3 Steps to Actually DO Succession Planning

With the great resignation still continuing and baby boomers, who many feel delayed retiring, now retired or retiring in large numbers due to the pandemic, succession planning has never been more important.  But as we’ve seen through many of our clients (and ourselves!), the need to get something done and getting it done are two different things.  When it comes to succession planning, I think the key challenge is not knowing where to start and the steps to take once started.  Overall, you need to: 1. Know your current talent state.  This involves several sub-steps of determining:  a. What’s your

Servant Leadership

I recently helped a top security government employee with developing a resume. His leadership philosophy centered around supporting his employees (as opposed to the other way around); he believes in empowering subordinates with authority, as opposed to responsibility. His view of leadership embodies serving which is what great leaders do.               Servant leaders are a revolutionary bunch—they take the traditional power leadership model and turn it completely upside down. This new hierarchy puts the people—or employees, in a business context—at the very top and the leader at the bottom, charged with serving the employees above

Design Thinking as a Leadership Practice

In an ever-changing world, it’s more important than ever for leaders to have the tools to be able to navigate change and innovate. It’s also important for leaders to have opportunities to spur creative thinking in a world that is cluttered with a lot of noise and distractions. Most importantly, though, leaders need support in connecting with people and building empathy.    When frameworks are provided to help spur innovation and build valuable people skills, we find that leaders are better equipped to move forward.  It seems counterintuitive to use a process to try to break away from routine thinking and/or

6 Steps for Choosing Leadership Training Content and 7 Recommended Frameworks

We’ve had the opportunity to begin training a group of leaders for a client using a global curriculum the client developed.  As facilitators, we have the opportunity to take the quality content developed and structure learning in a way that allows the participants to apply the content to impact their behavior at work. Hopefully, this will lead them to invoke positive influence on those they lead and interact with.  Any good training frames learning around well-researched models or theories.  And there are a lot of models and theories out there! How you sort through them all and determine what to

Are Your Company Policies Holding You Back?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my almost 20-year career in HR it’s that the world of HR is ever-changing. And while sometimes we all sit back and take a big sigh and think “not again”, it’s a good thing. Change allows us to grow and adapt. But are there policies that we are holding on to because we’ve always done it that way or everyone else is doing it that way?  In this time of the “Great Resignation”, I find myself thinking about what could be changed to make the biggest impact. Not only in the short-term to