Learning or Performance Enhancement: Which Is It?

2. Identify and describe the organization’s gap profile. The goal here is to reveal the true mission, vision and core values of the enterprise and where it falls short of them. Unless the endeavor resonates with depth and authenticity and challenges people with a breathtaking goal, it will not create a burning platform sufficiently capable of grabbing and holding the attention of the senior management team.

3. Map out a strategy. This is accomplished by harnessing the intense energy that comes from standing on a burning platform and relying on the navigational instruments created by the first two phases’ deeply challenging work. The mission, vision, core values and strategy documents produced now become the equivalent of compass and gyroscope for management as it navigates the uncharted waters ahead, a journey that will test its imagination, courage and leadership.

4. Develop a leadership-competency model and improve talent development resources. The above core strategic processes and benchmarks should lead the organization to develop a leadership-competency model, an exceptionally useful directional tool for helping leaders maintain a course toward true north. Management also should utilize the same core strategic processes to refine and add to its array of talent development resources.
By using these steps, a strategically informed, EQ-savvy leadership team will be able to create the levels of trust, communication, inspiration and meaning that will support and fuel an organization’s transformation and continued growth, individual by individual.

Leader-Like Behavior
Although true change can’t be taught in a classroom or mechanistically imposed from the top down, it has to begin at the top. To accomplish this, an organization’s leaders need to behave in ways appropriate to their roles at all times. The fact is that employees view their executives, managers and supervisors as role models and measure their leaders’ behavior against an intrinsic, personal set of expectations. If leaders of the enterprise don’t individually and collectively embody their corporate strategy with integrity, transparency and passion, employees almost certainly will become disillusioned and cynical, a death knell for any change initiative.