What benefits could justify the level of investment needed?
Measuring the outcomes from your investment in leadership development requires a meticulous approach beginning from the planning stage. This is costly and is rarely done. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe the effects of outstanding leadership on organisations. These include:
Improved business outcomes: By definition, outstanding leadership delivers the holy grail of outcomes: improved business results. The potential is not only for some kind of percentage improvement but for a step difference in performance outcomes. These are the organisations that stand out in their field as unequalled, delivering a standard of excellence that sets the benchmark. What’s more, these are the organisations whose performance levels are sustainable because excellence is built in to what they do.
A culture that supports high performance: Outstanding leaders deliver improved performance outcomes by creating a culture and climate which support high performance. You can expect that improvements in leadership across your organisation will lead to increased staff engagement. Outstanding leaders attract outstanding staff to jobs to which they are well suited. These are staff who are ambitious to deliver and who continue to learn. They may not stay forever – some will move on to more senior jobs elsewhere. Still, whilst they are with you they will make a significant contribution to performance outcomes in your organisation.
Work as play: For the kind of staff I have described working in a culture and climate which supports high performance, work has the potential to become play. In the word of Kahlil Gibran, “work is love made manifest”. In these environments, the prevailing values and beliefs of staff create a highly supportive and trusting environment in which people collaborate willingly and with ease and in which the natural processes of work are filled with fun even whilst “delivering the goods”.
Health and well-being: The language of performance improvement can tend to gloss over the deeply personal experience of the individual at work. Improved leadership leads directly to a greatly improved personal (“human”) experience, including far greater personal fulfilment, health and well-being amongst leaders and their staff.