Overview: In this part of the communication strategy
The main problem facing the company is that there are leadership inequalities, which if not addressed will negatively affect the functionality and long run success. The company’s leadership is lacking primarily in areas such as social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills of effective leaders (Elikan & Pigneur, 2019). Nevertheless, some solutions have been proposed on how to counter the challenges. However, there is a need to develop a strategic communication plan that can be used in ensure managers are informed on the specific changes they need to make to improve their leadership qualities.
Moreover, the personal development plan and adaptive leadership toolkit will address the above challenges. Specifically, the adaptive toolkit will assist the managers to consider their own and others’ adaptive leadership skills, as well as a process for identifying areas to strengthen, a self-assessment, and questions to help with next steps. While the personal development plan will be critical in personalising the specifics of the traits and quality each manager and supervisor need to focus on to improve their leadership.
A Personal Development Plan is a lifetime process that tries to improve one’s employability by enhancing one’s working abilities and knowledge, which is regularly reassessed. Thus, the personal plan was designed to personalise the specifics of what needs to be done by each manager towards improving on their leadership in the long run. In contrast, the Adaptive leadership abilities was designed to help identify and develop adaptive leadership skills. It includes reflective questions to help managers at the company consider their own and others’ adaptive leadership skills, as well as a process for identifying areas to strengthen, a self-assessment critical to improving their leadership skills that fit the needs of the company.
This year’s employee engagement survey results for the organization show that some leadership practices are rated lower, while some practices were rated higher. The areas that the managers scored the highest relates to transformational leadership (Barnes & Rennie, 2021). Self-efficacy, social identity, and the relationship between company ideals and follower values are all ways in which transformational leaders drive their followers. Such attributes have been rated as among the highest in the company assessment. This means that the managers instils a sense of purpose and self-determination among the employees in the company.
The analysis has helped inform skills and behaviors included in the adaptive leadership toolkit. The analysis has utilised the core principle of the toolkit to enable the management understand the nature and core operations of the company. The concepts of technical and adaptive have been sufficient in addressing the question “what is the nature of the work before us” in regards to improving the leadership quality required by the company. With the technical aspect the work tasks are clearly defined and the managers are in the position to provide solutions. In contrasts, the adaptive work the challenges affecting the company are not clearly defined or understood. Furthermore, there are no authority or experts who can be called upon to resolve such problems. Specifically, the leadership challenge facing the company can only be solved through internal mechanisms since it is an internal problem.
Nonetheless, with adaptive work, the managers of the company are required to sort through competing priorities and commitment in solving the prevailing leadership problem. Thus, the analysis guided by the adaptive leadership tool kit provides the management can overcome adaptive issues relating to the leadership problem by expanding on their critical thinking skills on how to overcome the prevailing challenges.
Adaptive leadership is a style of leadership that focuses on assisting others in adapting to new issues and circumstances. Workers need a safe place to experiment with new ways of doing things in the workplace, which adaptable leaders can give. This means that adaptable leaders must develop skills and competency to be aware of the context in which they operate, such as being able to understand the larger picture, which enables them to offer guidance. It is the goal of this kind of leadership to have people doing different things in order to help the company run smoothly. In addition, the analysis has provided key methods, in which the managers can use to change the behaviours of the leaders in the company in accordance with the desired leadership outcomes. This has been achieved by providing alternative methodologies, which can be adopted by supervisors to overcome their biases that may hinder them from adapting or acquiring desired leadership traits.
Essentially, the analysis has been instrumental in enabling the company to realise how the adaptive can be useful in achieving the desired leadership goals. For instance, one of the main goals of the company is to ensure its leaders from the supervisory role attains emotional intelligence as a means to improve on their leadership trait. By using the adaptive toolkit a person’s capacity to understand and regulate emotions, and the ability to do the same for others, is referred to as “emotional intelligence.” This means learning new skills and adopting a new method of working are frequently necessary for adaptive solutions. Emotions and feelings of loss might arise as a result of this process, which can be difficult to deal with. Adaptive leadership necessitates that the leader be aware of these issues and handle them in a mature and deliberate manner.
Personal Development Plan
The personal development plan serves as action plan or road map that enables an individual to identify personal goals he or she wants to achieve or are in line with the objectives the organizations. The personal development plan play an important role in harmonizing the needs of the individual with those of the organizations as dictated by the adaptive leadership toolkit (Barnes & Rennie, 2021). Overall, the personal development plan identifies a person’s area of leadership interest and the adaptive leadership toolkit enhances these areas through scientifically proven techniques.
Improving skills
One of the fundamental strategy of personal development plan is skill improvement. Personal development is a method of developing oneself via conscious habits and actions. It is the quest of personal improvement to increase one’s quality of by realizing personal and organizational objectives. Such a skill is critical in addressing the business problems the organization is currently facing, which requires the managers to develop new leadership skills in developing social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills as required.
