A research-based, time-tested, classic guideline for developing managers, the 70-20-10 rule emerged from over 30 years of our Lessons of Experience research, which explores how executives learn, grow, and change over the course of their careers.

According to the 70-20-10 rule, leaders learn and grow from 3 types of experience, following a ratio of:

• 70% challenging experiences and assignments
• 20% developmental relationships
• 10% coursework and training

The underlying assumption of the 70-20-10 rule is that leadership can be learned — that leaders are made, not born.

We believe that today, more than ever, a manager’s ability and willingness to learn from experience is the foundation for leading with impact.

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Go Beyond the 70-20-10 Rule With Experience-Driven Development

The 70-20-10 framework seems simple, but you need to take it a step further. All experiences aren’t created equal.

Which experiences contribute the most to learning and growth? And what specific leadership lessons can be learned from each experience?

To help you (and your boss or direct reports) match your learning needs to the experiences most likely to provide that learning, we’ve researched and mapped out the links between experiences and lessons learned.

We’ve studied on-the-job learning and experience-driven talent development extensively, and we even extended our long-standing findings (rooted in U.S.-based corporations) to a global audience. Our researchers collaborated with organizations in India, China, and Singapore to extend what we know about how leadership is learned.

Sources of Leadership Learning From Experiences

Our research across China, India, Singapore, and the U.S. has found that there are important similarities and differences in the way leadership is learned from experiences. But, from our studies of these 4 countries, 5 universally important sources of leadership learning stand out:

1. Bosses and superiors
2. Turnarounds
3. Increases in job scope
4. Horizontal moves
5. New initiatives

Additionally, each respective country draws from 2 unique primary sources of leadership:

• China: personal experiences and mistakes
• India: personal experiences and crossing cultures
• Singapore: stakeholder engagements and crises
• United States: mistakes and ethical dilemmas

Among the leadership lessons learned from experiences, all 4 countries rank these 3 as universally important: managing direct reports, self-awareness, and executing effectively.

To adapt and grow, leaders need to be constantly involved in new experiences and challenges that foster learning. Some of these new opportunities will come their way through new jobs, crises, or significant challenges.

But it isn’t necessary to change jobs to find powerful learning experiences in the workplace. And in any job situation, leaders need to seek out or strengthen relationships with bosses, mentors, and peers that will contribute to their own growth in leadership.

At CCL, our work with the 70-20-10 framework rule reveals the power of putting experience at the center of talent management. It’s an approach that emphasizes the pivotal role of challenging assignments in attracting, developing, and retaining talent — and at the same time, highlights how the power of on-the-job experience is enhanced when surrounded by developmental relationships and formal learning opportunities.

In fact, our research on the 70-20-10 rule shows that challenging assignments are the primary source of key learning experiences in managerial careers.

The Amplifier Effect of the 10% for Coursework & Training in the Classic 70-20-10 Framework

What about coursework and training? Although it’s seen as contributing just 10% to a leader’s development, well-designed coursework and leadership training programs have an amplifier effect — clarifying, supporting, and boosting the other 90% of your learning. A program module that incorporates tools and experiential practice sessions can help managers become more effective learners and leaders.

The 70-20-10 rule reveals that individuals tend to learn 70% of their knowledge from challenging experiences and assignments, 20% from developmental relationships, and 10% from coursework and training. Skilled training specialists can help an organization establish a shared knowledge base and align its members with respect to a common leadership vision and the 70-20-10 rule.

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There’s no magic bullet to ensure that people apply what they learn. But there are steps you can take to create leadership programs, experiences, and support mechanisms that improve learning transfer and support lasting growth and behavior change. Over time, new skills, perspectives, or behaviors can be reinforced, until they become unconsciously and competently put to use.

As a professional interested in learning and development, you may be in a position to acknowledge and help overcome the challenges of learning in your organizations. You are likely in a position to influence supervisors and executives, as well as potential participants, in leadership development efforts. You may also have a role in creating and supporting a learning environment.

The Challenges of Improving Learning Transfer

Individuals — and organizations — face significant challenges in their efforts to apply and integrate learning and develop the leadership capacity they need. These challenges include the following:

• Formal training is just one aspect of learning.
• Leadership — and its development — is always dependent on the people involved and the context.
• Leaders are already overloaded.
• Learning isn’t always aligned with what matters most.
• The learning culture clashes with the operational culture.

Given these realities, though, you can still begin to help leaders and your organization overcome challenges to learning transfer — and earn greater benefit from leadership development investments.

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How to Improve Learning Transfer for Leadership Training

Learning is a process and works best when it’s viewed as more than merely a program. Leadership development can include formal or classroom-based training — but it’s just one piece of the learning puzzle that must have corresponding pieces back on the job.

Research supports the value of extending learning into the workplace and connecting the workplace into formal learning. Most executives cite on-the-job experiences as the key events that shaped them as leaders and taught them important skills, behaviors, or mindsets. In fact, research shows that senior executives distribute their sources of key developmental experiences as 70% on-the-job challenges, 20% other people, and 10% formal coursework and training. At CCL, we use the 70-20-10 “rule” as a guideline rather than a formula for creating learning experiences. Yet, we know that experiences that focus on creating learning in all 3 categories can boost learning transfer and accelerate development.

Learning transfer is also a social process. Learning — and the desired performance that comes from learning — doesn’t take place in isolation. The work context, including the level of support from role models, mentors, peers, coaches, and bosses, has a powerful impact on turning lessons learned into leadership in action.

Drawing on our understanding of and experience with adult learners, we produced a white paper on making learning stick and explaining our 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer. This framework informs our leadership development work — and can be applied to development programs or initiatives within your organization.

Our 3 x 3 x 3 Model for Learning Transfer Helps Make Learning Stick in Development Initiatives

Our 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer and making leadership learning stick is:

• Think in 3 Phases: Learning isn’t a one-time event, but rather it occurs over time, as explained more below.
  • Prepare
  • Engage, and
  • Apply.
• Use 3 Strategies: Use at least 3 different approaches to provide a chance to deepen and reinforce learning.
  • A key leadership challenge,
  • In-class accountability partners, and
  • At-work learning partners.
• Involve 3 Partners: They each have to take responsibility to ensure learning happens and isn’t a passive activity.
  • The learner or participant,
  • The organization, and
  • The training provider.

This 3 x 3 x 3 model for learning transfer helps organizations that need to look at organizational change and leadership development in large-scale and deeply-personalized ways. It also outlines the critical steps that are required of the leadership development sponsor in the organization.

Improve Learning Transfer by Designing Development in 3 Phases: Prepare, Engage & Apply

For making learning stick, what happens before and after the formal part of a program or development effort is just as important as the program content and delivery. This is true whether the initiative is long or short, in-person or virtual, ongoing or one-time.

At CCL, we design leadership development keeping the 3 phases of “Prepare, Engage, and Apply” in mind, to help both individual leaders and organizations get the most out of their investment in leadership development.

The Prepare Phase

As soon as a person is tapped for or has chosen to participate in a formal leadership training effort, the development process begins. Consider:

• How might you help participants start learning right away?
• How do you get them thinking about their leadership experiences, challenges, and needs?
• How do you help them connect to the purpose, content, and value of their development experience?

