Leadership Development: How To Make It Effective?

Lourdes Murillo, Sr HRBP, Global HR Head Support Functions, Millicom (Tigo)

Professional development is a multi-million dollar industry that offers a wide variety of solutions that include different types of services, products, channels, modalities, and delivery options.

It was fueled by the introduction of coaching, between the 1970s and 1980s, and soon after, with the introduction of online education alternatives.

Today there are billions of hours of content available, dedicated people (coaches, mentors), companies, platforms and channels offering content to cover a wide variety of topics at all different org levels, to cover any need, area or skill.

However, across corporations and industries, there is still room for improvement in leadership development to ensure that leaders and managers are more effective. According to Gartner, 60% of HR leaders prioritized “leader and manager effectiveness” as the #1 key initiative by 2023 to strengthen organizational effectiveness.

The top issues identified by the 515 HR leaders surveyed in Gartner’s 2023 HR Priorities Survey were:

Additionally, leadership development ranks statistically in the bottom percentiles across a variety of engagement surveys, culture pulses, and other company-driven measures.

Given this context:

• On the one hand, a great availability of contents, programs and development processes and methodologies.

On the other hand, it continues to be a priority to improve leadership development in companies

"There is no one size fits all. Leadership development should enhance uniqueness"

The two questions to ponder are:

• Why does the effectiveness of Leadership Development have room for improvement?

• How can we make it effective?

There are many reasons why development programs fail:

1. Intentionality The commitment and the will must come from the individual. If there is no intention and purpose, the relevance of the process is diluted.

2. Customization

There is no one size fits all. Leadership development should enhance uniqueness.

3. Integration of different systems

In most cases, the focus is on developing specific skills and competencies. People live in ecosystems. Development processes must consider different elements of the human ecosystem.

4. Action orientation

The leadership development industry is very mature in assessments and diagnostics, and in developing content based on a very solid scientific foundation. It’s also surprisingly good at delivery, honing the experience to make it more relevant. However, the execution (action orientation) still has a lot of room for improvement.

Three innovative perspectives to make Leadership development effective:

1. Getting alignment with a higher individual purpose

The will produces movement; movement produces work; and work produces results.

To move the will, we need to connect leadership development with a higher purpose that is meaningful and relevant to each individual.

2. Integrating the ecosystems

Leadership development is not an isolated topic. It will activated only if it is connected to the different systems in which the executive was, is, and will be involved in.

3. Action

Even when finding our own responses is powerful, actions don’t come only from reflection, generation of ideas, orinspiration. It comes from changing little by little, in a structured way that is focused on a strategic path.

Disrupting the way in which we traditionally have developed leadership can literally bring a huge transformation and impact on companies’ culture and performance.