Leadership and Change Management

Chapter 4 :The Making of a Leader

Making of a leader

Learning from experience

Developing next generation leaders

Context-specific
Level-specific
Use of role models
Dramatic
Learning value
Storytelling in practice

Tying leadership development to organization goals

Consciousness
Future orientation Execution
Integration
Evaluation of development efforts

Chapter Summary

Great leaders demonstrate one important ability – “Adaptive capacity”. This is the ability to overcome adversity and emerge stronger from the experience. This ability can be explained in terms of two qualities. The first is the ability to grasp context. This is the ability to weigh different factors that influence the situation; to understand how another person will interpret a gesture; and to communicate perspectives on the situation.

The second is hardiness - perseverance and toughness. Hardiness helps people to overcome devastating circumstances. The combination of the ability to grasp context and hardiness ensures that a leader not only survives, but also learns and emerges stronger and committed from adverse situations. Any method aimed at building next generation leadership should take two aspects into consideration.

First: Learning is most effective when it occurs where it is going to be practiced. Only then can it deliver real and immediate value. Second: Leadership lessons are best received when they come from trusted and respected leaders in the organization. Storytelling takes these two aspects into consideration. Storytelling by senior executives in the organization, places potential leaders in the context, and ensures that they generate impressive results when they replace current generation leaders.

‘Best practice’ organizations tie their leadership development programs with their business strategies. According to Robert Fulmer, CEOs in these organizations support leadership development programs not out of love for knowledge or education, but because such programs help in aligning functional areas with corporate strategy.

The researchers are of the view that strategic vision alone is not enough to bring about change or link leadership development to company goals. An organization has to take five critical steps to achieve this: consciousness, future orientation, execution, integration and evaluation of development efforts.

Next Chapter>>