This is a time when boss support is crucial. The Prepare phase involves good communication about logistics and expectations — but also begins to build an emotional connection to personalize the learning experience. It’s a chance to engage and excite the learner — rather than approaching the process as another item on their to-do list. Research shows that participants begin to engage in a development experience when they’re able to make plans with a boss, mentor, or coach and discuss the support they’ll need and understand how the program will benefit them.

At CCL, we carefully prepare participants for their learning experiences in our leadership programs by providing guidelines for selecting raters and completing 360 leadership assessments, interviewing key stakeholders, selecting real-life challenges they’re facing to apply to course learning, and asking the learners and their colleagues to complete self-assessments and reflections on their leadership style and skills. Other activities during the Prepare phase could include asking participants to read material ahead of time or watch welcome videos from course faculty.

The Engage Phase

The content of a learning experience is important, but so is the way it’s presented. Listening to speakers and reading information is a passive learning process — and information is less likely to stick than processes that connect and engage each person through applied practice. So when designing leadership development initiatives, we always consider how we might create opportunities for guided practice and skill development throughout the program to help improve learning transfer.

At CCL, we ensure our learning experiences include a variety of ways to keep learners engaged, whether in a live, in-person setting or a virtual leadership program. We use a mix of activities such as skill-building, action learning, reflection, simulations, experiential activities, goal-setting, and coaching.

The Apply Phase

Reinforcement and support at work — away from the learning environment and over time — is also essential for learning transfer. How might you create opportunities for the participants to use and continue new learning at work and beyond? Most people need structures that foster the application of new concepts and practice of new skills to achieve lasting behavior change. To improve learning transfer, participants need support and encouragement to get past the initial awkward phase that accompanies the application of new skills.

At CCL, we often use tools such as action-learning projects tied to real work issues; conversations to help connect new learning to an existing business challenge; follow-up lessons through reading, discussion, toolkits, and job aids; and executive coaching focused on making progress on goals.

A Closing Word on Making Learning Stick

We know that leadership development can create competitive advantage, but organizations rightfully want to ensure that their investments pay off through sustained behavior change. With a better understanding of the 3x3x3 model for learning transfer, you can help your organization improve learning transfer and realize multiple benefits, including a greater impact from investments in development, more effective leaders, and a stronger organizational culture.

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These are the timeless, fundamental skills that are needed by leaders throughout every organization — and they’re important regardless of role, industry, or location.

But the way you address each core leadership skill, and what you need to learn or emphasize around it, will shift and change as you move into higher levels in the organizational hierarchy and encounter new leadership challenges.

So what exactly are these foundational leadership skills? While there may not be a single definitive list of core leadership skills, at CCL, we call the core leadership skills needed in every role and career “The Fundamental 4.”

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The Fundamental Leadership Skills Needed in Every Career

The “Fundamental 4” Leadership Skills

At CCL, we see the 4 core leadership skills as:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Communication
3. Influence
4. Learning Agility

1. Self-Awareness.

Simply put, knowing and leading yourself is key to becoming as effective as possible at leading others. But gaining greater self-awareness is anything but simple. It takes intentional effort to assess your natural abilities and development opportunities; determine how to maximize your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses; and recognize your own values, biases, and perspectives.

Taking the time to reflect on these things and consider how you’ve been shaped by your background and social identity builds greater self-awareness. And ultimately, greater awareness about yourself as a person will make you a better leader. If you’re not sure where to start, here are 4 sure-fire ways to boost your self-awareness.

2. Communication.

Communication is one of the most basic, across-the-board leadership skills that all of us need to develop and refine during our careers. “Communicating information and ideas” is consistently rated among the most important leadership competencies for leaders to be successful. Communication is also embedded in a number of other core leadership skills, including “leading employees,” “participative management,” and “building and mending relationships.”

Writing clearly, speaking with clarity, and active listening skills are all part of the core leader competencies related to effective communication. And as you move up the career ladder, communication in leadership roles expands to behaviors such as encouraging discussion, building trust, conveying vision and strategic intent, and pulling people along with you. At every leader level, communication is a critically important skill.

3. Influence.

Developing your influencing and leadership skills helps you to communicate your vision and goals, align the efforts of others, and build commitment from people at all levels.  

Influence can vary greatly at different levels in the organization. Knowing your stakeholders, or audience, is key. Do you need to influence your boss? Your peers? Direct reports? Customers? Each stakeholder has special concerns and issues, so consider the most appropriate ways of influencing others for your particular situation.

Early in your career, or in individual contributor roles, influence is about working effectively with people over whom you have no authority. It requires being able to present logical and compelling arguments and engaging in give-and-take. Later on, or in more senior-level or executive roles, influential leadership skills are focused more on steering long-range objectives, inspiration, and motivation. But throughout your career, influence remains a core leadership skill. Ultimately, influence allows you to get to the business of getting things done and achieving desirable outcomes.

4. Learning Agility.

To develop as leaders and as people, we need to be active, agile learners. Leaders need to be in a mode of constant learning, valuing and seeking out experiences to fuel leadership development, and recognizing when new behaviors, leadership skills, or attitudes are required — and accepting responsibility for developing those.

Learning agility is critical for career longevity, and it involves learning from mistakes, asking insightful questions, and being open to feedback. It also includes learning new skills quickly, being open to learning from hardships and taking advantage of opportunities to learn from heat experiences, and responding well to new situations.

For senior leaders, learning agility is also about inspiring learning in others and creating a learning culture throughout the organization.

Set your development as a leader on the right track by learning and practicing core leader competencies and the 4 foundational leadership skills of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility.

How to Grow the Core Leadership Skills

Developing Foundational Leadership Skills to Prepare for Every Role

If you’re thinking about adding the Fundamental 4 to your leadership skills list, keep in mind that each skill should be continuously improved, or “built on as you go.” To be effective, you must continue to develop, adapt, and strengthen these core leadership skills throughout your career — because the learning never ends. As you gain leadership skills in one area, you’ll find there’s even more to learn and practice in taking on new challenges and larger roles.

And if you think you’ve “skipped over” any of the Fundamental 4 core leadership skills during your career, you won’t be as effective, or fully develop your leadership potential. The good news is that, with concerted effort, you can still develop any skills you missed out on; it’s never too late for soft skill development!

If you can identify any leadership gaps or weaknesses in your leadership journey, you have the potential to learn, grow, and change. With the foundational leadership competencies of self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility as the core of your leadership skills development, you can be confident that you’re building capacity for new opportunities and the next level of responsibility — because these 4 are core leadership skills needed for everyone, and every career stage.

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Partner with us to help your organization develop the4  fundamental leadership skills. Our leadership fundamentals course: Lead 4 Success®, helps grow core leader competencies for foundational leadership skills development.

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Leadership is often described by what a leader does or the capabilities they have. Yet while the skills and behaviors of individual leaders are important, the true meaning of leadership is about what people do together. Said another way, everyone in an organization contributes to leadership.

So, what is leadership, really?

Based on our decades of pioneering research and experience, we define leadership as a social process that enables individuals to work together to achieve results that they could never achieve working alone.

