Leadership Development and Succession Planning

Management-Issues reports that Development Dimensions International has recently published a study that suggests today's business leaders do not rate themselves highly -- or even feel up to the job, -- raising serious questions about the future profitability (and performance) of their businesses.

Their findings?

• Strong leadership can increase the successful implementation of business strategies by 22%
• Organizations with strong leadership development and succession planning generally reported higher returns on equity and profit margins.

The disconnect?

• Too often, leaders gave themselves low grades when looking at indicators of leadership performance and potential.
• Leaders rated themselves low on critical qualities of passion for results, adaptability and bringing out the best in people.
• Leaders are barely giving themselves passing grades, and organizations are still graduating them to the next level, promoting them into leadership positions
• One in four leaders had considered bailing out of their leadership position altogether, evidence of dissatisfaction with the leadership role.

BOTTOMLINE: A leadership crisis in the making? Most definitely. The majority of organizations are not preparing for the next generation of leaders. They should be growing leaders from within -- with succession planning in mind. People performance management (including leadership development) - one of the six management best practices that is integrated into the Six Disciplines Methodology.