International trends in Leadership Development: Charting the rising popularity of development centres
20/01/2012, Author: Maria Gardner
The last 12
months at Criterion Partnership has seen a significant increase in demand for
development centres – from both our UK and international clients, although
interestingly for quite different reasons.
In the UK, the recession of the last couple of years has led to some
significant restructuring, if not downsizing, and organisations are now at the
point of needing to consolidate those changes.
Typically, the restructure has lead to a rationalisation of roles –
particularly at management level, leading to those individuals that are left
working in an expanded role and taking on responsibilities that have been
historically outside of their domain.
As a result, depending on how brutal the restructure a leadership population
can end up feeling a little fragile and their organisation is realising that to
re-inspire them, and get them working to the required level, investment and
development in this population is required. As a result businesses are turning
to development centres as a first step in making this happen, typically as part
of a plan for a broader leadership development programme.
Outside of the UK, for example in Turkey and the Middle East, the reason for
the increase in demand is quite different. Here, organisations are
expanding rapidly and for this growth to be sustainable, they are seeing as a
priority the need to assess the current abilities of their management
population. They want to evaluate the potential of their key players in
relation to the new, shinny and bright future the company is moving towards.
In both instances the increase in demand for development centres seems to echo
the findings of the CIPD Learning and Talent
Development Annual Survey Report 2011.
The report found that “the most common focus for leadership development
activities in the next 12 months will be enabling the achievement of the
organisation's strategic goals(43%), improving the skills of leaders to think
in a more strategic and future-focused way (39%) and developing high-potential
individuals valued by the organisation (37%)”.
In addition, for the third year in a row in-house development programmes and
coaching by Line Managers were most commonly ranked in the top three most
effective learning and development practices (by approx 50% of
respondents). A third ranked on-the-job training as amongst their top
three practices.
So why the
increased popularity?
At the most simplistic level, if organisations want to put their people
(usually managers) through a leadership development programme they need to know
what to develop.
Whist the usual performance management data can give an indication of this;
typically at this point the business is looking for a more in-depth, concrete,
and possibly more objective data to work with. They also want to convey
this to the target population, which brings me onto the second reason.
Communication.
A development centre sets the tone for the leadership development programme,
what it values, where and what the organisation wants its leaders to develop
towards or even highlight how things will be different going forwards.
Sometimes this second reason is actually more powerful than the first.
So what are the
benefits?
I could spend some time waxing lyrical on this point, but luckily (for you) two
very nice people from Yorkshire, Leese and Taylor (1996) carried some research on
this very topic. Through factor analysis they found that the benefits of
carrying out development centres could be understood in the context of three
primary areas: personal development, career development, organisational
commitment. Three benefits, which in these current times are pretty high
on a lot of organisations’ hit lists!
What does it
take to make sure they have the desired impact?
Fundamentally, regardless of any increased popularity and overarching benefits,
development centres are only really effective if they are designed, implemented
and followed up properly. They need to be introduced and rolled out with some
real thought, good intentions and commitment behind them. I’ve personally
seen a number of well designed and well intentioned development centres fall
down in the later stages due to the following reasons:
- Failure to carry out proper follow up activities in a timely manner after the event
- Not integrating the detailed information collected into robust personal development plans (PDPs)
- The information being unexpectedly ‘hijacked’ by more senior levels of management to inform a previously unannounced restructure or round of promotions
If you would like to know more about development centres and the work Criterion Partnership does in this area please don’t hesitate to contact us.
In the meantime if you’ve enjoyed Maria’s ramblings why not check out some of our other blogs and thought pieces.
For bite-size updates and 140 characters worth of insights you can also find us on Twitter: @realCriterion and @mariagardnerUK
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