Understanding how leadership works as a social process is important for several reasons:

• This definition of leadership avoids putting the entire weight of leadership on a few individuals — or limiting the leadership potential of others. Each person can discover and build upon their own leadership potential.
• This view of leadership is both realistic and adaptive — because the truth is, leadership doesn’t take place in isolation. It reflects, responds to, and shapes many different relationships, cultures, and systems.
• It’s also practical. When we define leadership as something that happens through the interactions among people with shared work, we have many opportunities to amplify leadership potential. Plus, in a group, a multitude of skills, perspectives, and expertise work together, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Any individual weaknesses are overshadowed by the strengths of others, and the team or group thrives — accomplishing more together than any one individual could ever do alone.

Management vs. Leadership: What’s the Difference?

The terms management and leadership are often used interchangeably, but there are distinct differences, so understanding the definition of leadership vs. management can be helpful. The key difference between them:

• Management is the process of planning and control, while
• Leadership is the process of people working to achieve something together.

Both management and leadership are important for accomplishing goals or making change happen, and depending on your role, you will need to draw on aspects of both to be effective.

What Do Managers Focus On?

Management roles and responsibilities involve planning, organizing, getting things done, and solving problems. Effective managers deploy resources and work through others to gain efficiency, quality, and accomplish goals. The focus is on day-to-day operations and tasks, and ensuring employees meet expectations for what they do and how they do it. A good manager delegates tasks effectively; ensures the team meets any deadlines and targets; manages resources; and addresses conflicts efficiently.

What Do Leaders Focus On?

Leadership roles and responsibilities are broader, and involve influencing, inspiring, and bringing out the best in others. Leaders see the big picture, help others connect the dots, and fill in gaps. Effective leaders motivate and influence teams to work towards achieving a common goal, and invest in the whole — the collective people and systems needed to succeed. They set a clear vision, encourage innovation, and support personal and professional growth in others.

Whether you’re currently leading people and projects, a team or department, or an entire organization, your role will involve aspects of both leadership and management, as both are important. And when facing a new challenge, goal, or situation, remember the definition of leadership as a collective process, and consider what’s most needed in the moment: leadership vs. management.

With that clarity, you can learn or apply the skills, behaviors, and capabilities most likely to solve a problem or support the desired shared outcome — and guide others to play their part, too.

Defining Leadership By Its Outcomes — Direction, Alignment, and Commitment

At CCL, our research distills leadership down to 3 essential elements: direction, alignment, and commitment, or DAC, in our widely recognized Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) model for leadership.

This leadership definition moves beyond a focus on leaders, followers, and shared goals, and instead puts the emphasis on the shared outcomes of leadership. If all 3 elements – direction, alignment, and commitment — are present, then we know that leadership is happening.

The actions, interactions, reactions, and exchanges of multiple people produce DAC together. And while organizational leaders play a vital role in setting the tone and making space for DAC to thrive, everyone is involved in creating DAC.

When you understand how essential direction, alignment, and commitment are for what leadership is, you can see why we define leadership as a social process — not a solo effort.

Our definition of leadership puts focus on what effective leadership does. It recognizes that everyone can learn, grow, and contribute to shared direction, alignment, and commitment. And it creates space for many different leadership styles, individual personalities, and cultures.

But what exactly do we mean when we say that leadership is the result of DAC?

Direction

Agreement Within the Group on Overall Goals

Direction is a shared answer to the question, where are we going? It’s an agreement on what a team or organization wants to achieve together and serves as a guide for setting shared goals.

With a collective sense of clear direction, everyone’s time and energy go where they matter most. People know what to say yes and no to, and where to spend resources. They can see how their individual efforts fit into larger objectives.

Setting direction is an essential part of what leadership is, because it requires much more than just announcing a business target or even articulating a vision; it’s about purpose-driven leadership that creates clarity and inspires and motivates others.

Alignment

Coordinated Work Within the Group

While direction is where we’re going, alignment is how we get there.

With alignment, each person understands their role and how it fits with the work of their colleagues. Overall, there’s a sense of coordination and synchronization. Confusion and miscommunication are reduced. Efficiencies are created, resulting in fewer redundant tasks, duplication of efforts, and multiple checks and cross-checks.

Creating and maintaining alignment can be especially challenging today among remote or hybrid teams, with members in different locations and time zones. It can be frustrating to try to collaborate with others because teammates are in a different place and time of day — leaving people feeling left out, unable to contribute, and confused about their role and what’s going on.

Effective leadership always requires a focus on both relationships and tasks, but that’s particularly true when leading in a hybrid work environment or with remote team members. Intentionally building trust and fostering coordination and interdependence can ultimately create greater alignment.

Commitment

A Feeling of Mutual Responsibility for the Group

Commitment is a willingness to make the success of the collective a personal priority, where individuals know that their own successes are connected to those of others. People can trust that everyone will make the effort needed to ensure the group is successful, with a balance of give and take.

When a culture of resistance or minimal effort is replaced by a sense of “being in it together,” managers don’t need to monitor activities so closely, or follow up many times on the same item. Team members are willing to give a little extra to ensure their group’s success, versus just doing enough to get by. With an increased sense of accountability and a shared ownership mentality, change is supported, shared goals are achieved, and cultural transformation is possible.

But commitment cannot be enforced; it must be fostered. The most effective managers understand that leadership means respecting differences, and seek to understand the experiences of their employees and build belonging at work, creating spaces where people feel their perspectives and contributions are valued.

How a Better Definition of Leadership Can Improve It

A shared view of the importance and meaning of leadership can actually help to improve the quality and consistency of it. With clarity on what leadership means, you can assess what’s going well and what isn’t — and take steps to improve how you work with others and accomplish what matters most.

So now that you know what leadership is and how to recognize when it’s happening, what can you do to improve it?

Fuel the Social Process of Leadership: Start by Diagnosing Leadership Challenges

If progress is stagnant in your organization or team, or in a community effort, think about leadership as an outcome that you want to achieve through direction, alignment, and commitment. This can quickly help you diagnose where you need to focus your attention to regain momentum. Some specific steps to follow are outlined below.

1. Watch for signs that DAC is weak.

How can you diagnose unclear direction, lack of alignment, or low commitment? Here are a few key signs:

• A lack of agreement on priorities or resource allocation
• People feel as if they are being pulled in different directions
• People are stuck, the same things are repeatedly problems or frustrations
• Team members are unclear about how their tasks fit into the larger work of the group
• Deadlines are missed, rework and duplication of effort are common
• Groups or functions compete against each other
• Only the easy things get done, there’s a persistent gap between effort needed and effort given
• People put their own interests first, a sense of “what’s in it for me?” dominates
• Inconsistencies between what people say and what they do

2. Bring in multiple viewpoints.

Go beyond your own perspective to engage your team and learn how others view the current levels of DAC. Hold a candid conversation about the outcomes of leadership in your group, team, or organization to get a more accurate picture of what’s going on and understand the current issues and challenges. Be intentional about first creating psychological safety so that group members feel free to share openly what they think is going well and what’s not.

