Leadership Skill Planning: Why It’s the Most Important Thing You Haven’t Thought About

Including effective leadership skill-building in your strategic plan, these days can feel like trying to hit a moving target while on horseback in a snowstorm.

The evolution of the leader has significantly transformed over the past decade but even more so over the past 24 months. For example, in a pre-COVID (2018) Gartner analysis of more than 7.5 million job postings, U.S. job postings in IT, finance, and sales roles required an average of 17 skills. These same types of roles now require an average of 21. Plus, eight of these skills are new and weren’t required in 2018. It’s also estimated that 29% of the skills from an average job posting in 2018 may not be needed (at all) in 2022.

With the volatility of what’s considered a basic requirement in leadership positions, how do you plan for leadership skill-building? And how do you focus on what’s needed on an individual level and an organizational one?

Assembling a car while driving down the road—or similarly, creating a leadership skill-building pathway after one is in a leadership position—is a stressful endeavor that creates a work environment prone to strife and disorganization. On the other hand, working in a culture with a well-communicated pathway of leadership development means less trial and error, greater success through mastery of leadership skills, and increased employee engagement and loyalty.

Proactive (or Predictive) Versus Reactive Leadership Skill Building

In business culture, an organization is either proactive or reactive in its leadership skill-building. A proactive (or predictive) organization assesses its industry, employees and internal environment, and the needs of stakeholders when creating leadership skills requirements and pathways. The process fleshes out what leaders will need next year or beyond through a pathway predicated partially on predictive analysis and partially on the same luck we all hope will fall in our lap when we receive a scratch-off ticket. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you just get gunk everywhere.

On the other hand, reactive leadership practices teach leadership skills after the organization’s management discovers the need for the specified skills. For instance, post-COVID most businesses realized what they needed in a leader of a home-office based environment was different from what they were looking for in-office before a global pandemic. The years 2020 and 2021 began with most businesses operating on the reactive. They realized what they needed and went about trying to teach it after the need existed, like trying to find an air leak while driving on the tire.

Which style is more effective, playing the leadership skills lottery or waiting until there’s something that needs to be addressed and dealing with it then?

According to research from Harvard Business Review, only 37% of new leadership skills were still used after 12 months in predictive cultures. That means only a little over a third of what future-telling executives assume will be necessary actually is important. And 54% of employees in a reactive culture applied the new skills they learned in the same period -a much higher number. However, in a reactive environment, while the employees may use more of the leadership skills they learned, they often are applied too late to be effective. Ideally, a blending of predictive and reactive would occur in leadership skill-building.

Developing Organizational Leadership Skills

Working with employees to learn the skills they will need at the next level of career growth within an organization is essential to business and employee success. Mastering these skills before a crisis or need will create an environment of better adoption, implementation, and retention. After all, you will have a much more successful outcome teaching someone the rules and objectives of football, for instance, prior to launching the ball at their heads.

Strategic direction for leadership skill building means employees will feel more:

• valued because legacy planning illustrates an investment in employees’ and the organizations’ future.
• challenged. One of the top reasons people leave their jobs is a lack of growth opportunities. Drudging through the same job year after year leads some to explore other opportunities.
• included. A leadership skill-building plan gives insights (and requires thought) into what’s needed, why it’s needed, and how leaders at every level of the organization contribute.
• critical to outcomes. By strategically engaging leaders at all levels, it becomes clear the roles they play in the organization’s success and its ability to meet the needs of its stakeholders and customers.
• secure. Many employees are leaving corporate structures due to a concern over their future or the future of the business. Instituting legacy or succession planning can help alleviate that source of apprehension.

Strategic Planning for the Future of Leadership

Developing leadership skills within your organization can be a difficult undertaking. Do you base it on what your leaders need today or tomorrow? Lack of clarity, problems communicating vision, and overcomplicated processes are just a few of the ways your strategic plan can fail. Problems with your strategic plan make it unnecessarily difficult to execute business initiatives and create time-wasting roadblocks on your path to achieving objectives and goals.

Liddell Consulting Group works with leaders to define the future of your business by specifying essential initiatives and people. Your planning can be a wasted effort without action, however.

If you are interested in learning more about our strategic business planning process or how it can help you develop skills within your organization, contact us today!