A Senior LeadersGuide Leader-Led Development

© 2007 Corporate Executive Board. All Rights Reserved.

Learning and Development Roundtable®

A Senior Leader’s Guide to Leader-Led DevelopmentUnderstanding Your Role in Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

PURPOSE OF THIS GUIDE

Few learning strategies rival the development senior leaders alone can offer. Your business expertise, extensive experience, and leadership credibility are unmatched resources for preparing the next generation of leaders. This guide shows you how to more effectively develop your direct reports by focusing on the right activities and establishing a solid foundation for coaching partnerships.

Recognizing the demands of your role, this guide does not contain an argument for increasing the amount of time you devote to developing your direct reports. Rather, it is a simple tool designed to demonstrate how you can better develop your direct reports without increasing your time investment. In fact, by focusing exclusively on the right activities, you can increase the performance of your direct reports by up to 27%.

QUESTIONS ADDRESSED

� Why should I develop my direct reports?

� Where should I focus my efforts?

� How do I become more effective?

KEY AUDIENCE

General ManagersHeads of Business UnitsHeads of Functional Areas


Note to Members

This project was researched and written to fulfi ll the research requests of several members of the Corporate Executive Board and as a result may not satisfy the information needs of all member companies. The Corporate Executive Board encourages members who have additional questions about this topic to contact the Board staff for further discussion. Descriptions or viewpoints contained herein regarding organizations profi led in this report do not necessarily refl ect the policies or viewpoints of those organizations.

Confi dentiality of Findings

This document has been prepared by the Corporate Executive Board for the exclusive use of its members. It contains valuable proprietary information belonging to the Corporate Executive Board, and each member should make it available only to those employees who require such access in order to learn from the material provided herein and who undertake not to disclose it to third parties. In the event that you are unwilling to assume this confi dentiality obligation, please return this document and all copies in your possession promptly to the Corporate Executive Board.

Legal Caveat

The Learning and Development Roundtable has worked to ensure the accuracy of the information it provides to its members. This report relies upon data obtained from many sources, however, and the Learning and Development Roundtable cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information or its analysis in all cases. Furthermore, the Learning and Development Roundtable is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. Its reports should not be construed as professional advice on any particular set of facts or circumstances. Members requiring such services are advised to consult an appropriate professional. Neither the Corporate Executive Board nor its programs are responsible for any claims or losses that may arise from a) any errors or omissions in their reports, whether caused by the Learning and Development Roundtable or its sources, or b) reliance upon any recommendation made by the Learning and Development Roundtable.

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TD172RQN1

Learning and Development Roundtable

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Creative Solutions Group

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© 2007 Corporate Executive Board. All Rights Reserved. A Senior Leader’s Guide to Leader-Led Development 3

Portfolio of Tools for You and Your Direct Reports

A Rising Leader’s Guide to Preparing for Future Leadership Roles

Helping Your Direct Manager Boost Your Performance and Realize Your Potential

Questions Addressed

1. How can I prepare for future leadership roles? 2. How can my direct manager help me prepare? 3. How can I proactively manage my coaching partnership?

Available Spring 2007

A Senior Leader’s Guide to Leader-Led Development

Understanding Your Role in Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

Questions Addressed

1. Why should I develop my direct reports? 2. Where should I focus my efforts? 3. How do I become more effective?

Available at www.ldr.executiveboard.com

Tools for Line Supervisors and Managers

Driving Results Through Employee Development

Understanding Your Role as a Manager

Available at www.ldr.executiveboard.com

www.merc.executiveboard.com

Tools for You, Tools for Your TeamThis guide is one component in a suite of tools designed for you and your direct reports to improve and accelerate individual performance. These resources share a common objective: to identify strategies for integrating development into daily work.


Foundations for Success

(Pages 18–20)

The Five Essential Roles

(Pages 10–15)

The Business Case

(Pages 6–8)

How do I become more effective?

Where should I focus my efforts?

Why should I develop my direct reports?