• Try to gauge whether others agree on what you’re trying to accomplish together. Ask if everybody is clear about how their task fits into the work of the group. Do they think their contributions are valued?
• Have colleagues, partners, or direct reports take our quick and complimentary DAC assessment. Hold one-on-one meetings and focused conversations to share perspectives on what is going well, and where improvement would make a meaningful difference.
• Sometimes, getting everyone’s mind out of the present and into the future is helpful. For instance, if the team was performing better 6 months from now, what would start happening? What would stop?

Based on what you learn, you can identify needed changes.

3. Take simple actions to address issues that emerge.

Every team, project, and situation will involve different leadership challenges, so how you address issues will require different skills, actions, and behaviors.

For example, you may realize that your group has clear direction and strong commitment, but the processes and the systems and the way the organization is set up is chaotic. That means that Alignment is the area that needs the most work, and so the collective effort should focus on improving how work is accomplished. In other situations, it might be low levels of shared Commitment and/or Direction that are the biggest pain points to address.

While there are no quick fixes or single solutions, you can make progress on improving DAC levels with small changes such as these:

• Expand your network. Involve a more diverse group of people as you plan or make decisions, communicate more broadly, and build in connection points with people, groups, or functions whose work or interests are related to yours. Taking a network perspective enables leaders to get more tasks accomplished through influence and the power of their relationships.
• Go beyond surface-level relationships. Try to understand what really motivates your team members, what information each person needs to make sense of the goal, and encourage leadership purpose to help each individual connect the larger objectives to their own work.
• Improve interactions within the group. You might change the frequency or format of meetings or updates, streamline a key process, or consider establishing team norms or setting up a team charter to turn the team’s values into agreed-upon behaviors and operating agreements, if those weren’t in place already.
• Hold candid conversations. Give greater effort to building trust, rapport, and a deeper understanding of the group’s perspectives. Ask for feedback, ideas, and concerns. Hold open discussions about changes that are needed and why, and use active listening skills to learn others’ views.
• Help your team manage priorities and competing demands. Consider more frequent check-ins, clearer accountability structures, and focus on helping to address or remove roadblocks for others, which will help the team make progress and also demonstrates compassionate leadership.

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Investing in Leadership at All Levels

When everybody at an organization understands what leadership is and how to support DAC as part of their role, more leadership happens. The results of more leadership include:

• Increased agreement on group and organizational priorities;
• Clarity on how individual tasks fit into the work of the larger team; and
• Individuals who prioritize the success of the collective.

Implications of This Relational Definition of Leadership

This more relational understanding of the meaning of leadership has important implications for leadership development. As our research has noted, it underscores the importance of not focusing on development solely for individuals in positions of authority or who have been deemed “high-potential,” but rather, the importance of building leadership capacity for the collective — teams, workgroups, and organizations.

But effective leadership across all levels doesn’t come automatically; knowing how to contribute to the leadership outcomes of direction, alignment, and commitment must be learned and practiced. This requires an intentional investment in growing leadership at all levels.

We can begin by honoring the unique starting point of individual leaders, helping them grow their self-awareness and leadership skillsets and mindsets. We can also work to foster an increased understanding of the meaning of leadership within teams and groups — ultimately creating a profound ripple effect across entire organizations and communities.

Amplifying Leadership Potential With Development

Providing the right learning at the right time for all talent — from individual contributors to frontline managers, and from team and cross-functional leaders through senior executives — is the key that unlocks organizational performance, engagement, and retention. Some key steps to amplify leadership potential across your organization:

1. Encourage good leadership and make development accessible.

The most effective leaders consistently show the characteristics of a good leader such as integrity, self-awareness, courage, respect, compassion, and resilience. When individuals learn and improve these essential leadership qualities, and more, the social process of leadership becomes smoother and more effective.

But just knowing what good leadership looks like isn’t enough. In our decades of research and hands-on experience, we’ve found that people are more committed and engaged when they have a clear career path, ample professional and personal leadership development opportunities, and the support they need to become the best possible version of themselves. Leadership development prepares individuals to navigate change and builds collective capacity to solve pressing problems.

Unfortunately, access to opportunities for growth and development isn’t always available. Our research on emerging leaders found that 60% of young professionals worldwide feel that access to opportunities for leadership development is inequitable.

Fully supporting emerging leaders can include actions such as working against systemic exclusion from the past and providing more equitable access to opportunities in the present. A variety of leadership programs, courses, and tools can fit together like puzzle pieces to tailor your organization’s large-scale training and retention initiatives and make leadership development more accessible to all.

2. Grow teams together.

When building high-performing teams, remember to focus on more than just star power. Of course, having the right people with the right leadership capabilities is important, and each person should know why they’re on the team. That’s key. But that’s just one of the 4 components of team effectiveness, and the only one that considers individual people, or the level of talent and ability within a team. As the other 3 aspects of our research framework on team effectiveness emphasize, an effective team supports direction, alignment, and commitment, reflecting that what leadership is about, really, is people working together to produce collective results.

And instead of only having individuals move through leadership development independently, picture the power of teams growing together. By establishing strong direction, alignment, and commitment, team members will all work together more seamlessly, improve outputs, and expand potential for impact.

3. Scale for organization-wide impact.

Imagine the impact that would result in your organization if there was a shared understanding of the definition of leadership, and a leadership vision, language, and behaviors were all linked to critical business needs. What if direction, alignment, and commitment were strong and vibrant, rather than an unfamiliar way to define leadership?

By implementing and scaling leadership development enterprise-wide, organizations broaden access to learning, provide equitable access to opportunities for growth and development, create new capabilities across the enterprise, and foster the social processes needed for effective leadership. In fact, organizational investments in leadership development have been repeatedly shown to:

• Improve bottom-line financial performance. Superior human capital management is an extremely powerful predictor of an organization’s ability to outperform its competition.
• Attract and retain talent, strengthening the leadership pipeline. As a result, employee retention is 20 times greater at companies with a focus on leadership development.
• Drive strategy execution and facilitate organizational alignment. Done right, leadership development unquestionably delivers impact and fosters alignment.
• Increase organizational agility and change readiness. When facing an unpredictable business environment, 86% of companies with strategic leadership development programs are able to respond rapidly, compared with 52% of companies with less mature leadership programs.

While it can be a challenge to deliver high-impact development opportunities at all leader levels and to large populations, organizations can still enjoy the many benefits of leadership development by supplementing their own in-house training resources and teams with content and support from outside experts and proven leadership development providers.

4. Create a ripple effect in society.

As individuals, teams, and organizations come to understand the meaning of leadership and how to create greater direction, alignment, and commitment, their leadership potential is expanded, and the impact can ripple outward — making a difference not only in their lives, but also in the lives they touch.

That’s why we say that systemic societal or community problems cannot be solved by individuals alone. Given their size and complexity, confronting so-called “wicked problems” takes many people working together to uncover the roots of the issues and find sustainable solutions.

This reality truly underscores that when we embrace a more relational and collective definition of leadership, we open up the possibility of transformational change for everyone — from individuals and teams to entire organizations, and even larger communities and society.

What Does Leadership Mean to You?

Now that you know the research-based definition of leadership involves the outcomes of direction, alignment, and commitment, and that DAC enables people to achieve more together than they ever could working alone, you can decide what effective leadership means to you and the mission and goals of your organization, group, or community.

