HR Magazine recently spoke with Sureish Nathan, Vice President of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Singapore to get his take on leadership development.
Tell us about yourself and how you came to work for CCL?
I was the Director of Executive Education at the National University of Singapore Business School for three years prior to joining CCL. Although the school offered a variety of programmes, I became especially interested in leadership development programmes. So when the opportunity to join CCL was presented, it was an ideal opportunity. My interest in leadership development stems from the fact that it affects real change in managers and the people they lead. This goes back to my corporate career experience, particularly my time with Hewlett Packard’s Asia Pacific regional business where I had the good fortune of working with some outstanding leaders from the regional teams. My early interest in what made certain leaders more capable in inspiring and motivating their teams to accomplish challenging business goals has probably made a significant contribution in my journey to CCL.
What do you see as the main strengths of CCL programmes?
CCL has always had its foundation in practically applying the knowledge generated from its research in the programmes and leadership development solutions that we offer. Our adult-learning design approach and experiential delivery methodology is another critical asset as it taps into the synergies of left and right brain activity to push the boundaries of creativity and internalise the learning process. And finally, the inclusion of our assessment tools and embedded executive coaching in our solutions provides an integrated solution to support sustainable change. Together, these elements offer a powerful learning experience that helps individual leaders unlock their potential by raising their self-awareness as leaders and assists organisations in accelerating their strategy.
What is the importance of leadership training in times of economic contraction?
Economic contraction impacts an organisation from several angles. Retrenchment, salary cuts and budget cuts, lack of resources, employee morale, etc, are some internal effects. Externally, organisations encounter a strong competitive and complex business environment. With such pressures, leaders play a critical role as they are expected to do more with less, and require leadership skills to keep their teams fully engaged. The investment in leadership development is a long-term endeavour and it becomes an especially crucial lever in times like this. Companies who do not develop their leadership talent will find it more challenging to implement their strategies, foster innovation and drive growth when the economy turns around. Independent studies published by Harvard Business Review, US consulting firm Bersin & Associates and other sources also show that investments in leadership development bring four key benefits.
Four key benefits of investment in leadership development
- Improve bottom-line financial performance
- Attract and retain talent
- Drive a performance culture
- Increase organisational agility
How have changes in the exogenous and endogenous corporate environment influenced leadership training and development?
There’s a casual relationship between the exogenous and endogenous corporate environment. The complexity of the external environment requires that leadership take a more collaborative approach to business strategy and execution. The advent of technology, the ubiquitous availability of information, the changing demands of customers and the rapid rate of change would be just some of the critical factors that have led to this increased complexity.
A customer issue no longer just rests in ‘customer service’, it will most likely involve a product or service group, operations and in severe cases public relations. Customer issues may also sometimes have vital legal and financial ramifications. The situation with Toyota today would be one clear example. Leaders in such organisations have to work in highly collaborative teams. Information and power is shared and therefore requires a different mindset and behaviour than working in silos for instance. Consequently, this affects the endogenous context of how the development of talent is managed. Within the ‘war for talent’ there is now an essential subset of leadership talent that needs to be developed to meet these complex challenges and drive the business strategy of a company.
How do you think culture, motivation and leadership contribute to the success of an organisation?
CCL’s research illustrates that an organisation’s overall culture is clearly impacted by its leadership culture, which determines the beliefs and fundamental values that guide day-to-day work. There is a direct correlation between leadership and motivation and there are specific types of leadership that provide the required level of motivation, given the context in which that organisation operates. Organisations involved in research for instance would require a more open and collaborative style of leadership that fosters innovation and creativity. Security organisations on the other hand are process and protocol oriented with command and control leadership. Therefore, the leadership of an organisation shapes the culture of that organisation, which in turn impacts motivation and engagement.
What do you feel are the major challenges in building a balanced senior management team?
It is imperative for a balanced senior management team to possess a variety of experience, abilities and personalities. Given today’s complex business environment, it’s crucial to have a variety of cultural perspectives, career experiences and skill sets, including innovation and design thinking, to create a fully balanced and high-functioning senior team. The natural temptation is to pick people exactly like ourselves–similar demographics, educational and career backgrounds, as well as like-minded attitudes and perspectives. The challenge therefore is to be able to step of out the comfort zone of ‘familiarity’ and build a senior management team whose capabilities not only complement each other, but also offers multiple viewpoints and perspectives that enhance strategic decision-making.
How can HR directors best measure the effectiveness of leadership training and development programmes in their organisations?
To measure the impact, it is critical that HR directors identify the outcomes they expect from leadership development and design both the programmes and a comprehensive evaluation to address those outcomes. Outcomes will vary according to the reasons organisations are using leadership development as a strategic tool. If they want, for example, to create a more performance-oriented culture, evaluations should measure outcomes that indicate changes to the culture and related performance outcomes. There are several practical ways to measure this. Research has shown that effective leadership impacts employee engagement positively and this can be measured in tangible ways. For instance, there is a positive correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction levels–the more engaged employees are, the better they are able to serve their customers. Effective leadership also affects the ability to collaborate across functions.
Therefore, organisations who depend heavily on cross-functional collaboration can also measure how efficiently these teams are working–leaders who are able to collaborate more effectively are more likely to be able to develop a new product and go to market in a faster time frame.
What advice would you give to companies wanting to invest in T&D to develop staff leadership skills?
Ensure that your leadership development strategy is linked to your business strategy. This takes a future orientation as to the skills and abilities that are required in leaders to drive the business strategy of the company. The leadership development strategy should then aim to nurture the development and close any gaps in the skills and abilities that have been identified. Providing this context to leadership development is critical as it then lends the organisational support to sustain the learning and development journey of key talent. This synergy is vital to ensure that development is not being done just for the sake of it but that is anchored in the leadership abilities that are being valued by the company to drive its strategy.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
