Accelerating Leadership Development: Practical Solutions for Building Your Organization's Potential - Hardcover

by Jocelyn Berard (Author)

Proven strategies and innovative solutions for developing and retaining successful leaders

Many organizations today are facing a crisis of leadership. As the Baby Boomer generation exits the workforce, companies are struggling to find qualified leaders to fill critical roles. Accelerating Leadership Development offers solutions for leadership development, management, and retention from award-winning development firm Global Knowledge.

Accelerating Leadership Development provides a proven model to help companies develop high-potential employees with the competencies and knowledge capital to assume critical roles successfully. It includes practical and rigorous tools that enable organizations to identify targets and predict those targets' success with six measurable factors. With this proven development system, companies can develop a pipeline of ready leaders with high levels of engagement and retention.

• Features actionable, effective principles and strategies for leadership development using a results-oriented framework
• Chapters address communication and delegation strategies, effective feedback models, shifting of responsibility and accountability to direct reports, and contemporary coaching and development approaches
• Based on in-depth research and client interactions from one of the most prominent names in workforce development

For any business that experiences a leadership failure or a lack of qualified leaders for vital positions, the consequences can be devastating. This practical and effective guide to leadership development offers real solutions for long-term excellence.

Front Jacket

From the Introduction

Organizations need to recognize that they are engaged every day in a war for talent. Leaders and HR professionals from rival companies both known and unknown are attempting to hang on to their high-potential employees and attract all that they can from others, including yours. People who are very talented can always find opportunities, says Global Knowledge president and CEO Brian Branson. So it is important to make sure that we as leaders in our organizations are not only trying to attract the right talent but making sure that we have the right opportunities and support infrastructure to retain that talent.

What I have found in two decades spent consulting with companies in North America and Europe on leadership development and succession management is there is a need for a book that lays out in a practical, step-by-step fashion all the tools, strategies and research that leaders and HR professionals need to accelerate leadership development within organizations.

That's what this book is all about: speeding up the process of leadership development. It's a multi-step approach in which organizations identify talent gaps, determine leadership requirements, select next-generation talent, train them, ensure their development and give them the tools they need to succeed.

The book is peppered with interviews of executives and academic thought leaders from North America and Europe who share their expertise and experience on the key themes of the book: finding and nurturing leadership talent, ensuring their future development and making the necessary changes to create first-class organizations.
--Jocelyn Bérard

Back Jacket

The cold, harsh reality of business today is that there are too few leaders across all functions of an organization. While good corporate governance can raise the flag, the organization itself is at risk by not having strategies and initiatives at hand to develop its high-potential employees. The greatest challenge facing any organization lies in identifying, developing and retaining great leaders. In addition, the stakes have been raised by the pending demographic tsunami in the form of aging boomers and the different drivers and demands of the generations coming after them. What leaders, aspiring leaders and HR professionals require is a straightforward, practical and useable guide about how to ensure that the leadership talent pipeline is filled and maintained.

Accelerating Leadership Development provides a model to assist companies to develop high-potential employees to assume critical roles and develop competencies, intellectual and knowledge capital. It also presents practical and rigorous tools and practices that enable organizations to identify high-potential employees and presents the six factors that can predict the success of future leaders. Once identified, the organization needs to prepare them to lead by developing their strengths and addressing their development needs. Development solutions are presented as well as follow-up procedures to ensure activities are executed and results are achieved. The measures of success are a steady source of ready leaders, engagement and retention of high-potential people, and the development of intellectual capital.

But processes and engaged HR professionals are only part of the solution. What of the high-potential people themselves? Leadership is an opportunity and a challenge. Accelerating Leadership Development offers a unique set of strategies and initiatives to enable leaders to build capacity and confidence in their ability to perform. Within a results-oriented framework, the book addresses communication and delegation strategies; useful feedback models; how to shift responsibility and accountability to direct reports; contemporary coaching and development approaches; the role of performance management; and onboarding as an essential business practice.

The ideas and concepts in Accelerating Leadership Development are built on research and client experience, and the many examples illustrate the essential connections between business strategy and leadership development.

Author Biography

JOCELYN BERARD is Vice-President Leadership and Business Solutions, International, for Global Knowledge. He has worked in the leadership and talent management field for 25 years, with clients in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. His business unit at Global Knowledge focuses on research and intervention initiatives with organizations to develop their leaders and improve their talent management. A sought-after speaker, Bérard has presented at numerous HR associations in Canada, Europe and the US, including CSTD, HRPA, CRHA, and SHRM, and is a frequent speaker at Global Knowledge Executive Speaker Series events.

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE is an award-winning global organization known for its strategic solutions with a very strong focus on people development. The company is one of the world's largest learning and development firms with training centers around the world.