When you see areas of strength and what’s holding you back, you can take targeted and intentional action to develop your capacity to lead — and help others do the same. The result? More people reaching their potential, making faster progress, and finding better solutions — together.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

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Frequently Asked Questions About the Meaning of Leadership

The post What Is Leadership? appeared first on CCL.

But what if you are asked to coach a subordinate or a peer within your organization? Is coaching someone who you work with daily an impossible task? It isn’t — if you know the key principles of coaching for leaders.

6 Core Leadership Coaching Principles

Key Tips for Leader-Coaches

Whether you’re an external executive coach or a leader-coach working in the trenches of your organization, a lot of the same rules of thumb apply in terms of what it takes to coach people. Use these 6 core principles for leadership coaching to coach someone from an office, cubicle, or virtual call.

1. First, create a safe and supportive, yet challenging environment.

We all need our thinking challenged at times. But offered without sufficient support, challenge can cause damage by decreasing trust and eroding morale. Providing safety and support includes assuring people that they’ve been heard and that their feelings and values are understood. It builds trust, encourages honesty and candor, and helps your coachee feel psychologically safe at work.

It’s up to you to create an environment where risk-taking feels rewarding, not risky, so keep your attitude as open and as nonjudgmental as possible, and let the coachee know you support them, even as you test their knowledge and skills. (This is the basis of our Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS) framework, one of our widely-recognized leadership development models; remember ACS to ensure you’re providing needed support at the same time as challenge and accountability.)

2. Try to work within the coachee’s agenda.

Remember, in a coaching conversation, it’s not about you, so let the coachee decide which goals to work on and even how to go about improving. Sure, it’s great when the coachee’s own agenda aligns perfectly with the organization’s goals, but never impose your personal priorities on the relationship. When it’s clear you need to push a point, put on your managerial hat — thereby preserving the special collaborative coaching relationship you’re trying so hard to build.

3. Facilitate and collaborate.

Like Socrates, who always led his students with questions, the best coaches don’t give direct answers or act the expert. Focus on using active listening skills when coaching others.

Really hear the coachee’s needs, and avoid filling the lesson with your own life stories and pet theories. Although you may suggest several options for responding to a problem or issue, the ultimate choice of what to do next should rest with the coachee — with you acting as the facilitator and collaborator.

Ready to start today? If you’re designing, initiating, or implementing coaching programs, explore our actionable guidance on approaches and techniques that drive better outcomes in our Handbook of Coaching in Organizations.

4. Advocate self-awareness.

You want your coachee to learn how to recognize their own strengths and present weaknesses — a prerequisite skill for any good leader. In the same way, you should understand how your own behaviors as a coach impact the people around you. Demonstrate a sense of awareness in yourself and you’re more likely to foster in your coachee a similar self-awareness. You may also want to share ways to boost self-awareness.

5. Promote learning from experience.

Most people can learn, grow, and change only if they have the right set of experiences and are open to learning from them. As a coach, always help your coachee reflect on past events and to analyze what went well and what didn’t. Foster experiential learning and using experience to fuel development, and your student will continue to improve long after the end of your lessons.

6. Finally, model what you coach.

This, the last of the 6 core principles of coaching, may be the most difficult to embody, as it means putting into practice outside of class the leadership lessons you’ve been trying to communicate.

And remember, if you don’t feel you have the capacity to coach on a particular issue, refer your coachee to someone more experienced — perhaps someone who, we hope, puts into practice the 6 core leadership coaching principles even better than you do.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

If you’re seeking a highly trained, world-class provider of leadership coaching services for your leaders, we can help. Or, if you’d like to instill the principles of leadership coaching across your organization, partner with us to offer enterprise-wide conversational skills training with our Better Conversations Every Day suite.

The post The 6 Principles of Effective Coaching for Leaders appeared first on CCL.

What can you do to improve talent development?

Teach your leaders how to give feedback regularly and well (we recommend using our SBI feedback model), and help them to hold effective feedback conversations with employees.

This is the fastest way to improve talent development because individual leaders are in the best position to influence and develop talent — or shut it down. Managers can give employees good reasons to be engaged, work effectively, and build their skills.

Most importantly, a talent conversation isn’t done to someone, but with someone. It’s about building a relationship that allows managers to influence employees toward improved performance, development, and positive outcomes.

It’s one of the simplest yet most effective ways to develop others. And, if the employee has been given honest, ongoing feedback, these conversations don’t come as surprises.

Some of the most valuable types of feedback are given in the moment and on routine, day-to-day behaviors. When feedback is given consistently and well, managers establish and strengthen trust. The more trust and rapport managers can build, the more readily subordinates will accept and act on future feedback, creating a pattern of learning and growth.

In the face of unrelenting disruption, effective leadership is what’s needed most. Download our new Talent Development report to learn how investing in talent development today will position your organization to succeed tomorrow.

Get the Report

Hold More Constructive Feedback Conversations With Our SBI Feedback Model

First and foremost, make sure your managers know that giving feedback on a regular basis is more effective than saving it all for the performance review. Ongoing feedback conversations can:

• Motivate employees to continue a behavior that increases their effectiveness
• Encourage them to stop a behavior that reduces their impact
• Encourage employees to adopt or modify a behavior that will make them more effective
• Foster greater commitment to their work and the organization

Secondly, we recommend sharing any feedback using our SBI feedback model. It’s a simple ways for leaders to structure feedback conversations to capture and clarify the Situation, describe the specific Behaviors, and explain the Impact that the person’s behavior had.

Our SBI feedback model can be used to give both positive and negative feedback. It’s a process that may feel awkward or formal at first, but once managers get some practice, they tell us that they find it’s incredibly helpful.

The SBI Feedback Model in 3 Simple Steps

1. Describe the Situation.

Describe the specific situation in which the behavior occurred. Include the time and place to reduce any confusion.

2. Describe the Behavior.

Describe the actual, observable behavior being discussed. Keep to facts only and avoid inserting any opinions or judgments.

3. Describe the Impact.

Describe the results of the behavior in terms of the impact it had, whether the effect was positive or negative.

Take the Feedback Even Further by Asking About Intentions

Our SBI feedback model can be even more helpful when accompanied with an inquiry about intent. This turns the one-way act of giving feedback into a two-way dialogue, a feedback conversation, where both parties can have a clarifying discussion around intentions versus impact. Learn more about using SBI to explore intent vs. impact.

Feedback Conversations Can Be Talent Conversations

Feedback conversations can be thought of as talent conversations. They’re an opportunity for managers to influence their direct reports towards improved performance, development, and positive outcomes.

Feedback conversations can happen at any time, and are part of what it takes to coach your people on an ongoing basis. But one of the most critical moments for holding effective talent conversations is during your organization’s regular performance review process.

Here are some guidelines to consider for those times.

First, Understand the 4 Types of Talent Conversations

Managers need to be prepared to hold 4 types of talent conversations, based on how an employee is doing. The first step is to clarify whether the employee is considered top talent, a solid performer, a potential performer, or an underperformer. The feedback conversation will have a different focus, depending on how the employee is viewed. From there, you will know where to focus the feedback conversation.

