The Leadership Development Pathway

The Canning Leadership Development Pathway is designed to help your organization put in place the systems and development programs identified at the planning stage (see Planning for Leadership Development).  It is targeted specifically at cohorts of participants to help them move to the next level of leadership within the organization.

Our experience of leadership succession planning and leadership pipeline development suggests that any approach needs to accomplish three things:

  1. Identify the participants as being at a specific level of leadership within the company and then enable them both to improve within their current level and prepare them for the next level
  2. Go well beyond “traditional” approaches to development and focus fully on the ongoing holistic development of each individual within the strategic context of the organization
  3. Closely involve Senior Management in their development

With this clearly in mind, we have designed the following Pathway approach with a view to creating a system that is exciting and fulfilling for all involved.

Objectives:

  • Fully embed what leadership means at your organization and align emerging leaders with  your values, vision, mission and strategy
  • Embed and institutionalize organization-specific  leadership behaviors by operationalizing  the Leadership Competencies and Capabilities required for each level of leadership
  • Enable participants to develop their leadership competencies and capabilities either in their current role (new to the role) or for future roles (pipeline)
  • Increase each participant’s personal mastery and adaptability: help them get ready for anything
  • Create a dynamic and motivation for continuous professional development and personal excellence
  • Enable senior management to have a front row view of the leadership bench strength within the organization

Our starting point is that Leadership cannot be taught but it can be learned.  It follows that any approach to leadership development should be based to the greatest degree possible on the way ability is developed in the real world.  Our experience, backed up by empirical studies, shows that:

  1. The majority of learning takes place in situ; by creating experiences in the workplace that are tailored to developing specific , identified competencies and capabilities (both strengths and development needs)
  2. A fair amount of development is enabled through coaching and mentoring – particularly when combined with a feedback loop around the experiences garnered in the workplace development track
  3. Some learning can indeed take place in a classroom environment, provided that the group dynamic is used to stimulate learning, and the focus is mostly on learning by doing, with the “theory” element kept to a minimum.

In the Canning Leadership Pathway, these essential types of learning are provided through the following approaches:

  1. A Learning Centre focusing on 3 to 5 leadership competencies, capabilities and transition-specific challenges.  Through a series of simulations and feedback/coaching, participants are put through their paces to identify their strengths and development needs against each competency.  This provides not only a development opportunity for the participant but also key insights for management as to each participant’s learning agility and adaptability.
  2. Mentoring as a highly effective way for Senior Managers within the organization to support developing leaders.
  3. Group Coaching sessions as an alternative to more traditional classroom training.  This involves hands-on practice through “micro-skilling” all the essential skills and strategies related to the specific subject matter of the session.
  4. Action Learning sessions that take place between the elements of the main program to enable further learning of a specific competency, whilst simultaneously enabling the participants to benefit from the group dynamic.
  5. Personal Mastery and Adaptability involving a360° appraisal, a Personality Questionnaire, a Personal Mastery Feedback session, creation of a Personal Development Plan (PDP) and a Performance Feedback, typically after 9 months and 18 months.

Leadership Kick-Start