The personal development plan enables managers to decide on what they seek to achieve in terms of leadership. To ensure success, the managers can adopt the SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals (Bjerke & Renger, 2017). The SMART objectives are critical in materialising the desired leadership objectives. To reach your objectives, SMART is a useful tool that helps the managers get the clarity, attention, and drive they require or need in attaining the desired leadership styles. It may also help the managers achieve their organization goals by focusing on fulfilling the objectives SMART.
Adaptive Leadership Toolkit
Target audience
When it comes to the workplace, things change constantly. The leadership and management style must evolve to keep pace with the changing demands affecting employees, customers, and resources. In an ideal world, management and leadership should be separated. The difference between management and leadership is that the former focuses on dealing with complexity, organizing people and tasks, and the latter on ensuring that the team works together to achieve a single objective. It is the ability to adapt quickly and effectively in a changing environment that sets the most successful leaders apart from their peers. Poor leaders, on the other hand, do the reverse and fail to adapt to changing circumstances, resulting in chaos and confusion. The importance of clearly defining the purpose and empowering the team to carry it out cannot be overstated. The managers must, however, be well-prepared and motivated in order to deal with major change.
Motivating workers in today’s multigenerational workplace requires more than just monetary incentives due to the wide range of motivational factors at play. It is important for an employer to consider other variables that may be important to their workers, such as a healthy work-life balance, the chance for professional growth within the business and the capacity to execute meaningful or difficult work. During times of transition, they become more critical. Thus, based on the above discussion it can be established that the adaptive tool kit has been designed to be used by organizations that seek to adopt new changes that affect the intrinsic characteristics of its employees.
Owners of the toolkit
If a company isn’t able to keep up with the times, it’s not going to be able to sustain its position as a market leader. Consider Kodak as an example. Many of its patents had to be sold off in order for the firm to emerge from bankruptcy after it was once a dominating player in the photographic film industry. In order to prevent a similar destiny, organizations might profit from adapting their leadership style. In the history of business, there are several instances of corporations that were once dominant but were unable to adapt to the changing times. To counter above mentioned challenges Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky developed a practical leadership paradigm called Adaptive Leadership, which is based on their research, teaching, and writing. Heifetz and Linsky distinguish between technical and adaptive modifications in their work on adaptive leadership (Pianesi, 2019). Despite their complexity, technical difficulties always offer a clear issue that can be handled with the help of pre-existing knowledge and the skills of a select group of specialists. Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, don’t have a clearly defined problem and require solutions that go beyond the organization’s current expertise and know-how. Individuals and organizations alike may benefit from this paradigm, which can be used to adapt and prosper in adverse situations. An organization’s ability to adapt depends on its ability to examine its fundamental assumptions, challenge the status quo, and make required adjustments.
Leadership skills and behaviors
There are numerous leadership skills and behaviors that are included in the adaptive leadership. This section discusses on the various behaviours and skills that are part of the adaptive leadership toolkit and their impact on the business problems the organization currently faces. First, Willingness to project into the future; by analyzing the long-term consequences, adaptive leaders are able to anticipate change before it occurs. A willingness to examine longer-term tactics for change, despite the short political cycle, and an evolutionary rather than a short-term outcomes focus are part of this approach. By doing so the adaptive leader will be able to develop interpersonal relationships with the employees as galvanise their efforts towards a common gaol. Essentially, Leaders that have strong interpersonal skills are better able to build meaningful connections with their team, encourage and inspire their staff, and overcome obstacles. Emotional intelligence has been shown to be an important factor in the success of leaders.
Secondly, breaking down barriers; Adaptive leaders are not territorial. It is less about supporting a company’s role in the bigger business than it is about promoting throughout the whole enterprise. Such as adaptive leader will be able to understand the importance of cultivating other leadership traits that are challenging or limiting to the growth and productivity of the company. In the context of leadership barriers the adaptive leaders will be able to develop high levels of emotional intelligence in order to be able to discern when their own pride or other feelings are interfering with their judgment, resulting in better decisions. Being emotionally intelligent also makes it simpler to foresee and react to the emotions of others.
Thirdly, being disruptive: Organizational norms may have to be altered in order for adaptive leaders to achieve their objectives and ideals. This skills is critical in enabling the managers to “think outside the box” in assessing themselves on how they can adopt new traits, which can be desirable in enhancing the leadership needs of the company. Lastly, being agile to get to the goal: When fresh knowledge or economic, technical, or societal developments necessitate a different strategy, adaptive leaders alter direction to meet the need of the company. Such as skill is critical in impacting on the competency of a leader to propose solutions facing the company in real time. Ability to sense and respond; Adaptive leaders remain faithful to their perceptions of the world and to their own character. They take into account the long-term consequences of successes and losses, and realize that they may have to overcome their own obstacles in order to achieve their goals.
