To continue from the previous post:

A list of moderate to extensively used Leader Development programmes in the order of ranking (Page 17)

Tests, assessments, or other measures of skills

Another interesting finding was ?Formal training is the most common leader development practice, but special projects or assignments are the most effective. ( Page 18 )

A finding that I find difficult to accept is ?Internet and other online sources? ranked the lowest amongst the different sources of learning for leaders.

The top six sources of learning for Leaders according to the study are:

Internet and online resources just got 14%! This is surely too low in this age of the “google, wikipedia,webminars, blogs, online access to the various magazines and newspapers. Tons and tons of resources out there to be grabbed. Free or otherwise!

Development Dimensions International, Inc. (DDI) has recently published a 56 page report titled the ?Best Practices for Tomorrow?s Global Leaders?. The study includes responses from 4,559 leaders and 944 HR representatives from 42 countries.

Some aspects of the study that made an interesting read:

What is the most respected Leadership behaviour?

Leaders think ?ability to bring in the numbers? is the most respected leadership behaviour. (Page 10)

The following is the ranking of which Leadership action gets the most respect.

And here is why HR thinks internally sourced leaders fail (Page 11):

About one-third of internally sourced leaders fail, usually because of poor people skills or interpersonal skills.

Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and CEO of American Express, shares his business insights and philosophies at a talk in Wharton

The quotes are from his talk.

Integrity: “Many people construe ‘integrity’ to mean being honest. That’s a piece of it, but it’s really about being consistent in words and actions. When you are trying to lead others, they look for consistency. I want people to have a will to win, but I want them to win with integrity.”

Courage: “To me, it’s not personal. I want you to argue with me. It requires courage to offer a different perspective and challenge current or popular views. It requires courage to speak out, especially when one doesn’t personally benefit from it. To build ‘followship,’ one has to be courageous and orient always from the core value of integrity.”

Team player: “Everybody wants to be a team player but there can be nice people who are bad team players — people who don’t engage in confrontation when that’s what is really needed, people who don’t give feedback. I look at whether the person helps the team improve.”

Execution skills: “Today, people are focused on IQ, but executional quotient, EQ, is just as important. If a person has a match of IQ and EQ, he or she has an incredible personal commitment and can be an incredible force. Disparity between IQ and EQ means that person is just focused on himself.”

Development of people — helping others succeed: “I judge the success of a leader by the success of the people who are the followship. I look at the results. Is this a person who facilitates the achievements of others and who has the capacity to get people to willingly follow?”

Being proactive: ?A leader has to take action and make things happen.”

To read Dr. Warren Bennis’s “Six time tested competencies of Exemplary Leadership”, go here

The recent issue of “Leader to Leader” (subscription required) has an article on ?Leading the Way to Double-Digit Growth” by Robert P. Gandossy and Shelli Greenslade.

The single biggest differentiator based on extensive research of double digit growth companies is Leadership Development. According to the authors, “Without a strong leadership infrastructure, organizations simply would not possess the ability to sustain long-term double digit growth.?

Some findings include:

More than half of the fast-growing companies studied cited corporate culture as a factor that enables them to develop leader quality and bench strength. Approximately 20 percent named it as the key enabler.

On the contrary, among single digit growth companies, culture was viewed as a barrier to developing leaders by more than a third of the companies, with 15 percent ranking it as the number one barrier.

Among survey questions that studied ?Employee Attitudes at Double-digit growth companies as compared to other companies?:

Pretty significant.

So as a leader, if you wish to grow in double digits, ?focus on combining culture, strategy, performance management, development, and senior leadership support in a way that enables your people to consistently deliver strong financial returns.?

There was a similar study byWatson Wyatt in 2001 that focused on HR Practices. It identified the following HR Practices to increase shareholder value by as much as 47%.

Movies primarily allow for teaching left brain concepts with right brain simulation. The visual impact offers insights on human behavior under various situations that is retained for a longer time. If movies promote discussion with colleagues, allow for people to share their learnings and examine ways in which they can be translated into behaviours that can be applied at the work place, then it can become an extremely powerful tool of learning.

While there are a number of movies that present great management lessons, Apollo 13, perhaps ranks the highest among the most memorable of movies that offer lessons that can be applied back at the workplace.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem” is a line ingrained among many who have watched the movie “Apollo 13″

It was the year 1970, nearly a year after Apollo 11 had safely landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Two days into the mission, 320,000 kilometres from Earth, one of the two oxygen tanks broke down and the crew started losing oxygen and power supply.

