I had this conversation yesterday with Simon. It was a rambling one where we went from topic to topic but we covered many of the issues that have been ongoing for me for a few months now. One thing that struck me was the continued need to define the kind of leadership behaviours and characteristics we are developing. Things like, developing an ability to listen to others and empathise. I want to pull these out more. I think there are certain books, like Dialogue, Beyond Authority, World Cafe, where we can get these from.
This provides us more of an end game for our programme delivery. I feel it will enable us to state more clearly up-front what leadership development we are heading for. The recent book by Julia has allowed us to describe the attitudes a leader has to show, some of the attributes and beliefs of a strong leader but not to signpost clearly the piece about what abilities and behaviours they have. e.g. we know it is important to be aware that change can take time, sometimes be slower than we think, however the attibutes of a leader in this situation are patience and the behaviours are…… willing to listen, ability to see all sides of a situation etc.
These competencies will allow us to signpost upfront what participants are heading for. They may not get this on our programmes, but they could do multiple programmes.
Practically we need a written list with explanation, pointers to which elements of our programmes help a person to identify and then develop these.
I spent many years writing competencies Oliver. I think that it is less a set of competencies and more a map of the territory that is required.
The problem with competencies is that they infer a kind of one best way mentality. While a map says ‘you had better be comfortable navigating in these areas….’
I also think that perhaps CP needs to build some more overt training in some of these topics into its training courses.
By: Mike Chitty on 18 September 2008
at 3:17 pm