The Top Talent Conversation

Focus on future investment. Individuals who clearly meet or exceed expectations and deliver superior results are top talent. These are the individuals who are seen as the future leaders in the organization. Be sure you’re being thoughtful about engaging this high-potential talent.

The Solid Performer Conversation

Focus on maintaining or building value. Solid performers are typically individual contributors who are valued by the organization but could take on more responsibility.

The Potential Performer Conversation

Focus on short-term success for now. Potential performers are individuals who may not have had enough time in their role to show significant results but are expected to bring a lot to the role they’re in.

The Underperformer Conversation

Focus on improving performance. Underperformers are not meeting expectations. The feedback conversation should remain focused on the here and now rather than future options, new tasks, or additional responsibilities. Learn more about managing a difficult employee.

Discover how to use talent conversations to build relationships based on rapport, collaboration, and mutual commitment and help your team improve performance, focus development, and reach positive outcomes.

How to Structure a Feedback Conversation With Your Talent

Whatever other formal talent management or leadership development systems are in place, feedback conversations are where development becomes real. It’s the best time for managers to build their direct report’s commitment to the organization and engagement in the work.

So the feedback conversation itself should have a structure, too. Things will go more smoothly if you follow these 6 steps:

1. Clarify the goal. What’s the purpose of the feedback conversation? What exactly does each person want to accomplish?
2. Explore the issues. Assess strengths, vulnerabilities, development needs, and performance. Identify motivation and career aspirations.
3. Identify the options. Generate ideas and opportunities for learning and improvement.
4. Set expectations. What do we want to do first? Next? What are the obstacles?
5. Motivate. What support is needed? Are you sure the goals are meaningful? How can I help and what else is needed?
6. Identify the plan. How will we know you are on target? How will we track outcomes?

Learn even more about our recommendations for holding feedback conversations with your direct reports in our guidebook, Talent Conversations: What They Are, Why They’re Crucial, and How to Do Them Right.

Demands placed on managers to meet performance goals can be relentless, and priorities and challenges shift frequently. That’s why the key to improving your talent development processes is ensuring that your managers can hold meaningful feedback conversations with talent (and again, our SBI feedback model is a great tool for that).

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Upskill your team’s capacity for holding effective feedback conversations. We can create a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-based modules. Available leadership topics include Conflict Resolution, Emotional Intelligence, Feedback That Works, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, and Talent Conversations.

The post Improve Talent Development With Our SBI Feedback Model appeared first on CCL.

What kind of thinkers do you need in your business? What types of leadership will get you desired results?

To answer these questions, you’ve got to be thinking about a different kind of learning and development. Yes, you want to ensure that HR is preparing a pipeline of leaders for the future. But how exactly are you doing that?

Your organization needs both horizontal and vertical development to get you there.

First, What’s the Difference Between Horizontal vs. Vertical Leadership Development?

When we say horizontal development, we mean the traditional kind of talent development: increasing technical skillsets and building the most important leadership competencies. If your organization is like most, you’re probably already providing all sorts of opportunities for horizontal development — disseminating more knowledge, skills, and information to your people. These skills are essential and necessary — but they are no longer sufficient in our new era.

In contrast, vertical development is entirely different. What is it exactly?

Vertical development is about developing more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking, greater wisdom, and clearer insights. It’s called vertical development because it’s based on levels, or stages, of thinking. It involves gaining new perspectives and leadership mindsets needed to make your business strategy work.

For example, with vertical development, managers and groups learn to tackle a problem with inquiry — questions, observation, and reflection — before jumping into advocating, lobbying, or deciding. This opens the door to deeper understanding, greater clarity, more options, and multiple right answers — which are especially needed for leading in complex, uncertain situations.

In short, horizontal development builds skills, while vertical development helps build a more interconnected, interdependent leadership culture in your organization.

In the face of unrelenting disruption, effective leadership is what’s needed most. Download our new Talent Development report to learn how investing in talent development today will position your organization to succeed tomorrow.

Get the Report

What Is Vertical Development?

3 Conditions That Catalyze Vertical Development for Leaders

Our research has found that these 3 primary conditions support vertical leadership development:

1. Heat experiences;
2. Colliding perspectives; and
3. Elevated sense-making.

Many well-intentioned leadership development programs fail to deliver lasting results because they hit on only 1 or 2 of the conditions needed for vertical development. And any one of the above can provide some value, but it’s not until you combine all 3 that you have vertical development, and growth really takes off. Let’s take a closer look at each of these 3 conditions.

Heat Experiences: The What

Leaders have the opportunity to respond to heat experiences when they face a complex situation that disrupts and disorients their habitual way of thinking. These situations help leaders discover that their current way of making sense of the world is inadequate. As a result, they seek out new and better ways to make sense of their challenge. Heat experiences are the what that initiates vertical development. Learn more about how to harness heat experiences for development.

Colliding Perspectives: The Who

Leaders also have an opportunity to challenge their existing mental models when they’re exposed to others with different worldviews, opinions, backgrounds, and training. These relationships increase the number of perspectives through which leaders experience their world. Colliding experiences are the who that enables vertical development.

Elevated Sense-Making: The How

As leaders process and make sense of these perspectives and experiences, they enter an elevated stage of vertical development. A larger, more advanced worldview emerges and, with time, stabilizes. This is the how that integrates development, particularly when preparing high-potential leaders for the unknown.

Is Your HR Function Focused on Both Horizontal & Vertical Development?

Some Questions to Ask

Are both horizontal and vertical development factored into how your HR function thinks about your talent, your culture, and how people learn and grow? Consider these questions about the perspectives of your Human Resources or Organizational Development functions:

• Does our organization understand the difference between horizontal vs. vertical development? Are both horizontal and vertical development incorporated strategically into our leadership development methods and approach?
• Is our organization aligning our leadership culture to our strategy? Organizational leadership cultures develop through different stages: dependent, independent, and, eventually, interdependent. Has our team worked out which leadership culture our strategy requires? Are we designing leadership development to match?
• Do we have a good understanding of how leaders make different sense of the world at each of the stages? Whether explicitly or implicitly, is this understanding blended into the way we develop our leaders?

Learn more about how vertical development and organizational culture change are interconnected in our white paper, Vertical Leadership Development: Culture Still Wins Over Strategy.

HR’s Role: Tailoring Development, Both Horizontal & Vertical

Remember, employees come into their roles with different experiences, skills, perspectives, and stages of development. Human Resources must put experience at the center of talent management, tailor development, and meet people where they are — as not everyone is ready for the same challenges at the same time.

For example, you may emphasize horizontal development for your early-career talent, but you can plant the seeds for vertical development for them, too. Learning from heat experiences, experiencing colliding perspectives, and helping elevate their sense-making can support frontline leaders through many of the common challenges that first-time managers face.

And for experienced executives, senior leaders need different leadership skills, so their process of vertical development will likely be more complex and collaborative — but their mindsets or approaches may be more fixed.

There’s an important difference between helping a leader grow and trying to force it, though. At each stage of development, both horizontal and vertical development are important. The role of HR is to create the right conditions in which many different people can grow and develop.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Partner with us for both horizontal and vertical development that’s tailored to your organization’s unique context and culture. Learn more about our talent development solutions.

