Executives are unhappy with their leadership development

Leadership development is the pressing need of organisations across the globe. Whilst there are organisations investing significant sums of money to develop leaders, according to recent research the results have been disappointing. Management-Issues discusses research by the Global Leadership Forecast 2008|2009, by consultants DDI, which sets out to examine why confidence in leaders is declining despite a heightened focus on developing leadership talent. The study surveyed almost 1,500 HR professionals and more than 12,000 leaders from 76 countries. The key findings of this research is as follows:

• Although three-quarters of the executives surveyed said that improving leadership talent was a top business priority, just four out of 10 were satisfied with what their organizations were actually doing to help them, a decline of 12 percentage points since the last Leadership Forecast was published two years ago.
  
• “… what emerges from the report is a clear message that while executives want more opportunities to learn on the job, such as special projects or moving to a new assignment, their senior management seldom takes responsibility for making this happen".”
  
• Almost six out of 10 executives said that they and their manager had not agreed on a formal written plan for their development.
  
• Only around a third of senior managers were held accountable for the success of leadership development programs.
  
• Just a quarter of organizations monitor their leadership development programs or formally measure their results. "Great leadership doesn’t happen by accident - organizations need to start listening to their leaders and make the right development investments if they want different results than they’re getting now," Wellins said.
  
• Only half of organizations globally have succession plans for their leadership team and US organizations even lower than the global sample. “But having succession plans isn’t the whole story - HR professionals indicated that one in three succession candidates fail.”
  

This research makes it clear that developing future leaders is not seen as a priority by today’s leaders. The sad thing is that one of the primary responsibilities of leaders is to grow and develop other leaders. It seems that we are failing in executing this responsibility. What actions can you take over the following week to start developing a programme to grow and develop future leaders in your teams and organisations?