers including Washington Post, Forbes, Harvard
Business Review and Financial Times and has contributed chapters and Forewords
to multiple books. Norm has been a frequent blogger on HBR Online where his
blog on Personal Leader Brand was highlighted as one of ten most read of 2010. Norm
was a faculty member in executive education at the University of Michigan in
the Ross School of Management between 2001 and 2003.