The post Developing Talent? You’re Probably Missing Vertical Development appeared first on CCL.

And if you aren’t currently measured on your “ability to develop and coach others” — that’s likely to change soon.

Coaching provided by outside experts continues to be important and valuable, but increasingly, organizations are looking at skill-building for coaching people as a vital tool for developing talent and meeting performance goals. And managers play the key role.

The problem is that leaders are being held accountable for developing others, but few are taught best practices for coaching others. So they end up giving reviews and giving advice, but they don’t really understand how to have a coaching conversation with their people.

That’s why we’ve been partnering with client organizations to help them develop leader-coaches who understand how to be an effective coach, outlining specific actions for coaching people well.

How to Coach People Using LACE

4 Core Skills for Coaching Others Effectively

At CCL, our coaching methodology is based on research and our over 50 years of experience coaching others in organizations around the world. We believe that whether you’re a professional leadership coach, or a leader with coaching responsibilities, you need to build both your skill at coaching others and the relationship itself.

Unlike some coaching models that can be convoluted and theoretical, the 4 core skills we teach for coaching people effectively ensure that in the moment, you’re not trying to remember a concept or a theory, but have pragmatic guidance to follow. Just remember LACE, our acronym for the 4 core skills for holding conversations that coach others:

• Listen to Understand
• Ask Powerful Questions
• Challenge and Support
• Establish Next Steps and Accountability

1. Listen to Understand.

Listening starts with paying close attention, repeating back concepts to build understanding, and summarizing what you hear. But listening to understand goes beyond these active listening techniques for coaching others.

Listening to truly understand someone starts with recognizing that multiple levels of information are conveyed in a conversation: facts, emotions, and values. Naturally, when listening, you pay attention to the facts being discussed. But listening to understand also means paying attention to other levels. Listen too for the values behind the matter at hand, as well as the emotions that people feel. Notice not only their words, but also the tone of voice, body language, beliefs, and what seems to be most important for the other person. Coaching others well requires that you listen for all 3 levels, and you will really be listening to understand the other person’s perspective.

2. Ask Powerful Questions.

This is really the ability to ask courageous questions, moving the conversation forward, and provoking new insights, rather than just providing them for the other person. Making non-directive inquiries that draw out more information and stretch the other person’s thinking is a learned skill that must be practiced. Examples of powerful questions include:

• What else could you do?
• Who else have you talked to about this?
• Who else is affected in this situation?
• How do you want the rest of the team to feel about this?

Beyond creating mutual understanding about facts, asking powerful questions like these when coaching others can help uncover insights and unspoken reservations that wouldn’t have come to light otherwise.

3. Challenge and Support.

We all need our thinking challenged at times. Challenge can stress-test ideas, yield productive dialogue, and uncover unexamined assumptions. It can lead to stronger, shared understanding.

Ultimately, coaching people is about getting them to try something different from what they have done before, or creating a significant shift in perspective. It’s about uncovering answers through inquiry, openness, and exploration, and there usually aren’t quick fixes.

But challenging someone is only effective when combined with the right amount of support. You must show that you’ve truly listened to the other person and understand their feelings and values. A challenge should be offered within an environment of safety. Taken too far — or offered at the wrong moment and without sufficient support — challenge can cause damage.

When done well, challenge builds trust and encourages honesty and transparency, rather than triggering defensiveness.

4. Establish Next Steps and Accountability.

Having an effective conversation is only one aspect of successful coaching. The real work happens later when insights are applied and new behaviors are tried. The skill of creating accountability lies in creating clear, specific, and meaningful actions.

Connect conversations to action by establishing next steps (“So, I’ll send you an email by Friday, letting you know how it went”). This ensures that the value, insights, and decisions created by a coaching conversation aren’t lost.

The goal of a conversation is always that those involved walk away with a shared understanding of what they discussed, and conversations like these increase the chance of successful follow-through that creates growth and fosters courageous actions that lead to meaningful change.

To Coach People, Focus on the Relationship

Leader-coaches can aim for transformation, even in 10-minute hallway conversations.

But creating the right relationship is critical. This ensures you have a safe, trusting, and productive space for conversations where you coach others.

At CCL, we believe effective leaders “bring their whole selves to leadership.” To be a leader-coach, focus on boosting your self-awareness, showing vulnerability and empathy, and creating an environment of psychological safety. In addition, set a foundation of high ethical standards and ground rules of agreement.

Once you have the tools and some practice with the 4 core conversation skills under your belt, you’ll find that coaching people through conversations are an effective way to develop and motivate your direct reports. And you will benefit, too; as you improve your skill at coaching others, you’re developing leadership capabilities that have benefits in other work relationships as well. A manager’s ability to build relationships, elicit information, challenge assumptions, support others, and clarify goals goes a long way in helping you to succeed as a leader.

Learn how to communicate better, connect more deeply, build trust, and be more satisfied — inside and outside of work — with our book, Better Conversations Every Day.

Create a Culture of Coaching Others By Scaling Conversational Skills

Coaching people can have both an individual and organizational impact. Helping individual leaders build the conversational skills they need to coach others effectively is the first step toward implementing a coaching culture across your entire company.

Our philosophy is that everyone in an organization benefits when people are using coaching skills every day. Enabling the 4 core skills of LACE creates better conversations that create a common language, a better foundation, and a stronger platform on which to build other enterprise-wide initiatives.

Once these 4 core skills for coaching others permeate everyday conversations, they enable leaders to build stronger relationships and enhance a culture of psychological safety, increase engagement, and foster development.

Organizations that want to truly scale a coaching culture will also want to:

• Offer everyone access to developing skills at coaching others, no matter where they sit in the org chart.
• “Seed” the organization with role models who coach people well.
• Link coaching outcomes to business goals.
• Coach senior leadership teams.
• Recognize and reward coaching behaviors.
• Integrate coaching others with other people-management processes.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Individual participants in our coaching skills program for leaders learn how to coach others more effectively. Or, your organization can partner with us for enterprise-wide conversational skills training with our Better Conversations Every Day suite and scale a culture of coaching others across your entire organization.

The post How to Coach People appeared first on CCL.

For more than 50 years, we’ve worked closely with leaders, conducting research and studying what makes them effective. We’ve also examined how people learn, grow, and change during their careers as a result of leadership development programs and evaluated our own programs and their impact.

Our dedication to expanding human potential in an ever-changing world has allowed us to continually evolve our understanding of effective leadership — producing new concepts, innovations, and leadership models over the years.

This paper can help you understand, apply, and reference our leadership models in your work. Whether you’re involved in designing leadership training curricula, nurturing employee engagement, or simply enriching your understanding of the field, you’ll find information about our pioneering and time-tested models.

What Is a Leadership Model?

A leadership model offers a simple, concrete way to teach leadership topics. Models (sometimes called “frameworks”) are conceptual structures that offer informed views on topics, issues, or processes. Researchers and practitioners often present models in graphic form, as visual representations provide an engaging and effective way to organize and communicate large amounts of information.

