Effective leadership (part 1)

Recently, I received an email from the HR director of a company whose leadership development program I have been leading since spring.

I had just conducted a workshop for some senior leaders, and this director asked me for some feedback on how the workshop had gone and how the participants had progressed. This was only our second workshop, and I had already begun to sense how serious this corporation was about truly developing its leaders; this email was more confirmation that this was indeed the case. Thus, I happily acquiesced, impressed by the significance that the company placed on leadership development.

This company, a European company that is over 100 years old, has begun leadership development programs in Europe, Asia and the Americas. I designed the program myself and also provide coaching and feedback to the individuals in addition to my workshop facilitation: thus, the company trusted its facilitator enough to give me authority in all aspects of the program.

I believe that Korean corporations can learn valuable lessons here in terms of their approach to leadership development.

Korean corporations currently tend to focus on short-term development of their leaders, such as unconnected, one-time training; leadership competencies chosen unilaterally by the company for recently-promoted people; one-sided attempts to solve organizational problems by correcting certain leaders; or concentrating too much on new and trendy leadership concepts without questioning their actual relevance to the company.

These sorts of approaches cannot bring about a satisfactory level of positive effects because one-way diagnoses will not bring about genuine reflection and voluntary change.

A company’s habits of leadership development become fossilized and inherited as a culture within the corporation, which significantly affects the kinds of leaders that the company can produce.