Having “onboarded” the emerging leader(s) into their coaching program, and having guided them through a series of “assessments”, the next step – and incidentally, the 3rd of my series of 10 “leadership coaching best practices” blog/pulse posts – consists of summarizing all of the information and insight gathered so far, and establishing the goal – and the associated timeline and outcomes – for the program. That’s what we typically refer to as “Development Priorities and Action Plan”.
What are “Development Priorities and Action Plan” anyway?
In essence, it’s quite simple. It consists in establishing the “what” and the “how” of your client’s program. Whereas the “what” refers to the leadership competencies that your participant has prioritized and decided to improve (with your help and support), the “how” delves into the specific activities, timeline and outcomes related to this improvement plan.
Why do “Priorities and Plan” matter?
The fact that “Priorities and Plan” matter isn’t puzzling… What is uber-troubling is the fact that they “matter soooo much”, yet most leaders - and most leadership development programs - go about their business without establishing such “priorities and plan”. Efficient team meetings have agenda, minutes and action items… Performing organizations have annual priorities, quarterly plans and monthly dashboards… Successful projects have charters, Gantt charts and task lists… Productive employees have annual goals, quarterly checkpoints, monthly reviews and weekly/daily ToDo’s… (and I could go on with the analogies, trust me!). So?
Well, if a Leadership Coaching Program has any chance of succeeding, it should begin with a set of priorities – the focus of the program; and it should have some sort of a plan – a set of preferred approaches, a list of activities, a certain timeline with key milestones, and some concrete outcomes that can be used to assess whether or not the program was successful… Otherwise, without any Priorities and Plan, the participant may end up “wandering aimlessly through the program”, one coaching session at a time, with punctual “feel good” reactions, but most likely with a general sense of “—blah—”. A 4-8 month Leadership Coaching Program is an important investment – of time, effort and money – for all involved stakeholders (the participant, his/her coach, the manager, HR, the organization). Embarking on this journey without a clear plan and set of priorities is simply… not cool!
What works well, what doesn't?
When helping your participant establish his/her Development Priorities and further declining them into an Action Plan, a number of important aspects need to be considered. Based on our experience coaching several emerging leaders, we found the following seven (7) practices – Do’s and Don’t’s so to speak – to be practical when selecting priorities and crafting a plan:
1. Summarize the onboarding and the assessments. At this point, although the program might feel like it hasn’t begun “the real coaching” per se, a lot of work has been done – and a lot of information has been gathered. So it’s a good idea to view this phase as an opportunity for the Emerging Leader to take a step back, review what’s in front of him/her in terms information, feedback and self-awareness, and synthetize the essence on this newly-gained insight into his/her development plan. What we’ve found useful is to turn this document into a real roadmap that we use for the rest of the program. This way, we no longer have to consult the onboarding questionnaire, the psychometric assessment results or the 360 feedback because the “jist” of it all is summarized into the participant’s action plan.
2. For competencies, consider both proficiency and importance. Since the underlying theme of the program is to improve the skillset of the emerging leader, it’s only natural that the “selection of leadership competencies” to be worked on plays a central part in the “Priorities and Action Planning” step. However, we found that most participants, as they review their 360 feedback data, have a tendency to zoom in and prioritize their “weaker skills” in hope of turning them into strengths. This is intuitive… but wrong. A better approach is to ask the participant to identify which of the dozen or so critical leadership skills are considered “very important” in their current role (or upcoming role – in case of a looming promotion). One way we often do this is simply by asking them the following: “Imagine you’re leaving your role and are asked by your boss to interview your replacement… during the interview, which competencies are you going to make sure that the candidate possesses in order to be successful in this role?”. By removing (so to speak) the participants from this introspective question, it becomes easier for them to truly identify the skills that matter for their role. Once this is done, then it becomes much easier to line up these “required skills” with the current proficiency profile of the participant. And what happens often is that, some of the “weaker” competencies that the participant wanted to improve suddenly get set aside because they don’t matter so much for the current role. In other words, it is important to identify the leadership competencies that are BOTH critical for the role and that require strengthening.
