10 STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CULTURE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
Building a culture in your organization where people are being intentionally prepared to lead requires leaders who have made an intentional commitment to doing just that. Following are ten strategies and specific actions for building and sustaining an organizational culture where leaders are identified, supported, stretched, and developed.
Strategy #1: Commit to Developing Leaders
Below are core leadership principles that support a culture of leadership development:
A. What you value is what you will do, and you will build the culture you model. You cannot build something you are not living.
B. The needs of the organization and the needs of the individual must always be in healthy tension with each other. You are here to help draw out the potential in the leaders around you.
C. Leaders go first and pay attention to the direction and needs of those around them.
D. Leadership is best learned on the job, so we must prepare people to hit the real world of leading by giving them the opportunity to stretch while still being supported.
E. Be clear about communicating what leadership development requires. Each of us needs to become increasingly comfortable with offering grace AND increasingly truthful with one another. If something isn’t working, we need to be able to be honest with one another without reactivity.
F. Developing leaders starts with a leader’s connection to a bigger purpose and then moves to mission-centered action for the organization.
