Your Executive Leadership Development – Sink, Swim, or Set up for Success?
Executive leadership of any company has immense responsibility on their shoulders to steer the entire company. Executive leadership’s collective effectiveness determines the success or failure of the entire organization. In a company with 1000 plus employees, it is not unusual to see an executive leadership team (ELT) of 30 odd leaders. What are you doing to develop your executive leadership team development?..
The Executive Leadership Team
In most companies, the board of directors occupies the top level of the organization and often includes the company founders and independent directors. In addition, the Board of directors usually has an advisory role.
The highest-ranking executive leadership position in any organization is the CEO or the Chief Executive Officer. Sometimes the titles may be different – MD (Managing Director) or something else, but the function is similar. The people who directly report to the CEO constitute the C-suite.
A list of designations that are in the C-suite usually includes the CEO, the COO (Chief Operating Officer), the CFO (Chief Financial Officer), the CIO/CTO (Chief Information/Technology Officer, the CMO/CRO (Chief Marketing/Revenue Officer), the CPO (Chief Product Officer), the CXO (Chief Experience Officer), the CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), etc.
The next level of corporate rung consists of people who report to the C-suite. These titles often include designations like Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, and Vice Presidents of specific functional areas. The C-suite and the people who report to the C-suite make up the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) at any company.
A lot is riding on your Executive Leadership Team!
The executive leadership team, ELT, has the unenvious job of steering the organization in today’s VUCA (Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) business world.
A lot is riding on the ELT!
Executive leadership – business results expectations
Below are some of the many expectations from the ELT
- Defining the vision
- Crafting the strategy to achieve the vision
- Do a SWOT (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis
- Steer the company through PEST (political, economic, social, technological) changes
- Survive and thrive in the VUCA world
- Deliver profitable growth for all stakeholders
This is just the execution side.
Executive leadership team – people expectations
Here are some of the many expectations from ELT on the people side
- Communicate the direction down the line
- Attract, retain and engage the top talent
- Exhibit behaviors that are inclusive, respectful, supportive
- Inspiring and providing meaning and purpose in their work
- Listen to and act on employee’s inputs
- Hold everyone (including themselves) accountable to high standards of performance.
ELT is expected to keep up with the fast-changing and highly competitive business environment and meet the ever-increasing expectations of customers and employees.
Executive leadership development
I often ask the top leaders in organizations we consult for – How many people are on your ELT? For one of the clients, that number was 32. Then I ask, how many total employees are in the organization. For this client, the number of employees was over 1500. So 32 people are responsible for inspiring, motivate, hold accountable, and deliver results for all stakeholders through a total of 1500 employees. That sheds light on the ELT’s responsibilities.
Regardless of its size, the Executive Leadership Team is responsible for providing leadership to the entire organization. As a result, this ELT has more impact on how the organization performs than any other group. And hence it is critical to have executive leadership development programs and solutions that include training and coaching.
My next question is – So, what are you doing to develop your ELT? Often there is silence! Then they will reply that we sent some of the leaders to an executive leadership training program at a B-school! Sometimes that happened quite a few years ago. Others talk about the e-learning platforms and executive leadership training courses and solutions available to the leaders for their development. Then there is also executive leadership coaching – a one-on-one personal approach to help the leaders grow.
Most of the time, such sporadic and disjointed leadership training is a waste of time and money. However, it is also dangerous as it gives a false sense that the company has executive leadership development solutions in training, coaching, and e-learning.
Executive leadership training is NOT working!
An estimated $100 billion is spent worldwide on executive leadership development programs. Are they working? How do we know that executive leadership development programs are working (or not)? Here are some eye-opening numbers from two different surveys in 2016.
The first survey was by Mckinsey and included 52,000 leaders worldwide.
86 percent of leaders rated themselves as inspiring and good role models
What did the employees think of these leaders? The answer is in the 2nd survey!
A 2016 Gallup survey on employee engagement found that.
82 percent of employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring.
What a stark contrast! 86% of the leaders rated themselves as inspiring. Only 18% of their employees agreed, 82% clearly disagreed!
The same survey found that only 13 percent of the global workforce is engaged. In addition, 24 percent of the employees are actively disengaged. Similar numbers are reflected in Gallup’s annual employee engagement surveys, year after year.
CEO and C-suite tenures are shrinking. The traditional approach to leadership is outdated. There is a huge skill gap in the approach and style of leadership required for the rapidly changing business environment of the 21st century.
Executive leadership development – Is it a top priority?
Leadership effectiveness drives business performance. As the ELT provides leadership to the entire organization, it has more impact on its performance than any other initiative. Their development is critical. It may be the difference between surviving and thriving. It is essential for sustainable growth in the long term.
This requires the continuous leadership development of the ELT. Their development has to keep up with the rapid changes as growth and profitability are at stake. Executive leadership training is also essential for the sustainability and survival of the organization. Their collective leadership effectiveness determines the success or failure of the entire organization.
Executive leadership development is not an event, and it is a continuous process. And it starts with the top! The CEO, the C-suite, and then cascade down to the ELT.
Read: Developing leaders vs. leadership development
To quote Peter Drucker –
“You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.”
Good organizations don’t leave that to chance. They engage in systematic executive leadership training that involves the entire team. And it is a continuous process that lasts anywhere from 2-5 years. It doesn’t stop after there. The leadership development is cascaded down to the next level. The world never stops changing, and executive leadership development shouldn’t either. Progressive organizations continuously measure results. The CEO, C-suite, and the executive leadership team drive the entire process and lead by example.