As our understanding of leadership evolves, these models continue to play a crucial role in advancing both the theory and practice of leadership development, helping leaders navigate increasingly complex organizational environments.

4 Types of Leadership Models

In this paper, you’ll be introduced to 23 of our most frequently referenced leadership models that can help you understand leadership spread effective leadership practices across your organization. They are organized in 4 high-level types:

1. Process models that help leaders understand the processes that build effective leadership.
2. Topical models that deepen understanding of how people work together within organizations.
3. An organizational framework that provides a structure for understanding and developing leader competencies.
4. An impact assessment that organizations can use to measure and enhance the impact of leadership development initiatives.

Our Most Common Leadership Models

The 23 leadership models included are:

1. 3 Types of Organizational Leadership Cultures: Labels organizational cultures as dependent, independent, and interdependent.
2. 3X3X3 Model: Outlines the key elements for effective learning transfer across 3 dimensions.
3. 4 Core Behaviors for Better Conversations Every Day: Shows the core skills that can build trust, fuel collaboration, and drive better business outcomes.
4. 70-20-10 Development Framework: Identifies 3 key types of blended learning developmental activities: challenging assignments, developmental relationships, and coursework and training.
5. Advanced Strategic Leadership: Illustrates the components of strategy formulation and execution.
6. Assessment – Challenge – Support (ACS): Displays 3 critical elements driving leadership development both in and out of the classroom.
7. Anatomy of a Learning Experience: Illustrates the complex journey of leadership development.
8. Beyond Bias: Demonstrates how bias manifests as stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.
9. Boundary Spanning Leadership: Provides 3 interrelated strategies to help leaders welcome, accept, and coordinate people of diverse perspectives.
10. Change Leadership / Change Management: Synthesizes research with clients, our Strategic Leadership model, our Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC) framework, our Leadership Culture Model, and John Kotter’s Change Management model.
11. Comprehensive Resilience Framework: Outlines the 4 interconnected aspects of resilience and 8 evidence-based practices.
12. Competencies of Leadership: Shows the Fundamental 4 competencies that consistently emerged as necessary for leaders across various career stages, organizational levels, and sectors.
13. Direction – Alignment – Commitment (DAC): Promotes a relational view of leadership, moving beyond command-and-control to mutual influence.
14. Digital Leadership Capability: Displays 9 people-related leadership capabilities, organized into 3 cycles of digital transformation.
15. Feedback That Works (SBI): Illustrates our seminal approach to giving feedback that we’ve been practicing and teaching for decades.
16. Fundamental 4 Components of Learning Agility: Shows the 4 behaviors we believe to occur sequentially in the learning process.
17. iAIM2 Communicate: Displays a 5-step process that transforms how leaders frame their messages and connect with their audiences.
18. Influence: Highlights 6 components regarding a leader’s ability to influence.
19. Leadership Development Impact (LDI) Framework: Showcases an approach to show the multi-layered impact of leadership development initiatives.
20. Model of Leader Competencies: Provides 20 critical competencies of leader effectiveness.
21. REAL: Outlines our approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).
22. Team Effectiveness Framework: Displays the critical areas in which teams must channel their collective effort and energy.
23. The Delegation Cycle: Shows what leaders can do to improve their delegation practices and team empowerment.

Download Our White Paper

The post Develop Your Leaders Using Our Top Research-Based Models appeared first on CCL.

When leaders execute their organization’s business strategies, they can’t forget their organization’s culture — the self-reinforcing web of beliefs, practices, patterns, and behaviors — because, as has often been said, culture trumps strategy every time.

Your organization’s culture is the way things are done; it’s the way people interact, make decisions, and influence others. Leaders’ own conscious and unconscious beliefs drive decisions and behaviors, and repeated behaviors become leadership practices. Because these practices eventually become the patterns of your organization’s leadership culture, leaders must understand their responsibility in creating — or changing it.

And the type of organizational culture you have, combined with how your organization approaches and understands the definition of leadership itself, together dictate how successful your business strategies will be.

3 Types of Organizational Leadership Cultures

Dependent, Independent, and Interdependent

In our research, we describe organizational leadership cultures in a hierarchy of 3 types:

• Dependent leadership cultures operate with the belief that people in authority are responsible for leadership.
• Independent leadership cultures operate with the belief that leadership emerges out of individual expertise and heroic action.
• Interdependent leadership cultures operate with the belief that leadership is a collective activity to the benefit of the organization as a whole.

And in our experience, we’ve found that organizations, like people, tend to evolve along a path over time, moving from dependent to independent to interdependent leadership cultures. Each successive culture moves the organization to a greater level of capability for dealing with complexity and accelerated change.

But how do you identify the organizational leadership culture that you have at your organization? And going even further, how can you determine whether you have the culture you need for the strategy you’ve set?

How to Identify Your Organization’s Leadership Culture

One way to decode what type of organizational culture you have is to assess how leaders go about creating direction, alignment, and commitment (DAC), which are the outcomes of leadership, at your organization. DAC is a key part of how leadership works in organizations.

The process of creating DAC may vary greatly from organization to organization, depending upon the predominant type of organizational culture, as shown below and explained in our white paper.

Direction

Direction determines how your organization decides on a way to go. Looking at the chart above, you can see that, depending upon the type of organizational culture you have, the approach to setting direction could be primarily rooted in compliance (in dependent cultures), influence (in independent cultures), or shared exploration (in interdependent cultures).

Alignment

Alignment refers to how you coordinate your work so that it fits together. Similar to direction, the approach to creating alignment varies depending upon your  organization’s culture and maturity. In dependent cultures, alignment results from fitting into the expectations of the larger system. In independent cultures, it results from negotiation. And in more mature, interdependent cultures, it results from ongoing mutual adjustment.

Commitment

Commitment speaks to mutual responsibility for the group — when people prioritize the success of the collective over their individual success. In dependent cultures, that commitment results from loyalty to the source of authority of the community itself. In independent cultures, it results from evaluating the benefits for self while benefiting the larger community. And in interdependent cultures, commitment results from engaging in a developing community.

Is Your Leadership Strategy in Sync With Your Organizational Culture?

You may be able to see how, as you move through the levels and types of organizational culture, that the most mature types of organizational cultures are interdependent. (Curious to learn more? Discover the 5 principles for interdependent leadership.)

Once you have identified what type of organizational leadership culture you have now, it’s time to ask:

• To what extent is our culture having a positive or negative impact on performance?
• Is our culture helping us to achieve the business strategies we’ve set?

If your business strategy and leadership culture are at odds, your leaders need to get serious about changing themselves — so they can create greater direction, alignment, and commitment and, over time, boost performance and meet strategic business goals. This is especially critical if you’re about to embark on a large-scale change initiative. Are your leaders ready and able to help you transform your organization?

For optimal outcomes, you must carefully link your business strategy, leadership strategy, and organizational culture. And make sure that your organization’s leadership development initiatives are aligned and crafted to support these, as well.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Partner with our experts to identify what type of organizational culture you have and ensure that your leadership culture and strategy are aligned. Learn more about our approach to Organizational Leadership Culture Change.

The post Can You Identify Your Organization’s Leadership Culture? appeared first on CCL.