Team Leadership:

Advancing the Professional's Development part 1 of 3

"Leadership principles are true and unchanging."

"...various principles may need additional attention in various cultures based on history, values, etc."

A presentation made by Brit Boone on April 17, 2005 at the Business and Career Conference hosted by The Exchange.

Research has shown that even for upper level management there are a number of issues critical to management development. According to an ongoing study conducted by the Ken Blanchard Companies, the top management issue is leadership. Other important areas include issues concerning the development of people. The findings are similar in the employee development challenges.

Ken Blanchard Companies' Survey Findings - 3 Year Overview
		2003	2004	2005
Management Challenges
1.	Developing Potential Leaders	74%	58%	58%
2.	Selecting and Retaining Key Talent	55%	55%	53%
4.	Creating and engaged workforce	47%	48%	48%
7.	Succession planning	48%	36%	34%
Employee Development Challenges
1.	Manager / supervisor skills	78%	61%	61%
2.	Customer relationship skills	51%	48%	44%
3.	Interpersonal communication skills	53%	56%	40%
4.	Team building skills	46%	44%	38%

(Complete research results are available from the Ken Blanchard Companies.)

There are two types of development: hard skills and soft skills. The hard skills contain anything that is factual. For example, two plus two is four. Once a person learns this fact they do not need to continue studying or developing to know the fact better. The hard skills category might include objective areas such as most of the sciences, financial reporting, procedures in a company, etc. It is essential that people have the hard skills to do their job. What we find is that there is an additional level of need beyond being able to function with proficiency in the hard skills. According to various research including that conducted by Mr. Blanchard’s organization* as well as research conducted by Global Hope Partners, the person that excels in business is the one who has the requisite hard skills and excels in the soft skills areas. For that reason, the area of soft skills will be addressed herein. Specifically, the soft skill area we will be addressing is the number one area for development of managers--leadership.

What we find is that for entry-level people, leadership is hinted at. Employers are looking for personnel with increased levels of self-confidence and improved presentation of self just to name a few areas that imply the need for leadership development. Regarding people at the mid to upper levels of management, it is clear that leadership quickly emerges as a priority issue.

Many are familiar with Jack Welch, formerly the CEO of General Electric for more than 20 years. In large part due to Mr. Welch’s leadership, GE was ranked by Fortune this year as the ninth largest company in the world. Though GE has an enormous range of products including lighting, appliances, power-generation systems, plastics, jet-propulsion systems, etc., Mr. Welch placed his primary focus in another area. When he took over GE, competition was tight, margins were not growing, revenues were not growing as quickly as desired. However instead of focusing entirely on growing sales or cutting expenses, he invested $46 million into building a new training center. He made the case to his board that though they already had a training center, it was run-down and not a desirable place to be for top-level management in GE. In preparing to make the case to the board, Mr. Welch crossed out previous projections of return on the investment and wrote “Infinite.” His claim was that developing people brought the corporation returns that were beyond the scope of being quantifiable.

Leadership principles are true and unchanging. However, it has been my experience that various principles may need additional attention in various cultures based on history, values, etc. At present, we will address three of those areas that are of great importance for Russia.

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