Developmental Leadership

Best Practice Number 1: Become a developmental leader who not only inspires employees to perform at peak levels and continually improve, but also equips, enables, and empowers them to do so.

Whenever people come together to accomplish a specific mission and shared goals, leadership is needed. In any kind of organization—business, government, military, or non-profit—the difference between excellence and mediocrity is often determined by the quality of the leadership provided. Consequently, executives, managers, and supervisors should commit to becoming effective leaders. However, just becoming an effective leader is not enough for those who want to equip, enable, and empower employees for peak performance. Organizational leaders who want peak performance and continual improvement from employees must become developmental leaders.
DEVELOPMENTAL LEADERSHIP DEFINED

To understand the concept of developmental leadership, one must first understand leadership in general because developmental leadership is leadership taken to a higher level. Leadership in the workplace can be defined as follows:

It is significant that the term inspiring is used here rather than motivating. While it is true that leaders must be good motivators, inspiring people is a higher level undertaking than motivating them. Human motivation is fleeting. Like the gasoline in the tank of a car, it burns up quickly and must be replenished constantly. Inspiration, on the other hand, can be permanent. People who can inspire employees to make a total commitment to peak performance are leaders, but they are not necessarily developmental leaders. To become a developmental leader, one must take the next step and equip, enable, and empower employees to fulfill the commitment they have made to peak performance and continual improvement. Employees making a commitment is one thing, but being able to fulfill the commitment is quite another. With this distinction stated, developmental leadership can be defined as follows:

Being an effective leader is about consistently providing an inspiring example. Being a developmental leader is about consistently providing an inspiring example and then teaching, training, coaching, mentoring, and otherwise developing employees so that they are fully equipped, enabled, and empowered to follow that example. THE EIGHT Cs OF DEVELOPMENTAL LEADERSHIP

Many people think that leadership is about image, dressing for success, and charisma. I can no longer count the number of times—but the number is high—that I have shared the podium at a professional conference with another speaker whose central theme was: If you want to be a leader, you must look like one. These image consultants typically focus on such topics as dressing for success, how to look taller, compensating for baldness, developing charisma, how to shake hands, and various other image enhancement strategies. If you can believe image consultants, the contents of a book do not matter as long as the cover is attractive. It is certainly true that an attractive cover is more likely than an unattractive cover to convince someone to open a book, so I do not discount the importance of image. However, I believe the concept is over sold. After all, once a book is opened it must have substance. No amount of glitzy artwork on the cover will convince people to read a book that has no substance, is poorly written, or is just plain boring. It is the same with leadership. No matter how polished one’s outer appearance is, the inner substance—or lack of it—will eventually show through. In fact, when people are asked what characteristics they want to see in leaders, a much different picture emerges than the one painted by the prophets of charisma and glitz. I conducted such a survey as part of the research for my book Effective Leadership (Prentice Hall) and the results were revealing. They showed that people are more inclined to follow those who consistently exemplify several specific characteristics that I call the Eight Cs of Developmental Leadership: • Caring • Character • Communication • Clarity • Commitment • Courage • Credibility • Competence Each of these characteristics is important to executives, managers and supervisors who are committed to becoming developmental leaders capable of equipping, enabling, and empowering employees for peak performance and continual improvement. CARING AND DEVELOPMENTAL LEADERSHIP

There are executives, managers, and supervisors who care only about the work their teams are responsible for. They care nothing for the employees who do the work. Then there are those who care greatly for their employees but little about the work they are responsible for. In both cases, these organizational leaders have their priorities out of balance. To inspire employees to peak performance and continual improvement, leaders must care about them as well as the work to be done.

The importance of caring for the work as well as the employees who do it cannot be over emphasized. Employees will not wholeheartedly follow organizational leaders who do not care about them. Of course, executives, managers, and supervisors may be able to coerce employees into carrying out their demands, but coercion is not leadership. In fact, coercion is more likely to result in reluctant compliance than a commitment to peak performance and continual improvement. Reluctant compliance means doing just enough to get by but not enough to excel. It is the opposite of the wholehearted commitment organizational leaders need from employees if they hope to see them achieve peak performance and continual improvement.

The best leaders are those who can inspire employees to make a total and willing commitment to peak performance and continual improvement; to put their hearts and minds into doing the best job they can possibly do. This is important because well led employees who put their hearts and minds into their work will outperform those who just reluctantly comply out of fear of coercion. Because of this, executives, managers, and supervisors must show that they care about not just the work to be done, but the employees who do the work. If organizational leaders do not care about employees, why should employees care about them or the work they are responsible for doing.

Caring leaders exemplify several important traits that make employees more willing to follow them. These traits are: 1) honesty, 2) empathy, 3) sincere interest, 4) patience 5) a participatory approach to decision making, and 6) servanthood/stewardship. To become developmental leaders, executives, managers, and supervisors must recognize the importance of these traits, internalize them, and apply them consistently when interacting with employees.