1 2 3

Road Map for the Guide


The Business Case: Good News About Leader-Led Development

The Link Between Effective People Development and Business Performance*

Senior Leaders Very Ineffective at Developing Other Leaders

Senior Leaders Very Effective at Developing Other Leaders

x

1.5x

= 50%

Percentage of Senior Leaders Who Exceeded

Their Financial Goals

* This key fi nding is based on the Roundtable’s 2006 Senior Leadership Survey, which surveyed more than 1,600 senior leaders and their direct reports in 14 organizations.

Source: Learning and Development Roundtable 2006 Senior Leadership Survey; Learning and Development Roundtable research.

Bench Builders Are Business BuildersSummary: As a senior leader, you know fi rsthand how to get results in your organization. The guidance and advice you have to offer your direct

reports is unparalleled. The good news is that developing your direct reports goes hand in hand with delivering business results. Senior leaders who are effective at developing their direct reports are 1.5 times more likely to exceed their fi nancial goals.

The very best developers of other leaders are also 1.5 times more likely to exceed their fi nancial goals.


The Business Case: One Reason for Developing Other Leaders—Performance Improvement

Senior Leaders Very Ineffective at Developing Other Leaders

100

127

Senior Leaders Very Effective at Developing Other Leaders

27% Performance Improvement

* For the purposes of illustration, direct report performance scores were indexed to a scale on which 100 points indicates performance of direct reports that report to senior leaders ineffective at developing other leaders.

Source: Learning and Development Roundtable 2006 Leader-Led Development Survey; Learning and Development Roundtable research.

The Impact of Leader-Led Development on Performance*Indexed

Additional Benefi ts

Why Leader-Led Development Matters to Your TeamSummary: Given your role as a senior leader, you recognize the powerful effect your guidance and advice have on developing the next generation

of leaders. But what you may not be aware of is the quantifi able, bottom-line impact of your efforts. By effectively developing your direct reports, you can boost their performance by as much as 27%, and the impact you have does not end there. Effectively developing your direct reports also increases their likelihood to stay with your organization, their engagement, and the effort they (and their teams) put into their jobs.

Effectively developing your direct reports can boost their performance by as much as 27%.

• 25% increase in direct reports’ intent to stay

• 25% increase in direct reports’ emotional commitment

• 18% increase in direct reports’ discretionary effort

• 16% increase in discretionary effort of direct reports’ teams


The Business Case: Another Reason for Developing Other Leaders—Your Leadership Legacy

Source: Dean Robert Joss, “It’s Not About You,” Stanford Business, August 2005; Igor Reichlin; “The Six P’s of PepsiCo’s Chief,” BusinessWeek, 10 January 2006; “Transcript: Edward Zander, Chairman and CEO of Motorola,” www.CNN.com, 2 October 2006; “Getting the Global View,” The Chief Executive, October 2004; Learning and Development Roundtable research.

“The day you become a leader, your job is to take people who are already great and make them unbelievable.”

Jack Welch Former CEO General Electric

“If you can’t build the people, if you can’t leave an organization stronger than you found it, with more capable people than you inherited, then I question whether you’re really adding value.”

Steven Reinemund Former CEO PepsiCo

“I think we [CEOs] are mentors, we are teachers, we are coaches, and that is what makes a great leader.”

Ed Zander CEO Motorola

“Leadership development is perhaps one of the most important duties that I have.”

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe CEO Nestlé

Why Leader-Led Development Matters to YouSummary: Effectively developing your direct reports also provides a personal payoff. While you benefi t from your team’s improved performance,

engagement, and retention, you also contribute to your leadership legacy. Business ideas and innovations may fade, but the impact you have on your people will withstand the test the time. Past and present CEOs from leading organizations share this belief and have made developing others an integral component of their executive mandates.




