Leadership Sustainability by Dave Ulrich

Author:Dave Ulrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw Hill LLC
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Flow of People

An individual leader who wants to sustain a personal change will be encouraged and validated when multiple HR practices reinforce that change. Whether a leader is trying to be more innovative and creative, more disciplined and efficient, or more collaborative, these behaviors should show up in the flow of talent: hiring, orienting, training, career planning and promotion, and outplacement.

Who a company hires sends signals about what behaviors are most in demand. Google’s extensive screening process validates the importance of innovation in its operations. A leader who wants to be more innovative will be encouraged when innovative behaviors are woven into the hiring decision. Leaders attempting to sustain change can help to set criteria for the types of individuals they want to hire.

How a company develops its employees also reinforces the desired behaviors. When the training initiatives offer content that is related to strategy, the principles being imparted in the training are more likely to be implemented. In recent years, action learning has been replaced with learning solutions in which the purpose is less about taking action and more about using training as a setting to learn new ways to solve problems. In many cases, a leader may learn about a needed change through a 360-degree feedback process, performance review, or other mechanism and then select a training course or development experience to provide the skills and tools to inform the desired change.

In recent years, most have accepted that leadership improvement comes more from experience than formal training. While we agree, we are worried that the “lessons from experience” movement focuses more on “experience” than on “lessons.” Just having a new experience does not ensure improvement. Leaders need to learn to access “lessons” from their experiences by rigorous and thoughtful reflection from questions such as: What worked? What did not work? Why? What are the principles that I can adapt from this experience? What would I tell someone that I learned? What would I do differently? How can I ensure that I will transfer the insights from this experience to another setting? When can I specifically apply those insights next? These questions ensure that experiences cumulate in lessons learned.

Who is promoted and how careers are managed go a long way to sustain change—or undercut it. For example, one leader we coached wanted to improve by engaging his employees in decision making. When he returned to his work setting, he did listen better and encourage participation, but the standards for his performance did not change, so his improvement did not show up in his performance review. And even more difficult for him, when he was one of the two finalists for a promotion, his new ability to engage employees was not considered, and he was passed over. When he observed that leaders who did not demonstrate the newly found skills were more likely to be promoted, he realized that his behavior changes were not valued by others. In career discussions, leaders who share their desired improvements should learn the extent to which those improvements will increase their ability to reach their career goals.

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