Leadership Development Programme

What a leadership development programme is

A leadership development programme (برنامج تطوير القيادات) is a structured path of fixed length through which an organisation prepares a chosen group of its employees for leadership roles. It combines formal learning, practice at work and guidance, and at the end it measures what has changed. It is not a course that is attended and forgotten, and it is not a general sponsorship of skills. It is a commitment by the organisation to a particular group for a particular purpose.

What distinguishes it is that it is aimed at a group, has a beginning and an end, and has a member of management who sponsors it. The goals and steps written for each participant individually are another document, the individual development plan, which forms part of the programme and does not replace it.

Who enters the programme

The first question is who is chosen, because everything after it is built on the answer. Participants are chosen according to the organisation’s need for leaders and according to what indicates their capacity for a larger role. Years of service and closeness to a manager are not the basis. Evidence of capacity is the subject of potential assessment, and the need for leaders shows in succession planning, which is the preparation of ready replacements for critical posts before they fall vacant.

The selection criteria are announced before the selection itself. If the reason one employee entered and another did not is not announced, employees take the programme as a privilege that is granted and not an opportunity that is earned.

What a programme consists of

Its means are many, and what makes it a programme is that these means follow one another along a single path. They include the following.

• Formal learning sessions. They build a shared language of leadership and serve as an entry to what follows. Their content may include models of leadership, such as transformational leadership, without the programme imposing one style on participants.
• Assignments. Here the participant takes over, for a known period, the duties of a larger post without being appointed to it, which is an acting assignment. In it the participant tests what has been learned, and the organisation tests the participant. The regulatory aspects of an acting assignment are reviewed before it is used.
• Managerial coaching. These are sessions in which a coach works by asking questions and not by prescribing, so that the participant reaches an agreed behavioural goal unaided. This is coaching.
• Mentoring. This is an extended relationship with a more experienced leader, mentoring, and through it the professional judgement that sessions do not carry is passed on.
• An applied project. A real problem in the organisation is worked on by the participants, who present the result to the sponsor of the programme.

Organisations differ in the proportion among these elements. Each learning session is followed by practice at work within weeks, because knowledge that is not tried may be forgotten.

How content is built on the participants’ gaps

The content of the programme starts from a question: what does a leader need in this particular organisation? Five required leadership competencies are defined and worded as behaviour that can be observed at work, in the manner of competencies. The participants’ level in each is then estimated before the start.

Suppose the required level is 4 out of 5 in every competency, and the group’s average comes out as follows: making decisions 3.4, delegating 2.4, managing performance 2.9, thinking about the long run 3.1 and communicating 3.8. The gaps are then 0.6, 1.6, 1.1, 0.9 and 0.2, and together they come to 4.4. The largest is the gap in delegating, whose share is 36.4% of the total of the gaps (1.6 ÷ 4.4). If there are eight formal sessions, about three of them go to delegating, and communicating receives only a small part of one session. In this way the design moves from choosing whatever courses are available to choosing what the cohort needs.

How much of the participants’ time the programme uses

Take a hypothetical programme for 12 participants lasting twelve months, with eight formal sessions of 6 hours each, which is 48 hours. Add ten hours of coaching for each participant, and each participant’s share becomes 58 hours, which is 7.25 working days if a day is taken as 8 hours. For the whole group it is 58 × 12 = 696 hours, which is 87 working days. This does not yet include the hours of mentoring, the project, or the work that the holders of acting assignments miss in their own jobs.

This time is recorded against those who take part, and it appears in the training hours per employee of their group. If the 696 hours are folded into the average of the whole organisation, their effect is lost among the large number. If they are shown for the participant group alone, the investment appears as it is. It is a cost to be counted beside the fees of the trainers, because it is the time of people who are also expected to do their own work.

The role of the sponsor and the line manager

The sponsor is a member of senior management who commits to the participants to attend the main milestones of the programme and to provide the tasks and real projects on which they can apply what they learn. We suggest that the sponsor ask for a short report every quarter on what has been applied and what has stalled, so that the sponsor’s role is not limited to attending occasions.