(Pages 18–20)


(Pages 10–15)

The Business Case

(Pages 6–8)




1 2 3


The Five Essential Roles: Focusing Your Efforts on the Right Activities


Performance Advisor

Offer Advice and Guidance

• Serve as a sounding board for diffi cult challenges

• Help direct reports understand unintended consequences

• Provide feedback on their greatest strengths

Relationship Broker

Connect Your Direct Reports to Other Key Leaders

• Enable learning from other leaders

• Build relationships between your direct reports and other key leaders

• Guide direct reports toward the most infl uential individuals

Experience Optimizer

Encourage Learning from

Work Experiences

• Provide opportunities to practice new skills

• Enable refl ection on learning assignments

• Help balance learning and work

Career Champion

Pave the Path to Senior

Leadership

• Ensure others see long-term potential

• Explain remaining steps to promotion

• Prepare for successful career moves

Experience Broker

Stretch and Challenge Your Direct Reports

Through Work Experiences

• Direct to career-advancing job assignments

• Create best sequence of work and assignments

• Place in situations to fi x failing projects and push their comfort zones

Focusing on the Five Essential RolesSummary: To make the most of your time, you should focus on performing fi ve essential roles. These roles capture the underlying activities that

have the greatest impact on your direct reports’ performance. You will quickly note that the roles you must play rely on your privileged insight and position as a senior leader. In other words, being an effective talent developer relies on your natural strengths, experiences, and abilities.

Five Essential Roles

What This Means for You

Activities You Can Try with Your Direct

Reports


Experience Broker

Activities You Can Try with Your Direct Reports Tips

• Direct to career-advancing job assignments• Create best sequence of work and assignments• Place in situations to fi x failing projects and push

their comfort zones

The Five Essential Roles: Stretch and Challenge Your Direct Reports Through Work Experiences


Role #1: Experience BrokerSummary: As a senior leader, you recognize the truth in the saying “experience is the best teacher.” One of your key responsibilities as an Experience

Broker is to connect your direct reports to the jobs and assignments that best accelerate their development. Whether these opportunities are plentiful or few, you should also “mine” their current jobs for developmental value. You will fi nd many opportunities to embed stretch and challenge into their daily activities.

• Ensure that direct reports have suffi cient opportunities to develop skills within their current jobs.

• Ensure that the projects you assign your direct reports build on one another and become increasingly complex over time.

• Allow direct reports to experience the entire “life cycle” of a project—pulling them away too soon prevents them from understanding the impact and implications of their decisions.

• Brainstorm with your direct reports ways to make their day-to-day tasks and activities more challenging in order to have a greater impact on business results.


Relationship Broker


• Enable learning from other leaders• Build relationships between your direct

reports and other key leaders• Guide direct reports toward the most

infl uential individuals

Role #2: Relationship BrokerSummary: Knowing the right people is critical to the success of any leader. As a Relationship Broker, you should connect your direct reports to

other infl uential leaders who can assist in their development. Your direct reports develop best when they are able to tap into and learn from a broader network. Equally important is ensuring that direct reports make the most out of their current relationships—helping them to both learn from and share their own knowledge and expertise with others.

The Five Essential Roles: Connect Your Direct Reports to Other Key Leaders


• Stress the importance of relationship building to your direct reports’ development.

• Connect your direct reports to other leaders who can help them with a specifi c development outcome.

• Share strategies and tactics for balancing “give and take” in professional partnerships.



• Serve as a sounding board for diffi cult challenges• Help direct reports understand unintended

consequences• Provide feedback on their greatest strengths

The Five Essential Roles: Offer Advice and Guidance


Role #3: Performance AdvisorSummary: The advice you have to offer your direct reports is critical to boosting their performance. Your direct reports respond best when you

listen, ask questions, and encourage them to make their own decisions. Although you can quickly solve their problems for them, you can make better use of your time by teaching your direct reports how to fi nd solutions on their own. At the same time, focus your advice and guidance on leveraging your direct reports’ strengths. While it is natural to focus on areas for improvement, giving them opportunities to further demonstrate their strengths dramatically boosts their performance.

Performance Advisor

• Create formal and informal opportunities for direct reports to approach you with questions (e.g., schedule a monthly check-in, invite a direct report to lunch).

