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How to Create an Employee Development Program

Driving Talent Development to the bottom Line
By: Stephen Marshall, Principal of Marshall Leadership Consulting

What is Development? The term “Employee Development� can have very different meanings for organizations. It can run the gamut from team white water kayaking and seminar training to organization-wide succession planning and 360° feedback surveys.

At its best, development provides the individual employee the best opportunity to keep her/his current skills sharp and to prepare for future career opportunities. For the organization, development ensures a pipeline of candidates for current and future talent requirements.

Myths and other mistaken beliefs about talent development

• Myth: Development is a natural process that happens every day between employees and their supervisors.
• Fact: Employees consistently give their own managers failing marks in developing direct reports and others. Of the 67 leadership competencies Lominger International surveys among managers and executives across more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, “Developing Direct Reports and Othersâ€? consistently comes in dead last.

• Myth: Development means training
• Fact: Only 10% of development comes from training. 70% of development comes from on the job experience that includes some kind of “development heat.â€? Another 20% comes from mentors, coaches and supervisors. (The Leadership Machine, Lombardo and Eichinger).

• Myth: Talent development activities are primarily “feel goodâ€? activities to improve employee morale or when times are good but do not fall to the bottom line.
• Fact: There is strong evidence that high performance talent development activities such as behavioral event selection interviewing, performance management, Talking Talent® succession planning, and competency based individual development planning are tied to increases in productivity, employee engagement and increased profitability (Marshall, Seidman and Lenson, Building on Strengths, Lominger Leadership Development Conference 2005). Š
   

Creating Your Talent Development System: As the Cheshire cat said to Alice, “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will take you there.� Are you a business owner preparing for significant growth? Are their industry-wide changes that will require you to grow your in house talent to meet them? Is one of your “go to� employees nearing retirement or has just left for “a better opportunity?� Are you concerned that one of your direct reports is beginning to have problems with colleagues?

Driving bottom line results through talent development requires close alignment with your strategy. Connecting the competencies required to drive your strategy can take your organization to the next level of effectiveness.

Are you making the transition to a more performance-based organization? Customer focus, decision quality, and learning on the fly are all associated with increased performance. Are employees stepping up to key business opportunities? Managerial courage, standing alone, and command skills are all required to meet and beat business risk. (For Your Information, Lombado and Eichinger.)

Development without assessment is just another training exercise. The development journey begins with an objective assessment of your current skill level. Once you identify the competencies required to take your organization to the next level of effectiveness, you need to assess yourself and others against them. 360° feedback surveys continue to be one of the most effective tools for assessing one’s strengths and opportunities for development. These surveys are called “360°� because they are completed anonymously by a selection of your colleagues, direct reports, customers and your boss. In effect, you receive a panoramic snap shot of others’ perceptions based on your organization’s mission critical competencies.

This feedback can then be used to construct a personal development plan to prepare you to become even more effective in your current role, or to prepare you for future responsibilities.

Organization-wide Talent Development: Data from individual 360° surveys can also be grouped to determine both towering strengths and common development opportunities across the organizations. Special projects, coaching, and training programs can then be designed accordingly.

Scaling Development Planning to meet your Organization’s Needs: Employee development can be as complete as a fully aligned competency based talent development system from selection through succession planning, or as simple as a paper based development plan for every employee. Regardless of your progress on your own development path, remember to start with an objective assessment of your strengths and opportunities for development. With a feedback-tested understanding of your strengths and developmental opportunities, you can expect the best return on your development dollars.

About the Author
Stephen Marshall is the principal of Marshall Leadership Consulting, a leadership development consulting firm. Steve’s firm specializes in growing current and future leaders, identifying high potential leadership talent, and sustaining organizations for the long term through customized leadership development systems. Steve has presented at national conferences on leadership assessment and team development. Steve holds a Diploma in Organizational and Business Consulting Psychology with the American Board of Professional Psychology. You can reach Steve at Steve@MarshallLeadershipConsulting.com.

           

Posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Leadership, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.