Ms Joan Busch, Director of Leadership Development in United Health Group shared her organisation's leadership development programme, with a special focus on the organisation's Emerging Leaders Programme for new managers and high potential staff.
Being such a vast area of development, United Health Group took the approach of "chunking" key content and messages into easy to pull information to facilitate the development of leadership competencies. The organisation estimated that only 10% of leadership development can be acquired through formal education, 20% through exposure to "others", and the final 70% acquired through experience. The organisation sought to weave the 70% and 20% into a semi-formal training programme - the Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP).
The Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP) is a 100% virtual programme. However, because intact cohorts of new managers and high potential staff are enrolled in the programme, a strong learning and support community is developed at every level. As additional support to staff, alumni of more senior-level development programmes serve as coach to ELP participants. Other developmental aids include a comprehensive manager's handbook, as well as a community building programme. For the community building effort to be effective, Joan suggested that organisations allow participants to take ownership of the programme, rather than having it controlled by HR. Participants who view the community building effort as a central initiative are less likely to be fully committed to the programme.
To integrate learning, Joan shared that technology has an integral role in leadership development. At the same time, she reminded the audience that leadership development must not focus only on senior management. Front line and middle managers also need a lot of development, if not more. This is because this group form the bulk of organisational leaders and touch the majority of the organisational work force. Unfortunately, this same group also has the weakest leadership skill sets.
Ms Kim Lamoureux, Vice President of Research at Bersin & Associates was also on hand to share the outcome of Bersin & Associates' research findings on the Maturity Model of leadership development. In essence, Bersin & Associates categorised 4 levels of organisational maturity in terms of leadership development.
Level 1 - Inconsistent Leadership Training (est. 25% of sample)
Content for training is available, but there are no additional development processes to benefit employees.
Level 2 - Structured Leadership Training (est. 38% of sample)
Training curriculum is well-defined and focused on developing core competencies within individuals.
Level 3 - Focused Leadership Development (est. 28% of sample)
Future-oriented and focus on developing culture and organisations.
Level 4 - Strategic Leadership Development (est. 10% of sample)
Programmes are championed by executive management and integrated with talent management.
Sueann
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