Leadership Institute

Achieving Your Leadership Potential

Learning Format:  Classroom
Order No. IMEX116

According to surveys of CEOs and HR managers, effective leadership is a competitive advantage for their organizations.  Unfortunately, these same surveys show that people at all organizational levels lack confidence in their leaders and in the ability of their organizations to develop good leaders.

This course bridges the widening gap between what is needed and required of today’s leaders.  A three-step process -- Diagnose, Plan, and Execute -- helps learners stretch their capabilities and accelerate their leadership development.

Do You Face Any of These Issues?

  • Do your leaders treat development of their leadership skills as something to do “if time permits?”
  • Do they search out job experiences or issues facing their business units that stretch their leadership capabilities?
  • Can they link their personal development to the organization’s growth and success?

Performance Objectives?

Helps leaders:

  • Define the scope of leadership development and potential.
  • Link their development to personal satisfaction and the organization’s goals, values, and strategic direction.
  • Use various sources to identify, assess, and prioritize their strengths and weaknesses.
  • Create targeted, challenging, yet realistic development goals.
  • Execute and measure progress toward goals, making appropriate adjustments along the way.
  • Keep a steady yet flexible focus on development over time.

Primary Competency Developed

  • Work Standards

Secondary Competencies Developed

  • Continuous Learning
  • Initiating Action

Course Overview

  • Prework:  Prior to the workshop, participants complete Achieving Your Leadership Potential:  The Handbook for Learning Leaders, Book 1.  This introduces them to the development process.  Activities help them determine their motivation and agility for learning and identify one strength and one weakness to be developed.
  • The Learning Leader:  A video depicts three leaders with different approaches to developing into a better leader.  Learners discuss these approaches -- falling behind, keeping up, or staying ahead -- and how they compare with their own motivation and learning agility.  From their prework, they describe the three phases of leadership development -- Diagnose, Plan, and Execute -- and its two cycles:  self-reflection
    and discussion.
  • Diagnose and Select:  Participants make connections between what’s happening in their organizations, the Leadership Imperatives critical for success, and the group’s strengths and weaknesses in those Imperatives.  They discuss the high payoff of aligning these variables.  Learners use a planner to identify initiatives, development goals, and skills/knowledge they need to gain.
  • Targeting Development:  The group discusses examples of three types of high-payoff development opportunities -- training, job experience, and coaching.  They work in teams to identify opportunities that would stretch them outside their comfort zones, and record opportunities for the development goals identified earlier.  The importance of their manager’s support is considered. 
  • Your Personal Business Case:  Learners complete a quiz to determine their receptivity to feedback and generate ideas for increasing openness to feedback. After watching a video model, learners practice preparing for and conducting a discussion with their managers to gain support for their development plans. 
    They receive feedback from one another and amend their plans as needed.
  • Execution -- Bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap:  After a discussion emphasizing key points about the Execute phase, a quiz helps learners determine how effective they are at execution.  Teams share barriers to execution and generate ideas for overcoming each.  They record these in their planners and identify needed support and measurement methods.

Video Segment Summaries

  • Three leaders, in different positions and industries, explain how they approach leadership development.
  • A model leader describes the business case for her personal development and secures her manager’s support and coaching.

Course Details

  • Target audience:  Informal and formal leaders at all levels.
  • Course length:  3 hours, 30 minutes.  Course can be lengthened with optional activities.
  • Facilitator certification:  DDI-certified facilitator required.
  • Prerequisites:  None.
  • Series:  Suitable for all environments.
  • Group size:  8 to 16 people.
  • Prework:  Yes.  45-60 minutes.

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