OnLine Coach 

Leadership Development Manager

A recent career assessment test I did suggested "Leadership Development Manager" as a career. Could you please answer the following questions: 

What are the job functions and general daily tasks of a leadership development manager? Also, what skills, education and work experience does one need to be a leadership development manager?

Interesting question.

Until today I didn't even know that there was such a post as a "Leadership Development Manager" This position could cause a lot of confusion amongst those who believe that Management and Leadership are two separate functions and here is a position that has to manage leadership development.

Firstly I'd like to know how the "Career assessment test" reached the conclusion that this would be a good career for you. The test must have identified certain characteristics and skills that led them to form this opinion. It would be really important for you to know what these are so that you can use them and build on them.

What are the job functions and general daily tasks of a leadership development manager?

This would all depend on the environment that you were working in. The most important thing to do with any job/position is to determine the intent of that position. Why does it exist? What is the job expected to deliver? There will be certain expectations of this post, it was created to do something, to deliver a result so it is vital that you understand this before deciding on what to do.

If you unpack the title Leadership Development Manager then the primary function seems to be to manage the process of developing leaders. In order to develop leaders you would need to understand what leadership is and what it is not. Then you would need to know what the purpose of developing leaders was. What is it that these newly developed leaders are going to lead?

So What is Leadership

Leadership is activity. leadership is attitude. Leadership is not position. You are not a leader if others are following merely because they were told to and you are going where you were told to. Merely being in front does not make you the leader (in fact often the leader will send others to the front) Leadership is about guiding, controlling, setting direction, managing process and inspiring performance.

Leadership is the activity of deliberately taking a group of people in a specific direction. leadership is not just wandering around being in front and hoping to find something. leadership always has a definite destination and a well constructed plan to get to that destination. Leaders however must be entrepreneurial, creative and flexible, (can’t plan for everything) but must keep the destination firmly in mind. Leaders are always led by the vision.

Job Functions

I would think that the very first thing that you would need to do is to develop a succession plan for the business so that you can identify where leaders would be needed in future.

Then you would have to identify suitable candidates for training. Training should be a mix of workshops, mentoring and coaching.

You would have to be a good role model. They will be learning by watching you.

What skills, education and work experience does one need to be a leadership development manager?

Skills

Good communication skills.

Common Sense - Lots of

Planning - creating and executing

Sense of humour and humility - The humour to get you through the tough times and the humility to understand that you are here to serve.

Awareness - The ability to observe your environment

Flexibility - You have to be results driven not process controlled. if what you are doing is not delivering the results that you want change what you are doing.

Education

As broad and deep as possible. The more experience that you have the better you will be able to fulfil the intent of the position so Study, Study, Study. (Often there is an insistence on a particular formal qualification, I always want to know what the skills are that you presume someone with that qualification should have then I like to focus on recruiting for skills and experience rather than qualifications)

Management skills in relation to the nature of your job will be essential.

Work Experience

The more that you have the better as it is your experience that you will have to build on to get to your expectation. The more that you have experienced the easier it will be to deal with the many different situations that you are going to encounter. But here lies the magic of study. You can draw on the experience of others. Just about every situation that you will encounter has been experienced by someone somewhere. You can learn from them and their stories.

I hope that this gives you a base from which to build.