Write a minimum of 200 words response to each post below. Reference minimum of 2 articles per post.
You will see the original post, which the two posts below responded to, and you will respond to the response posts 1 and 2.
Original question:
Analyze how the effectiveness of global leadership development is evaluated in your organization or one you’ve worked for in the past. Provide recommendations based on our readings and your own research.
Post 1
For the week five discussion board, I focused on the National Institutes of Health (NIH), mainly because I found a really interesting, and concise, step-by-step guide for succession planning. This guide also included at table, or a 9-box approach, that indicated the criticality and vulnerability of positions. The NIH Human Resource Department has a very informative and thorough website, which I hoped would provide information on how it, as a group of institutions, measured the effectiveness of their leadership development programs. I’ve learned that they export, or sell, these leadership courses to medical practitioners globally, which may be one of the reasons they do not have as much information on assessing the value of leadership development programs as I would have hoped.
Much like Kristine, I thought I’d look into how we can describe and assess programs and then I can bring it back to the limited information I’ve found on the NIH. I liked how one of our readings this week in the context of measuring the effectiveness of a leadership development program as it relates to the costs and investment in a person or position. In the conclusions by Edwards & Turnbull (2013), their approach requires both a macro and micro view of interconnections and networks that exist and the extent in which they’ve been influenced. Additionally, in an article I found, the link between measuring the return on investment with leadership development was assessed. In many cases, there wasn’t enough tailoring of leadership programs to the business needs of an organization or company, which can make for less productive outcomes as well as difficulty in measuring the effectiveness (MeInert, 2018). In another example, a blog from the Harvard Business Learning, focus should be on the impact of a program, not the “proof” that a leadership development program was successful (Clark, 2018). In both of these complementary examples, the authors stressed the length of time needed to allow leadership to begin synthesizing materials and examples into their operational approach, a minimum of nine months was recommended as an adequate period of time (Meinert, 2018). Other, maybe more traditional Human Resources tools were also recommended, such as 360 degree reviews, measurement of output, time, and quality, as well as reporting on the perceived tangible and intangible benefits of the leadership training or development programs (Meinert, 2018). From our text this week, Mendenhall & Reiche (2018), the use of a role typology could provide some value when comparing the way in which the roles (or individuals) may change based on investments of a leadership development program, if a specific segment of the typology is determined to be more beneficial within an organization.
The NIH Human Resource website has an area dedicated to workforce planning and specifically, workforce analytics. In this section, there are sample workforce data collection and reporting components, as well as data interpretation and training materials (NIH, n.d.). Unlike the detailed succession planning information, the data provided here on the analytics behind their training programs and other career enhancement opportunities is basic. It includes more of the traditional Human Resource metrics, such as retention, organizational growth/promotion, satisfaction surveys, etc., which may be limited in scope to measuring the effectiveness of their dedicated programs.
I’ve learned this that it seems difficult for companies or organizations to measure, and publish results, of leadership development programs. A few days ago, Brandon and I interviewed the Leadership Academy director from Wix, the company we have been focusing on for this course. I don’t want to give away any information prior to our upcoming presentation, but I can say now that even when companies seem to have a great foundation and development programs, the assessment process may be much harder or less mature to define. In our case, it seems to be very dependent on the culture.
I look forward to seeing what I may have missed and how you identified useful measurement techniques of companies.
References:
Clark, L. (2018, September, 4). Measuring the impact of leadership development: Getting back to basics. Harvard Business Corporate Learning. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/measuring-the-impact-of-leadership-development-getting-back-to-basics/
Edwards, G., & Turnbull, S. (2013). A cultural approach to evaluating leadership development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 15(1), 46-60.
Meinert, D. (2018, April 20). How to measure the ROI of leadership development. Society for Human Resource Management. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0518/pages/how-to-measure-the-roi-of-leadership-development.aspx
Mendenhall, M. E. & Reiche, S. B. (2018). Typology of Global Leadership Roles. In Mendenhall, M. E., Osland, J. S., Bird, A., Oddou, G. R., Stevens, M. J., Maznevski, M. L., & Stahl, G. K. (Eds). Global Leadership: Research, Practice and Development (pp.391-406). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
NIH, n.d. National Institutes of Health. Workforce Planning. https://hr.nih.gov/workforce/workforce-planning/search-toolkit-hr-area
Post 2
One of the major tools to aids in the evaluation of our developmental progress at the Department of the Navy and likely DoD wide is the use of Individual Development Plans (IDP’s). IDP’s allow employees to outline their career progression by clearly stating their short term (1 to 3 year) goals and long term (3 or more year) goals. They also allow employees to plan out their desired training and development coursework and designate mentorships or other programs they wish to engage in. In relation to the broader sense of DoD Civilian Leadership Development programming, DCPAS (n.d.) reviews the leadership development competencies against IDP’s and employee evaluations every five years and will complete a realignment when necessary to ensure that the competencies are in line with the needs of the organization and the needs of those leading and working within the organization.
When I think about recommendations the organization should consider I come to the diversity issues of unconscious bias, particularly related to generational gaps. For the broader DoD organization, it is crucial that they are intentional about considering what appeals to younger generations entering the workforce. Millennials specifically are dedicated to their growth and development in the name of happiness (Rykun, 2021). Their goal is to be happy with the difference they are making in their career while simultaneously learning and being a part of impactful projects. Each generation is rooted in its’ own culture and DoD leader development evaluation should embrace this. In an example study, Edwards and Turnball (2013) indicated their initiative to conduct a qualitative study where they studied the cultural norms, language, organizational stories, etc. of the leaders at a U.K. university. In the end, a reformed program which allowed leaders to glean what they needed but also meet the organizational needs was developed. It is my recommendation that the DoD and other organizations who may encounter dilemmas with generational gaps, retention etc. to implement evaluation initiatives which dig deeper into the generational cultural difference in the workplace so that they may develop programming to embrace and nurture these differences rather than pretend they don’t exist.
References
Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Services (DCPAS). (n.d.). Talent Management and Succession Planning. https://www.dcpas.osd.mil/executiveresources/talentmanagementsuccession
Edwards, G., & Turnbull, S. (2013). A cultural approach to evaluating leadership development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 15(1), 46-60.
Rykun, E. (2021, October 10). Millennial Employee Retention: 5 Best Strategies to Win Them Over. GoSkills.com. https://www.goskills.com/Leadership-Management/Resources/Millennial-employee-retention
