Your leadership pipeline is your vision of who will make your organization succeed, and how your organization will sustain its success well into the future. Your pipeline will have levels; smaller organizations may have about three, larger organizations may have seven or more.
Levels range from the individual contributors that do the daily work of your business to the CEO or enterprise leader who must set the direction for the entire venture.
But nothing in this picture is static. You organization and its leadership needs are continually flexing, and your people have ambitions for professional growth. Planning your leadership pipeline provides two huge benefits:
1. It assures that your organization will have the leaders it needs to grow and adapt to unforeseen changes.
2. It gives your people a reason to stay – as they see opportunities for professional growth.
Julie Geiger – a key leader of the Geiger Ready-Mix company – describes how leader development has both helped retain solid employees and improved their operations. She sees their people as the difference and believes that they can beat their competitors.
Dale Dean – a very successful leader of a fast-growing marketing firm – shares his thoughts on developing leaders and how that helps get the best effort from all.
Leadership at all levels creates the culture throughout an organization. Better culture makes better execution.
Good organizations promote from within because they can. That lets them grow sustainably.
One client said "we did not realize how hard it is to develop a program until we tried for ourselves." Instead, use the workshops designed by retired professors of leadership at the US Naval Academy. Over 25 workshops that can be used to address specific needs. Or use our courses, which combine the workshops most commonly needed.
You cannot become a better basketball player or baker only by reading a book. Doing either takes actual real-life practice. So do all of the behaviors that constitute leadership. Academy Leadership programs - from content to facilitation to coaching - are designed specifically to help your people cross the gap from 'knowing' about leadership to actually 'doing' leadership.
Tana Troke Campana describes how she used an Academy Leadership program to pull her experienced team together to face change.
Academy Leadership prepares confident and energized leaders at all levels.