• Don’t immediately “jump in” to solve your direct reports’ problems; it’s better to help your direct reports understand the pros and cons of their decisions.

• Recognize the strengths you want to reinforce in your direct reports and give specifi c examples of when they demonstrated them.


Experience Optimizer


• Provide opportunities to practice new skills

• Enable refl ection on learning assignments

• Help balance learning and work

The Five Essential Roles: Encourage Learning from Work Experiences


Role #4: Experience OptimizerSummary: Aside from connecting your direct reports to the “right” jobs and assignments, you also need to ensure they come out of those

experiences more capable than when they began. As an Experience Optimizer, you can drive home the value of experiences by encouraging them to refl ect on what they have learned and showing them how to apply it to work.

• Ensure that direct reports have clear expectations before a learning experience—ask them to share why they have been assigned certain tasks and activities and what they need to learn from them.

• Have direct reports identify what they learned; what they found easy, hard, or surprising; and what they would do differently after each key learning experience.

• Encourage your direct reports to teach others what they’ve learned from work experiences—this prompts them to refl ect and capture key lessons learned.


Don’t Shield Your Talent

We know letting go of your best talent is hard, but direct reports who feel “shielded” from job opportunities are up to 25% more likely to leave the organization entirely. It is far better to promote your best talent within the company than to risk losing them to competitors.

Career Champion


• Ensure others see long-term potential• Explain remaining steps to promotion• Prepare for successful career moves

The Five Essential Roles: Pave the Path to Senior Leadership


Role #5: Career ChampionSummary: The greatest impact you can have in developing your direct reports is setting them up for success in the long term. Accelerate their

ascent to senior leadership by advocating their performance and potential. You should also give your direct reports a realistic view of what they’ll need to accomplish in their fi nal steps to promotion.

• Have your direct reports give you “key talking points” about their performance record, career highlights, and other achievements.

• Create transparency on promotion “differentiators”—those behaviors and accomplishments that set other leaders apart.

• Hold your direct reports accountable for owning their careers and achievingtheir development goals.




(Pages 18–20)


(Pages 10–15)

The Business Case

(Pages 6–8)




1 2 3


Be a Role Model for Development

You can lead by example by demonstrating openness to coaching and feedback—your direct reports are more likely to take responsibility

or their own development if they know it matters to you.

Establish Healthy Relationships

When your direct reports perceive you as a credible leader who treats them with respect and fairness, they are far more likely to follow through on advice you give.

Summary: Focusing on the fi ve essential roles is the fi rst step to effectively developing your direct reports. The second step is to build a solid foundation for your development efforts by 1) establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with your direct reports and 2) demonstrating your own receptivity to development. While it may sound obvious, your direct reports are less likely to listen and follow through on your feedback and guidance if they do not view you as a credible leader who treats them with respect and fairness. They are also less likely to take their development seriously if you do not take your own development seriously.

Building a Solid Foundation

Foundations for Success: Boosting Your Effectiveness at Development


My IDP

What Matters Most

What Matters Less

• Top Management Support• Use of an Executive or Professional Coach• Company Culture• Financial Incentives for Developing Others

It may surprise you to know that when it comes to setting a solid foundation for developing other leaders, these factors are much less important than building healthy relationships and being a role model. With or without the infl uence of these factors, you can be successful in developing other leaders.


Summary: Your effectiveness at developing your direct reports depends in large part on the nature of your relationships with them. Treat them with respect and fairness, allow some fl exibility in work–life balance, and give them room to make and learn from their decisions. In sum, if they view you as a credible, visionary, and fair leader, they are more likely to respond to and follow through on your coaching.

