A leadership development plan is a detailed plan to train and hone the leadership skills of current employees and allows individuals to advance into leadership positions within an organisation. Often a leadership development plan for managers includes formal classroom-style training over a set period of time that ranges from months up to a year.
Individual development plan ideas may include executing coaching, reflective journaling, constructive feedback, coursework or mentoring. Implementation of a leadership development plan helps organisations prepare and adapt for the eventual step down or retirement of existing leadership. Currently, 77% of organisations experience a leadership gap and 89% of surveyed executives believe that strengthening organisational leadership should be a top priority. However, 63% of millennials believe their leadership potential is not being fully developed. Leadership development goals and action planning for organisations can realign these leadership priorities. Additionally, 81% of employees who report to recently trained managers are more engaged in their jobs, further emphasizing the importance of proper leadership development.
The advantages of excellent leadership development training
There are many advantages to excellent leadership development training. While many unanticipated advantages can arise from executing a leadership development plan, below are a list of the best qualities upon completion of a leadership development plan checklist:
1. Increased productivity
Properly trained leaders in an organisation know how to get the best performance out of their people. They’re able to understand different personality types and how each one best thrives in a work environment. A development plan example would be recognising when to let an introvert work alone or in a small group to maximise their output, or putting an extrovert in charge of a group of younger teammates to get them riled up. These are both examples of good leadership training. Good leaders are also empathetic, engaging and willing to go the extra mile with their employees when need be. As a result, employees led by strong leadership are more invested in their projects and their jobs, creating a win-win for all involved.
2. Retained workforce
Employees who work under poor leadership have a harder time staying motivated. Even if they like the work they’re doing, it’s inevitably bound to not be their best. As a result, employees start leeching away in search of a more rewarding job that offers better leadership. Conversely, strong leadership keeps employees motivated and engaged in their work. Others will flock to strong leadership and stay put.
3. Invest in your organisation’s future
Great organisations strategise and plan for leadership succession. It can be tempting to give the top job opportunities to the most forward employees with dominant personalities, but these candidates may not be the best choice for the job. A leadership development plan helps identify the right quality mix and nurture employees over time until they’re ready to run the organisation themselves.
4. Discover the perfect leadership style
Identifying the best leadership practices for individual employees can be challenging enough, and can become exponentially harder when you take the entire organisation into account. Creating a company-wide leadership development plan can actually help pinpoint the best leadership styles across the organisation and individual teams.
5. Make better decisions
An organisation with great leadership works at its best. The ideas flow, projects get done and leaders create a collaborative environment that fosters questions and suggestions. What do these characteristics add up to over time? Better decision-making and a thriving organisation.
How to create an action plan to improve leadership skills
So, we bet these leadership development plans sound pretty good right about now. But how do you create an action plan that’s tailored to your company? We’ve outlined the five steps every company should take to build a leadership development plan.
1. Consider your business needs and goals
Make a list of the leadership qualities you are looking for within your organisation. What are the strategies that are working well? Are there gaps and room for improvement? How many leaders do you need? How will they be committed to the goals of the organisation? Identifying what type of leader you want to train is the first step in creating a great leadership development plan.
2. Talk to your employees
Everyone’s job has a unique perspective, and the strength of a thoughtful organisation is to take as much input from each branch of the organisation as possible. Ask for feedback from all of your employees to determine what they’re looking for in a leader. It’s also good to ask them to candidly state what is working and not working in the organisation. Use the eyes and ears of your organisation to your advantage to create a great leadership development plan.
3. Consider different types of training and development
There are several strategies to consider for leadership training. Mentoring and modelling are both popular “train as you go” types of leadership development. The benefit of these approaches is a hands-on and extensive training experience, but these are usually best suited to individual or small-group training. For larger groups, online, workshops or classroom training might be more appropriate.
4. Establish the objectives and goals of the plan
Keep your business needs and goals in mind and identify clear objectives and goals for your leadership trainees. Creating a leadership development action plan example for your company could aid in identifying the key traits and objectives you’d like to see in your leadership trainees and convey to your employees your expectations going into their leadership development programme.
5. Measure success
What are the traits of your new leadership trainees that can be tracked? Identifying ways to quantify the implementation of your leadership development plan provides invaluable information as you tweak the programme in the future. This could be a measure of work output, employee contentment or profit margin, among many others. Decide what works best for tracking the leadership development at your organisation.
In the following section, we provide several individual leadership development plan examples.
Leadership development plan examples
Let’s look at some individual development plan examples. Because of the range of skill sets and experiences found among employees, we recommend tailored leadership training plans for employees and managers.
Individual development plan examples for employees
You may want to train employees for future leadership that have never had other employees working for them. For these individuals, you want to provide a strong basic skill set in leadership that will take time. This is a more significant investment and can include long-term training strategies like ongoing mentoring.
Example 1
Goal: Develop management skills
Skills: Clear communication and instruction, delegation, decision-making and problem-solving
Resources required: Access to leader mentors, instructional resources, reflection and feedback
Readout: Assessment of management skills by the current leadership
Timeline: Months to Years
Example 2
Goal: Build confidence in leadership ability
Skills: Develop self-efficacy, assertiveness and emotional intelligence
Resources required: Mentor instruction and praise
Readout: Feedback from mentors and employees
Timeline: Months to years
Example 3
Goal: Develop decision-making capabilities
Skills: Gather information to weigh options, logical reasoning
Resources required: Class instruction and trainee reflection
Readout: Track changes in work output, profit changes
Timeline: Months to years
Individual development plan examples for managers
Managers already have a strong leadership experience base, and may just need a refresher or may need to acquire just one specific skillset. These objectives can often be accomplished in a workshop or retreat setting.
Example 1
Goal: Improve Communication Skills
Skills: Manage expectations and communicate value for the project
Resources required: N/A
Readout: Feedback from Employees on Manager Communication
Timeline: Days to Weeks
Example 2
Goal: Improve motivational skills
Skills: Publicly recognise good work, stay positive, share big-picture strategies
Resources required: N/A
Readout: Increased work output
Timeline: Weeks to months
Example 3
Goal: Improve time management skills
Skills: Efficiency of individual and group attention
Resources required: N/A
Readout: Employee feedback on individual instruction and effective use of group meetings
Timeline: Weeks to months
Make training, coaching and enablement part of leadership development
Both new and veteran leaders need ongoing training, coaching and enablement so they can hone essential leadership skills. Seismic can help jumpstart your leadership development plan. Click here to learn more about our training and coaching software, or schedule a call with one of our teammates.
