Leadership development gives employees everything they need to build up their leadership skills, no matter what level of the organization they’re at. This can give organizations a steady supply of ready-made leaders when leadership positions open up and empower more employees to lead projects they contribute to without being in an official leadership role.
Let’s explore leadership development, how it fits with other HR strategies, and the impact it can have on your organization.
Key takeaways
- Leadership development cultivates leadership skills at various levels of the organization.
- Building skills beyond leadership is essential for developing effective leaders.
- Strategic HR plays a key role in upskilling employees and training new leaders.
- A successful leadership development strategy keeps organizations competitive.
- Building a leadership development program can be done by identifying opportunities for development, setting metrics to track improvement, and guiding employees in their development.
What is leadership development?
In its Handbook of Leadership Development, the Center for Creative Leadership defines leader development as “the expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes.”
Leadership development is the actual strategy an organization uses to build this capacity at scale, rather than on an ad-hoc, one-on-one basis. This practice isn’t limited to formal leadership or executive roles. It’s about building leadership skills throughout the organization.
Leadership vs. management
At 15Five, we believe effective management is foundational to great leadership. When managers are supported, they drive the very outcomes that define organizational success: high engagement, strong retention, and aligned performance
The biggest difference between leadership and management is in the contrast between day-to-day operations and vision. Leadership is about finding, developing, and sharing the organization’s larger vision. It’s about driving alignment through inspiration. Conversely, management is about ensuring direct reports have what they need to complete their day-to-day tasks and giving them guidance when needed.
Key components of leadership development
Building leadership skills throughout your organization goes beyond just sharing the right business books and setting up self-evaluations. Here are some essential components of every leadership development strategy:
- Training: Employees need dedicated training to build up their leadership skills.
- Mentorship: Pairing potential leaders with proven mentors gives them the confidence they need to grow.
- Feedback: Tools like 15Five enable structured check-ins, goal tracking, and performance conversations to create an ongoing dialogue between managers and their teams, not just periodic reviews.
- Self-awareness: This quality is important in leadership, and it’s especially true when employees are still building up their leadership skills.
- Experiential learning: With integrated feedback and OKRs, platforms like 15Five help connect day-to-day work with strategic objectives, making learning both practical and measurable.
What skills do employees need to be effective leaders?
Leadership is a multi-faceted discipline. Here are the skills your leadership development strategy should focus on:
- Communication: Every employee can benefit from being a better communicator, but this is especially important for leaders. No matter how great their vision for a team, it won’t accomplish much if they can’t communicate it accurately.
- Emotional intelligence (EQ): Awareness of your and other people’s feelings and knowing what to do with them fall within emotional intelligence. Poor leaders fly off the handle without realizing what they’re doing. Great leaders manage both their own emotions and those of others.
- Decision-making: Leaders need the ability to make the right decision at the right time, as well as knowing when a quick, good decision outperforms a great decision made too late.
- Vision and strategic thinking: Great leaders can look at the big picture, find the direction they want to go in, and turn that into a strategy they can articulate with the rest of the organization.
- Adaptability: Employees who aim to become leaders need to learn that all plans go wrong in some way and how to adapt when they do.
- Collaboration and teamwork: Leaders inspire their teams to come together to reach greater heights, and they’re experts at finding the best way for team members to collaborate.
While these are the most common leadership skills, they’re not necessarily relevant for all leaders. A department head or executive will need to demonstrate more strategic thinking than a team lead, while the latter will focus on developing adaptability and communication skills. That said, for leaders who want to eventually rise to the executive level, building all these skills early is crucial.
How strategic HR impacts organizational leadership development
HR has become much more than just an administrative function. HR leaders are becoming important strategic partners, sitting at the table for some of the organization’s most important decisions and helping to guide overall strategy. That’s what strategic HR is in a nutshell; focusing on aligning HR efforts with the organization’s overall goals.
Strategic HR is crucial in leadership development for these reasons:
- Aligning leadership development with organizational strategy: It’s one thing for your organization to make a commitment to developing leadership skills, but you need to ensure these efforts align with your broader vision. HR is an essential partner in this.
- Identifying leadership gaps: Do you know where your organization needs leadership most desperately? HR teams have access to tons of performance and hiring data that can be used to determine exactly where new leaders can most benefit the organization.
- Integrating leadership development into HR practices: HR leads initiatives aimed at improving performance across your workforce, and leadership development fits perfectly with these efforts. Performance management efforts can include discussions of leadership goals and paths to reach them. Employee engagement can be improved by finding employees who are interested in leadership roles and helping them build those skills. And these are just a few examples.