Establish Healthy Relationships


Foundations for Success: Establish Healthy Relationships

42.9% 42.7%41.0%

35.8%

43.4%

32.1%

Inspir

ation

al Le

ader

ship

and V

ision

Credib

ility o

f Lea

dersh

ip St

yle

and S

kills

Credib

ility o

f Bus

iness

Manag

emen

t

Expe

rienc

e

Gives F

reed

om fo

r Oth

ers t

o

Make T

heir

Own D

ecisio

ns

Trea

ts Dire

ct Re

ports

with

Resp

ect a

nd Fa

irnes

s

Committ

ed to

Flex

ibility

in

Wor

k–Lif

e Bala

nce

TipsImpact on Effectiveness at Leader-Led Development*

* Each bar represents the maximum impact each driver contributes to effectiveness at leader-led development.

• Ensure that the advice you provide to your direct reports strongly links to your expertise and experience.

• Balance your efforts to establish credibility—your value as a senior leader rests on your general management abilities, not subject-matter expertise.

• Treat each direct report differently, but hold all of them to the same standards.


Summary: In addition to fostering healthy relationships with your direct reports, there is nothing more powerful than the example you set by showing your own receptivity to development. It is diffi cult to be effective at leader-led development if you do not show your commitment to development by being open to feedback, recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, and following though on development goals. Being a role model for development encourages your direct reports to adopt the same posture and commitment to their development.

Be a Role Model for Development


Foundations for Success: Be a Role Model for Development

Tips

44.9%

40.2%

35.8%

43.8%41.6% 41.8%

Ope

n to

New Id

eas

and S

ugge

stion

s

Active

ly Se

ek O

ut Fe

edba

ck

and C

ritici

sm

Admit N

eed f

or Im

prov

emen

t

Appro

acha

ble to

Infor

mal

Feed

back

Curtai

l Self

-Lim

iting B

ehav

iors

Follo

w Thr

ough

on

Develo

pmen

t Goa

ls

Impact on Effectiveness at Leader-Led Development*

* Each bar represents the maximum impact each driver contributes to effectiveness at leader-led development.

• Recognize that seniority does not necessarily equate to (continued) success.

• See the “good” behind feedback—the best senior leaders recognize that they can only improve and succeed by heeding the advice of others.

• Ask others to hold you accountable for making progress on your own development goals.

• Ask your direct reports to be role models in their commitment to development as well.


An Important Note for Learning and Development ExecutivesThe Learning and Development Roundtable, now entering its sixth membership year, strives to address the most urgent concerns of senior learning and development executives through a combination of best practice case studies, quantitative analysis, decision-support tools, and networking events. Based on the enthusiastic reception to our work on the impact of leader-led development on individual and organizational performance, members requested that the Roundtable develop a short summary of this analysis for broad distribution to senior leaders (e.g., general managers, heads of business units, and heads of functional areas). This guide represents our response to that request.

About the Learning and Development RoundtableThe Learning and Development Roundtable is one of the many membership programs under the Corporate Executive Board and was launched in 2001 to serve senior learning executives, corporate university leaders, and organizational development professionals around the world. The Roundtable supports its membership in activities as diverse as manager-led development, measurement, leadership development, experiential learning, and e-learning, with a rolling agenda of strategic research, training modules, tools, and structured forums for idea sharing and implementation support.

In ClosingAn Important Note for Senior Leaders

This guide is designed to help you increase your effectiveness at developing your direct reports. Given your role as a senior leader, you recognize that the success of your organization depends on the strength of your leadership talent. While your organization can engage in numerous strategies to select and develop its next generation of leaders, the coaching you alone provide has the most signifi cant impact on your direct reports’ performance.

Recognizing the demands of your role, this guide does not contain an argument for increasing the amount of time you devote to developing your direct reports. Rather, it is a simple tool designed to demonstrate how you can better develop your direct reports without increasing your time investment. In fact, by focusing exclusively on the development activities that have the greatest impact, you can increase the performance of your direct reports by up to 27%. As you become more effective at development, your direct reports are more likely to stay with and be more committed to the organization.

This guide is designed to focus your efforts and improve your effectiveness at developing your direct reports by answering the following questions:

1. Why should I develop my direct reports?

2. Where should I focus my efforts?

3. How do I become more effective?

23

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