With the crippled space craft still hurtling its way to the moon, the team at the ground under the leadership of Flight Director Eugene Kranz had to take some critical decisions to bring with three men on board, safely back to earth.

Does the team at the ground succeed in bringing the three men on the spacecraft back? How does the team work under extreme conditions of stress, with the burden of the knowledge that three lives depend on them. The team also know that the supply of oxygen and power were limited and what would work in the space-craft was not known.

Read some of the lessons the movie “Apollo 13″ holds for leaders and for people at the workplace in this issue of HR News and Views

I was reading Subroto Bagchi?s Co-Founder and CEO of Mindtree Consulting article on the bosses who influenced him in last month?s issue of Business World.

Some lessons from the article that stayed with me:

Incidentally,Mindtree?s logo was designed by Chetan K S, a student of the Spastics Society of Karnataka, India who has motor and speech disability.

To read it in Subroto Bagchi?s own words, read Making of MindTree - I Page 25

Have you had a boss you has been an inspiring force in your career?

Do write in through the Contact Us and I would be happy to compile it and make it available in a later posting

According to IBM?s CEO, Sam Palmisano, ?In a hyperconnected world, IBM’s clients needed to become “on-demand” companies, their every business process exquisitely calibrated to respond instantly to whatever got thrown at them. And to help them, IBM would have to do exactly the same thing.

In a survey done to find out the competencies required by the leaders to meet this new strategy, it was found that almost a third of the competencies identified were entirely different. Competencies such as ?Collaborative Influence?, ?Thinking horizontally? are among them.

To find out what the leader?s at IBM are going to be graded upon, read about ?IBM?s Management Makeover? in this month?s issue of Fast Company.

Consider the following situations:

Steve Gomo, a mid level manager was asked to present the capital budget to the Hewlett-Packard Board of Directors because the executive who normally did it was not available at that time. Both Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were known to be tough taskmasters. During the meeting, while Gomo did a great job, he also ended up disagreeing with Hewlett on a process followed in handling financial data. At the end of the presentation, the only thing Gomo wanted to do was gather his papers and exit as quickly as possible. Just before he left, Packard stood up and said “I want it recorded in the minutes of the meeting
that this was one of the best presentation on capital budget that this board has ever received,” shaking Gomo’s hand.

Gomo, glowing inside, made his exit, shares this about that incident. “There was no reason for Packard to do that- except to make a young kid feel good. I will never forget that as long as I live.”

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks got a call in the middle of the night that three of his employees had been murdered in a botched robbery in Washington, DC. Stunned, he immediately chartered a plane and arrived in DC before nine that morning. He personally took charge of the situation, stayed for a week, visiting the store, working with the police, meeting with the victims’ families, attending the funerals.

Sridhar, CEO of XID Technologies Pte Ltd has this to say about one of his former bosses at Siemens in Germany, ?he used to speak with each and every of his 800 employees between 1st December and Christmas to understand them holistically ? and solve a few of their personal problems during the year. People were ready to go through troubled times with him due to the ?trust? he had created, always accepting if he made a mistake and working towards a common goal. From the gate-keeper to CEO, all the employees were IP focused and created more than 3800 patents and commercialized about 1000 of them.?

Read More here

“It is tough to go against the wave, but at least you reach where nobody else can.” Dr. Kiran Bedi

Before starting to write about her, I googled her name (the de rigueur) and was pleasantly surprised to see that she had a website. So I will not go into the details of her numerous awards, her career but try to share with you why I find her a remarkable leader.

Kiran Bedi stands out in her ability and conviction to do what is right and not succumb to pressure. Before International recognition and the awards,life as an officer in the Indian Police Service Officer (the first women to reach that position) certainly would not have been easy. Yet, she chose to make a difference and contribute to any job she was assigned and to whichever place she was posted. Be it in her early years as a Traffic Police Officer, when she earned the nick name ‘Crane Bedi’ for her liberal use of cranes to remove wrongly parked vehicles (including that of then prime Minister, Indira Gandhi). To take decisions that may go against the thinking of senior management is something that many of us contemplate in our jobs but hesitate for fear of repercussions.

Other qualities that make her stand out as a Remarkable Leader:

• Deepa