- HR involvement in manager training: HR knows where managers are struggling and what the business needs, but they don’t have to build training programs from scratch. Partnering with a proven manager resource lets HR focus on the big picture while managers get the support they actually need.
- Leading change: Strategic HR is all about finding opportunities for optimizing every aspect of an organization’s workforce in a way that contributes to its broader goals. That means HR leaders are often the first to identify the need for a leadership development plan while being best-placed to prove its effectiveness.
The business impact of leadership development
Leadership development increases leadership skills throughout your organization, which can have major impacts on its performance, its adaptability, and more. Here’s how.
Improves the organization’s performance
Organizations thrive or die based on the decisions leaders make at every level. Not every decision can single-handedly change your organization’s trajectory, but its growth depends on consistently making better decisions. By developing strategic skills for every leader, you ensure the organization’s strategy is better reflected in the day-to-day of each department and each team.
Increases employee engagement and retention
For many employees, having an opportunity to work towards an eventual leadership position can make them feel more engaged with your mission and keep them with your organization longer. Few people are satisfied by staying in the same role for years at a time, and increases in pay alone won’t guarantee they’ll stay with you. You’ll keep people aligned and engaged by systematically building up leadership skills throughout the organization.
Attracts better talent
Top talent doesn’t join an organization where they’ll stagnate in the same position. They want to find a place where they can grow and maximize their potential. With a robust leadership development program, you can show your dedication to helping every employee grow with you, especially if you have examples of this growth with current employees.
Facilitates succession planning
A leader’s departure can single-handedly stifle an organization’s growth, especially if you don’t have a clear plan for replacing them. Recruiting for executive roles can take months, making day-to-day operations needlessly challenging as you try and fill leadership gaps. By building up leaders within the organization, you can effectively plan ahead, whether you want to have an employee step up as an interim leader or fully promote them to the new role.
Improves company culture
Leadership development leads to a company culture where every employee feels more involved in strategic decisions, which helps eliminate the divide between leadership and the rest of the workforce. By fostering leadership skills at every level, you’ll also give everyone the tools to better understand strategic decisions and carry them out.
6 steps for building an effective leadership development program
No matter the size of your organization, you can build your own leadership development program in a few simple steps.
Step 1: Identify organizational needs
Where does your organization most need leadership? Are you finding that leadership skills are low across the board or only with specific departments? A needs assessment can help you identify any potential skill gaps among leadership and find teams where more leaders are needed.
Step 2: Define clear objectives and outcomes
What should your leadership development program accomplish once it’s in place? And how does it align with the organization’s overall strategy? Having clear goals before you begin—and ensuring they’re measurable with KPIs or similar metrics—will guide your efforts at every stage.
Step 3: Tailor the program for different leadership levels
Emerging leaders, mid-level managers, and senior executives don’t all have the same needs. As part of your strategy, tailor your program to each of these levels. Senior executives might only need to focus on a few leadership skills, while emerging leaders may need more dedicated training across all aspects of leadership.
Step 4: Incorporate a mix of learning methods
Not everyone learns the same way, and having a more holistic approach to learning can help all employees learn more effectively. Give your program a healthy mix of formal training, mentorship opportunities, regular coaching, peer learning, and on-the-job experiences.
Step 5: Leverage technology
How do you plan to track your leadership development program’s progress? And will you be gathering training content from multiple sources? Make promoting leadership throughout your organization easier with a dedicated tool like 15Five.
15Five is a performance management platform that’ll help you identify skill gaps throughout your leadership team, build your leadership development program, and even source training content to upskill employees. Book a demo to see what 15Five can do for your leaders.
Step 6: Evaluate and iterate
Consistent improvement is just as important for your program as it is for the people participating in it. Rigorously evaluate your program’s performance, ask employees for feedback, and make changes as needed.
Pendo, a software experience management provider, grew from 200 to 1,000 employees and had to onboard 163 managers, all while striving to reduce employee turnover. With 15Five, the team at Pendo streamlined the onboarding process for all these managers, which included developing their leadership skills. Read their story.
Lead from the front
Leadership development isn’t just about preparing for the next promotion. It’s about shaping the kind of culture and performance every employee contributes to. Strategic HR teams using 15Five empower leaders at every level to guide with clarity, coach with purpose, and drive results that matter.
Upskilling leaders at your organization? Check out our additional resources on leadership development and strategic HR:
Investing in leadership development doesn’t just turn managers into leaders, it makes your organization more resilient to change while ensuring everyone makes more strategic decisions. That leads to better performance across the board and more engaged teams.