3. Select a few but repeat often. Here, the goal is to avoid the temptation of “overloading” the development plan with too many leadership priorities. Emerging Leaders may not appreciate this just yet, but these critical skills have an important “behavioral component” (as opposed to more cognitive technical skills that younger workers tend to favor). And developing, i.e.: acquiring, strengthening and/or changing a behavior takes time… not hours or days, but weeks or months. Typically, a good Action Plan should only prioritize 1 to 3 (two is my favorite) leadership competencies, and leave enough time to implement several repeating Development Activities (e.g.: reflections, discussions, observations, experimentations, etc.). Only then can the participants truly internalize the targeted behaviors.
4. Contextualize and project forward. The essence here is to help the participant answer the following questions: “What does this really mean for you in your current role” and “Can you think of other way(s) to reach this development goal”. What we’re trying to accomplish here is to not tackle a particular leadership skill in absolute terms (say: Influencing others, or Motivating your employees…) but rather to “contextualize” it in the current reality of the participant. For example, there are several ways one can “influence others” or “motivate employees”. But the goal here is to work mainly on the “influencing or motivating ways” that are relevant for your participant’s context (i.e.: given who he/she is, and the context and people he/she has to influence or motivate). We also found it important to go back and leverage the participant’s “signature strengths” and “preferred learning style” when crafting development activities. For example, take two emerging leaders who both need to improve their “influencing and mobilizing skills”. If one of them is more “creative, funny, extroverted and a natural experimenter” and the other more “analytic, introverted, reflective and prudent”, then the “learning ways” in which they will both try to improve the same skills should be quite different.
5. Focus on observable behaviors. This step is very much in line with the previous best practice (to contextualize). The goal is to take a leadership competency and, before jumping ahead to plan development activities, to further analyze the selected skills into a few “observable behaviors” that are critical for the context in which the leader operates. These “observable behaviors” will also act as “success measures” – program outcomes so to speak – that you will refer back to at the end of the program. If the participant is successful, we (him/her and his/her manager and peers) should be able to observe the behaviors per se. Another important – and often overlooked – aspect that concerns behaviors is this: Sometimes the focus is on acquiring a new behavior that allows the participant to improve a particular leadership skill… But sometimes, we also deal with behaviors that inhibit change or are plainly destructive, and that the participant needs to let go of… And some other times, there are behaviors that the emerging leaders already possess, but simply need to be re-emphasized or be done more frequently… So, the key when breaking a skill down into a few observable behaviors is to identify those that need to be acquired, strengthened, AND/OR let go…
6. Seek feedback - before, during and after. This advice sounds obvious, but it is often overlooked, sadly. The feedback sought by the Emerging Leader while crafting his/her development plan is capital – and serves many purposes. For starter, it helps validate the information received during the assessment phase, thus raising the self-awareness of the coachee. It also tells the participant’s peers about the seriousness of his/her development endeavor – this way, they might be more forthcoming with constructive observations of the leader’s behaviors in the workplace. Finally, it commits the participant to truly change – because now, people expect it (and will likely support and welcome the change!). This is also a great time to involve the participant’s manager. Our approach has been to “strongly” recommend a frank discussion between the emerging leader and his/her boss during which the participant shares his/her development plan (which includes a summary of the onboarding and assessment insight) and seeks his/her buy-in and support. We always volunteer to participate to this call, but don’t impose it. But we do stress the importance of alignment between the participant’s priorities and what the manager expects. This just makes sense, doesn’t it?
7. Be pragmatic, but serious. At last, a plan of actions should be down-to-earth and flexible, but achievable and serious. What we mean here is to ensure that the sought-after outcomes, the proposed actions, and the high-level timeline are realistic and make sense. To do so, we let the participant draft the plan first, but we review it with them and challenge some of the assumptions that went into it. This way, when the “final plan” is completed, we stand a better chance of succeeding because of the strengthened commitment of the participant and the realism of the proposed plan. And the coach’s role becomes one of “support and motivation” to ensure that the participant stays the course and doesn’t deviate too much from the proposed plan. Of course, if hiccups happen (and they always do), we readjust accordingly. This is a dynamic process, so changes are to be expected. But flexibility should not be synonym with excuses and un-reasonable delays.
In conclusion, this crucial step is a reminder of the following quote from Greg Reid: “A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by actions makes your dreams come true.”
What do you think?
If you have ideas to share or feedback to provide, please comment this post, contact me through our Blog or our website (www.crinq.com), or email directly me at: patrick@crinq.com.
Merci, in advance…
Patrick
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