Rollout and Implementation
Measuring implementation
The adoption of new changes in an organization can be difficult to ascertain or measure, especially if the changes are affecting a significant population of the employees. It is essential that a leadership development program’s objectives be closely aligned with the company’s goals. While it is vital to demonstrate the benefit of leadership training to the company, evaluating learning outcomes may be a difficult task. ” Measuring the efficacy of learning is referred to as the return on learning investment (ROI). There are various frameworks and models, which have been designed to enable organizations measure the success of new leadership or training programs such as the Kirkpatrick Model of four levels (Reio, Rocco, Smith & Chang, 2017). Evaluation of training and education programs may be done using the Kirkpatrick Model, which is widely accepted across the world. Both formal and informal training techniques are evaluated and rated against four levels of criteria: response, learning, behavior, and outcomes. Thus the Kirkpatrick Model can be adopted as mechanism to assist the company in measuring the implementation success of adopting the adaptive leadership toolkit.
Level one of the model examines how the managers feel about the adaptive leadership toolkit program. The company can issue a questionnaire to judge how relevant it is to their position as leaders. Considerations include if it was worth their time, whether they would suggest it to others, and so on. There are doubts concerning whether the proposal of new leadership training requirement matched their leadership goals and demands. A cloud-based survey application may be used to conduct a short questionnaire for this survey.
The second level assesses the managers’ knowledge and skills to ascertain whether they benefited from the adaptive leadership toolkit program. It is an evaluation of the usefulness of what the managers have learnt in terms of developing social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills of effective leaders. The surveys can be issued to the managers to enquire how often they utilize the skills and competencies they gained as leaders.
Third level examines determine whether the training has been successfully applied to the workplace. Learner competence and behavioral improvement are the primary goals of this assessment tool. Multi-rater pulse surveys administered to a leader’s direct reports are the best technique to perform this sort of evaluation. It is recommend that the company at this level can outsource organization to conduct leadership audit to benchmark the growth of its leaders in developing social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills as required.
Important milestones to consider
Despite the fact that more than three-quarters of businesses believe that investing in the development of their organization’s leaders at all levels is critical, very few firms actually do so. The effectiveness of management training is often difficult to gauge in organizations. Without the ability to quantify the results of their efforts, organizations are far less inclined to devote resources to creating and executing new initiatives. The following are essential techniques, which can be adopted by the company to gauge the important milestones to consider during the leadership development initiatives apart from merely tracking learning and development leadership trends.
First, Employee Attrition and Retention Rates milestone. This stage enable the company to determine if the employees are “comfortable” with the adaptive leadership training being provided in the company. If the retention rates are low it means that the training is appropriate. Secondly, productivity rate milestone ascertain if the leaders have begun to demonstrate signs of developing social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and the interpersonal skills as required. Thirdly, organizational results milestone it indicates how the company galvanised its core leadership strength with the adaptive leadership knowledge to minimise of various identified leadership deficiencies.
Communication
With many employees naturally resisting anything but the status quo, leaders often struggle to keep employees engaged during times of organizational change. Most change, in and of itself, can generate a sense of unease because it pushes employees out of their familiar and comfortable territory into the new and unexplored. Studies have proposed multiple methods, which can be useful in affiliating effective communication when making leadership changes. They include communicating from top down the leadership chain. This means that the top management should communicate the steps or processes that need to be followed when adopting the adaptive leadership toolkit in the company.
Feedback
An employee’s feedback is a tremendous asset. It has the potential to grow and develop staff, promote trust and communication, and deepen the relationships between employees and management if it is delivered effectively. Feedback is sometimes disregarded or removed totally in an attempt to prevent pain, however this is not always the case. Thus, there are multiple, which in which the company can enable the employees to provide feedback on any roadblocks, issues, or ideas for improvement. Such as issuance of online questionnaires and feedback portals, which can allow employees to provide their individual responses on how to best improve the process of improving of leadership styles and qualities as desired by the company.
Coherently, to communicate with all the stakeholders regarding the adaptive leadership toolkit will require adoption of communication strategy that will convey both internal and external communications. The internal communication will focus on disseminating information pertaining to employees of the company where such methods such as email, memos, and virtual calls/ video can be used. Furthermore, to the company’s website, social media platforms, and mobile applications can be used to conyed information to other stakeholders of the company regarding the adaptive tool kit. The however, the nature of information being transmitted should match or resonate with the communication medium or the targeted stakeholders. This is to ensure communication is not interrupted, lost, or misunderstood.
Reference
Barnes, T., & Rennie, S. C. (2021). Leadership and surgical training part 2: training toolkit for leadership development during surgical training. ANZ Journal of Surgery.
Bjerke, M. B., & Renger, R. (2017). Being smart about writing SMART objectives. Evaluation and program planning, 61, 125-127.
Elikan, D., & Pigneur, Y. (2019). A visual tool for identity communication strategy. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development.
Pianesi, A. (2019). Design Thinking plus Adaptive Leadership: Leading Organizational Change with the Change Canvas. Organization Development Journal, 37(3), 45-58.
Reio, T. G., Rocco, T. S., Smith, D. H., & Chang, E. (2017). A critique of Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 29(2), 35-53.
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