Introduction
In Part One, we explored the change process and the rationale behind our tech-enabled approach to leadership development. Next, we'll guide you through best practices for navigating leadership capabilities. Reviewing this article gives you a head start when it comes time to dive into the software and tackle the detailed setup content in our Admin Orientation Guides.
Written Walkthrough
Our software is designed for leader development, starting with leadership capabilities—behaviors, competencies, or mindsets aligned with leadership growth. Examples include Strategic Thinking, Setting Vision and Direction, and Developing Others. Using a defined set of capabilities is key for measuring impact and ensuring that coaching and mentoring engagements are centered around leader development. You can use the Sounding Board capabilities that are available 'out of the box' or integrate your own framework. This also personalizes the software, creating continuity between your organization's priorities and the user experience within our platform.
Early alignment on these capabilities is crucial, as they are embedded throughout our software and provide a framework for impactful leadership development.
Best Practices
To help you get started, here are some of our Strategic Planning Best Practices for navigating leadership capabilities:
- Involve Key Stakeholders Early: Schedule a kickoff meeting with key stakeholders to discuss the importance of a leadership capability framework. Use this meeting to gather input and align on which framework to adopt.
- Choose a Leadership Capability Framework: Review available frameworks and select the one that best fits your organization’s desired outcomes. Consider how the chosen framework aligns with your broader leader development strategy and how it will help you measure leadership growth.
- Align Capabilities with Program Outcomes: Start with your desired program outcomes and identify the key leadership capabilities to drive those outcomes. Assess how these capabilities align with your organization’s overall leadership development strategy.
- Align Capabilities by Leadership Level: Identify the various leadership levels in your organization and determine the leadership capabilities you want to focus on and measure at each leader level.
- Configure Capabilities at the Company Level: Once in the software, navigate to the company leadership capabilities section and add the chosen capabilities to the company leadership capabilities section. By default, we’ve added the Sounding Board Leadership Capabilities.
For more details on leadership capabilities and orienting yourself to the software, check out our Coaching Admin Orientation and Quick Start Guide and Mentoring Admin Orientation and Quick Start Guide.
Reflect
- What additional steps do you need to take to get organized around leadership capabilities?
- Who must be involved in decision-making to ensure alignment on the leadership capability framework and its integration with your broader leader development goals?
- How does your chosen leadership capability framework align with your organization’s overall strategy for leader development and the desired outcomes?
- What questions do you still have? What might be helpful to talk through? *Please follow up with your customer team
As you work through leadership capabilities, keep in mind that getting aligned early and having a clear plan will save you time. Whether you use the Sounding Board capabilities or your own framework, what really matters is using a framework to measure impact and ensure that coaching and mentoring engagements are centered around leader development.
We hope this gave you a clearer idea of how to navigate leadership capabilities and helped you think about how to approach the strategic planning needed for a smooth rollout.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to your customer team.
Move to Part Three: Navigating the Building Blocks: Evaluation Methods (Surveys)