The collective effectiveness of your ELT
Most leadership development focuses on developing individual leaders. Organizations rarely focus on the collective leadership effectiveness of their entire ELT. If you can capitalize and utilize the collective intelligence of your executive leadership, it is an enormous competitive advantage. Individual leadership development is necessary but not sufficient. Today, most work is done in complex, interdependent teams. The days of a single heroic leader are all but gone. Unfortunately, organizations still are unaware of measuring and developing the collective effectiveness of executive leadership through training and coaching.
Ineffective methods of executive leadership cascade down!
Here are some of the critical issues that plague the executive leadership
- Lack of transparency
- Politics and selfish behaviors
- Poor listening
- Lack of trust and collaboration
- Clear direction and commitment
- Lack of accountability
- Lack of courage to discuss tough issues
- Inability to admit and learn from mistakes
These factors reduce the collective effectiveness of the ELT. And more often than not, the collective executive leadership performs well below the average intelligence of the individual members. Hence, it is essential to measure executive leadership training and coaching effectiveness, focusing on their collective development.
To quote Peter Drucker again.
“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”
How effective is your executive leadership?
As part of the ELT, you cannot leverage and scale the organization until you develop the leaders. The best way to develop others is by being a role model. Going through the process yourself. Understanding how it works. And inspiring others with your behavior to become better leaders.
It is imperative that organizations simultaneously work on developing leaders individually and leadership development collectively, especially for the executive leadership through training and coaching.
Here are some questions to ponder to gauge the collective effectiveness of your SLT
- How effective is your ELT?
- How do you know that? (hint if you do not measure it, then you don’t really know!)
- How does it compare with a peer group?
- Is your ELT developing faster than the pace of change in the VUCA world?
- What behaviors are the ELT members role-modeling?
- What kind of organizational culture is it creating?
The level and consistency of the executive leadership’s collective effectiveness make the difference between an organization’s success and failure. Often organizations focus on individual leadership effectiveness. Individual effectiveness is necessary but not sufficient for outstanding business performance. The organization cannot perform at a level higher than the collective effectiveness of its executive leadership.
The problem with executive leadership development
When asked, leaders always agree that leadership effectiveness (both individual and collective) is a primary contributor to business performance and success. In surveys after surveys, the majority of CEOs consider leadership development as their top priority. And yet, leadership development is often relegated to the human resources department, which often struggles for attention and relevance amid competing priorities. To complicate matters further, most organizations that focus on leadership development focus on individual effectiveness and ignore the huge potential of collective leadership effectiveness.
Executive leadership Development – A huge and untapped competitive advantage
Collective leadership effectiveness and intelligence of ELT is a huge untapped potential in most organizations.
To quote Peter Senge –
“We usually dumb down when we come together. We act at the lowest common denominator. “
Most executive leadership teams’ collective intelligence and performance are well below the average intelligence and performance of the individual members.
In most ELTs, you can observe poor listening, lack of transparency, silo mentality, political caution, self-interest ahead of greater good, mistrust, withholding of opinions, lack of psychological safety, etc. —undermine the collective effectiveness. A
As a result, most leadership teams function collectively well below their members’ average intelligence. Yet, for today’s complex, global, and interdependent tasks, collective intelligence is required for breakthroughs. As a leader, you cannot scale the organization until you understand and perform your role in developing other leaders.
Achieve sustainable growth in the NEXT normal by leveraging Executive Leadership Development
The best executive leadership program
We help our clients develop leaders individually and collectively through executive leadership training, individual coaching, and team coaching.
We offer guaranteed and measurable results, or you do not pay!
• Stakeholder centered coaching programs
Our leadership and team coaching programs are stakeholder-centered. It means that the leader’s team members are involved at every step of the 12-15 month process. First, the team members share anonymous feedback on the leader’s strengths and improvement areas. Based on the feedback, the leader selects improvement areas that are specific and customized to the individual leader. Then the team members give their inputs and suggestions on how the leader can improve – month after month. The leader implements these suggestions during their day-to-day work with the team members. They also anonymously rate the leader’s improvement via three surveys during this 12-15 month process.
• Benefits cascade to the entire team
Watching the leader make all the efforts to improve eventually spills over and cascades down to the team members. The best way to lead is to lead by example. With this process, the leader leads by example, and the impact spills over to the team. The entire team gets better. And the transition from leader development to leadership development takes root.
• Start with executive leadership coaching
We also advise our clients to cover all the leaders in an entire executive leadership team and then cascade down throughout the company. For a relatively smaller organization, the entire company may go through the process in one shot. For a larger organization, it may take 3-5 years. But it is really impactful. And helps the organization to transition from leader development to leadership development. It also has a multiplier effect as many leaders and their teams are improving simultaneously.
• Less time and money than sending people to a short duration B school program
Our coaching program that lasts from 6-12 months costs less than sending the leader to an episodic, short-term program at a reputed B-school. It also takes much less time away from work. We come to the leader (in person or virtually) and spend approximately 1-2 hours per month during the 6-12 month process. The rest of the time, the leader applies the learnings at work with their team.
• Guaranteed results or you don’t pay
In fact, we guarantee measurable results. We offer a no-growth no-pay clause for our leadership interventions. It means that if the leader does not improve, you don’t have to pay us. Who decides if the leader has improved? It is through three anonymous assessments of the leader’s improvement by their own team members.
Stop wasting money on developing leaders and start implementing leadership development in your organization today! Let us help you with leadership development and a culture of leaders at all levels in your organization. Why should you trust us?
• We are the largest leadership coaching network in the world.
• In 2020, Global Guru ranked this program the number 1 coaching development program globally!
• It is 95% effective in a study of 84,000 leaders on 4 continents
• And best of all – we work on a no-growth no-pay guarantee
Read: Which is the best leadership development program?
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