Talent Management including succession planning, developing high potentials, and attracting and retaining top people is now a critical issue. During the financial crisis and economic downturn of the last few years organizations slowed or stopped leadership development. As executives now face a wave of retiring Baby Boomers and take a longer term view, “leadership bench strength” has become a choking constraint to organizational growth.
We’ve recently published a Zenger Folkman white paper on Global Leadership Development. The paper reports on one of our studies on the topic that looked at senior executives rated in the 90th percentile in the globe perspective. The factors that most differentiated these top leaders from their peers were strategic perspective, customer focus and understanding, spotting trends, engaged team, willingness to take risks, and deep knowledge and expertise.
Whether developing local or global leaders these skills align with Talent Management best practices in developing future leaders for more senior leadership roles. The steps for implementing a long-term global leadership development strategy also apply across the range of Talent Management approaches:
- Create a new mindset and awareness among the senior leadership team.
- Establish a new culture and context that will support the creation of global leaders.
- Identify the unique capabilities required of a global leader for your organization.
- Begin developing future global leaders early in their careers.
- Utilize the most proven development techniques.
- Devise ways to better identify global leadership potential.
A key factor that’s emerged in this and our previous research is the need to develop leaders much earlier in their careers. As outlined in this white paper, more than three-quarters of managers don’t get any formal leadership development in their first position. Many don’t get leadership training until they’ve been in leadership roles for over ten years.
Click here to download a complimentary copy of Global Leadership Development.
In our CLEMMER Group planning session last week we recognized just how vital Talent Management is becoming. We’re planning a series of webinars, executive briefings, and workshops to address this issue in the next six months. Watch this space for details and how you can participate.
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