“Why are we at Microsoft?” bellowed Microsoft billionaire executive Steve Ballmer to a crowd of 9,000 employees at the Kingdome, a Seattle indoor stadium. “For the money!” he screamed. “Show me the money!” The crowd responded with a roar: “Show me the money!”
That was four years ago. Since then, big and small companies across America are slowly beginning to put people, not money first. A by-product of this shift in consciousness is that when companies pay more attention to customers and create a meaningful work environment for employees they do even better financially. Escorting this shift in consciousness is a high level training called leadership development, and it’s helping executives manage this new corporate order.
Since MIT’s Peter Senge gave birth to the idea of the learning organization, leadership development has become such a hot development option that many executives negotiate it as part of their compensation benefits package.
Why leadership?
There’s a R.I. CEO who has said, “People are our greatest asset.” Yet for the
last three Christmases, that CEO has laid off a bunch of people. Whether the company
was justified in its actions is not the issue. Leadership development — which
among many things teaches executives how to be loyal to the truth and keep promises
— would help this R.I. executive reconcile his actions with his language.
Leadership development helps executives answer the question “What do I do on Monday morning?” It teaches managers and leaders how to design effective cross functional teams; how to create and share their vision in such a way as to generate buy-in; ways to build a learning organization; and how to behave in ways that inspire confidence.
Leadership development has profound, long-term impacts on individuals and organizations because it evokes new behaviors. Participants test and question their belief systems publicly often for the very first time in their lives. This can feel both enlightening and threatening.
Is leadership learned? If you grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, executives, or community leaders, you were probably exposed to dinnertime conversations about product development and leadership and you may feel at ease in a leadership role. If you were not, now leadership development can fill that gap. And if your company is paying for it, you could not have asked for a better compensation benefit.
Francesca Vanegas is founder and president of Passion At Work, a leadership development
and executive coaching company based in Lincoln, Rhode Island. She may be reached
at Francesca@passionatwork.com and via www.passionatwork.com.