The line manager of each participant holds conversations at milestones: before the programme, to agree on what the participant wants to change; during it, to ask what the participant has tried and what has been faced; and after it, to assign work in which the participant uses what was learned. If the line manager does not know what happened in the sessions, the participant may return to a team that expects work to continue as it was.

What the whole programme costs

The cost comes together from items: the fees of the learning sessions, the fees of the coaching, and the participants’ time. Take hypothetical amounts. Eight sessions at 6,000 a session come to 48,000. Ten hours of coaching for each of 12 participants is 120 hours at 400 an hour, which is 48,000. The participants’ time is 696 hours at a cost of 150 an hour, which is 104,400. The total is 200,400, and the share of each participant is 16,700 (200,400 ÷ 12).

The calculation shows that the participants’ time is the largest item in this example, and it is an item that appears in no invoice. If 2 of them leave after the programme ends, the cost per remaining participant becomes 20,040 (200,400 ÷ 10). If 3 additional critical posts gain a ready replacement, the cost of each replacement is 66,800 (200,400 ÷ 3). This is not a return on investment, since it does not measure what the replacements may save in the cost of vacancies, but it puts before management the amount the organisation has spent on each result.

How the success of the programme is measured

Its effect is measured at levels that run from the participant’s satisfaction to a change in the results of the work, and this ordering is the basis of the Kirkpatrick model. A leadership programme keeps one particular measure that ties it to its purpose: how many critical posts now have a ready replacement?

Suppose the organisation has 10 critical posts, and 3 of them had a ready replacement before the programme, which is 30%. After the programme and a fresh assessment, 6 have a ready replacement, which is 60%. The increase is 30 percentage points, for three more posts. Caution is needed in interpreting this figure. The assessment is carried out by people who did not run the programme, because whoever designed it may lean toward seeing a result. The rule for “ready now” is written before the start. The departure of participants afterwards is also counted: if two of the twelve leave, they are 16.7% of those in whom the organisation invested and then lost.

The figure alone does not prove that the programme is the cause. The employees who were chosen may have been more capable to begin with, and the market may be what changed their positions. For that reason the participants are compared with those who did not enter the programme where that is possible, and whatever the comparison does not explain is stated.

What comes after the programme ends

The sessions end and the investment does not. For each graduate the level of readiness for the target roles and the date of the assessment are recorded, and they are put before the regular talent meeting so that those attending consider the graduate’s opportunities: an acting assignment, a project or a move. We suggest that graduates meet after six months so that each presents what has been applied, and the obstacles that did not appear during the sessions come to light.

All this is part of talent management, the approach by which the organisation identifies people of high capacity, develops them and retains them. A programme that is not connected to what follows leaves its graduates without a place in the organisation’s plan. We suggest that the list of critical posts and their replacements be updated every six months, so that it shows whether the number of covered posts has risen and whether a replacement who was once counted as ready has left.

Where a programme falters

The absence of a sponsor undermines it: if no member of senior management appears in it, participants see a timetable and not a commitment. Selection by seniority does the same, since the cohort then gathers those who have reached the rank and not those who have reached readiness. A programme is also weakened when sessions follow one another with no assignments in which participants apply what they learned.

Another cause of faltering is that participants graduate and find no larger role on the horizon, and they may carry what they learned to another organisation. A further cause is copying the programme of another organisation with its content as it is, so that it does not address the gaps of the leaders of the organisation itself. The last is measuring by satisfaction alone, by asking participants whether they liked the programme without asking what they have changed in their work.

How a programme begins in a small organisation

A small organisation does not need a cohort of twelve. It can begin with two or three participants for a single critical post, limit the means to acting assignments, mentoring and coaching, and write an individual plan for each. This smaller form keeps what distinguishes a programme: an announced purpose, participants chosen by a criterion, a path between a beginning and an end, and a measurement at the close. A programme that an organisation cannot afford to sponsor loses its sponsor and loses its meaning.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.