Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 18, 2015 NEWS 9 • provide developing leaders with opportunities to "audition" for future roles, such as a second- ment into another business and other stretch roles. It's about being programmatic, said Stockton. at means using traditional classroom training but also providing people with experiences and challenges and asking them to understand fac- tors such as their sector and the competition. "It becomes really an anchor of what you do in a business around building leaders, so it's going fur- ther down in an organization, it's being very, very systematic about it, treating it like a program, and it's also (about) different types of development and broader types of development," she said. "In the past, many leaders have really come up in one discipline as an expert and there's recogni- tion that in this new world we live in — with hyper-competition, disruption through technology and innovation — leaders actu- ally need to truly understand the business in a broader perspective than simply a single discipline or technical expertise." Testing and investing Organizations are also "testing and investing" in order to accel- erate leaders' performance, said Stockton. "So they're pushing them ear- lier and into different challenges; they're taking an expanded view around succession to develop leaders at all levels; they're very fo- cused on global mindsets to grow talent in business simply because of how open the world is today through social media, through technology, through disruption and through competition," she said. "And then leaders are driving learning agendas to shape culture, and then they're taking a very in- tentional approach to in-role and experiential development." Many organizations do a good job of identifying the skills that are going to make people successful as leaders, and trying to put them in positions to hone those skills, said Town. But other employers just hope the right people will show up or grow organically. "The lack of intentionality, I think, is a big risk particularly as the workforce changes with the advent of the baby boomer curve. It's going to work its way through in the next 10 years and I think there's going to be a whole dif- ferent set of people's experiences available to organizations in terms of leadership. "ose that have been develop- ing their leaders and have a good process for identifying them will be in a much better position than those that are not." Most skill learning is going to come on the job — it's not going to come from classroom training or online training, he said. It's about giving people expo- sure to skills in a very formalized way, such as coaching. "en the organization needs to be committed to testing those skills in the crucible of work, so putting people into secondments, one-year positions, covering off different leaves that can occur in the organization, giving people an opportunity to really show their stripes, said Town. "So it's almost like you're oper- ating a co-op program internally in your own organization to re- ally see 'Before I give somebody the full reigns of leadership, I've explored whether they can do this or not.'" In some leadership programs, action learning is used, where people in groups are given an executive-sponsored project to work on, said Russel Hor- witz, principal at Kwela Leader- ship & Talent Management in Vancouver. They're usually research-ori- entated projects involving some- thing critical to the business, so they're not easy tasks, he said, and they end with recommendations. Giving people more advanced work is huge, particularly with respect to testing critical thinking skills, conceptual skills, presenta- tion skills, those sorts of things, he said. "Not necessarily people skills — you don't need to give them a special project to see that. But those high-level leadership skills, definitely. " For leaders, there are a variety of skills needed, such as strategic planning, having a vision, change management, influencing skills, team development skills, being organized, conflict resolution, communication, teamwork skills, creative problem-solving and innovation, said Horwitz. Most people are promoted be- cause they're technically good at what they do, he said — and then it's discovered they lack the nec- essary leadership competencies to succeed, which leads to problems. "I don't think people know enough what to look for, particu- larly people skills, critical thinking skills, influencing skills, things that have nothing to do with ac- tual jobs," he said. "If you can spot those things and you promote someone, they'll probably do well. But if they're not present, they do very poorly, and a lot of people make that mistake." Advanced work can test future leaders' skills LEADERSHIP < pg. 3 For leaders, there are a variety of skills needed, such as strategic planning, change management and conflict resolution.

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