Think about your favorite teacher.  What were their special qualities?  My hunch is that they:

• had a vision
• pursued excellence
• communicated effectively
• were trustworthy
• built confidence
• were enthusiastic
• served others

The reason for my hunch is that those are the same characteristics of leaders.  While common leadership qualities or competencies are easy to define in effective leaders, developing such core leadership qualities are more difficult. Organizations need to develop leaders faster and build deeper bench strength.  Leadership development strategies help meet the challenges faced by today’s businesses.

Poor leadership skills are costly to an organization.  One study said as much as 32% of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills and can generate 3-4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores, which corresponds to a 1.5% increase in revenue growth.

Important elements of your leadership development program include:  identifying successors for critical roles, developing leadership bench strength and accelerating the development of high potentials.  These elements when successfully launched will increase employee engagement and productivity, enhance the effectiveness of current leaders and influence or change the company culture.

What is the cost of doing nothing?  Will your turnover, customer satisfaction and employee productivity improve without focus?  Best practice organizations recognize leadership development as a key component to improving those metrics and are committed to creating leaders throughout their organizations.