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Making Leadership Development Intentional, Not Incidental

July 23, 2024
Experiential Learning, Human Resource Training, Leadership, Learning
HRDQ-U

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Organizations can avoid the risks associated with inadequate leadership by preparing leaders for uncertain future scenarios in two ways. The first is by sharing past experiences with each other as a source of practical lessons about leading. The second is by planning for future experiences and lessons to learn to make themselves and others ready to become senior leaders. This structured approach to developing oneself and others is the best guarantee that your organization’s talent pipeline will be filled and flowing.

“It takes boldness to invest in programs of uncertain potentialities, but it is out of such support that some of the greatest discoveries have been made.” – H. Smith Richardson, Sr., Center for Creative Leadership Founder

For more than four decades, the Center for Creative Leadership has leveraged the power of leadership to transform individuals, teams, entire organizations, and societies to achieve what matters most to them — with results that are powerful, measurable, and enduring. Experience Explorer™ is a powerful card deck that contains Experiences and Lessons that matter most to preparing leaders.

Recommended training from HRDQ-U

Learning from Experience: Making Leadership Development Intentional, Not Incidental

5 Experiences and Lessons

There are five universally important experiences:

1. Bosses & Superiors

Leader(s) who are one or more levels above the manager and become a positive or negative role model, catalyst, coach, or teacher.

2. Turnaround/Fix-It

Fixing a failing or under performing business operation; or implementing an organizational culture change. These troublesome assignments can arouse turbulent thoughts and feelings that have to be managed to meet the twin goals of improving productivity and profitability.

3. Increase in Job Scope

An increase in budget, number of people to manage, access to resources, and complexity of tasks; typically raises the manager’s responsibilities and visibility and involves a promotion.

4. Horizontal Move

Transition or rotation to another function, business unit, organization, or industry sector; may not involve a promotion but calls for acquiring new expertise. Horizontal moves stimulate managers to experience different work and work cultures. These moves can be initiated by the organization or an individual.

5. New Initiative

Opportunity to develop or launch new products and services, adopt new technologies, craft a new policy or process, build a plant or unit from scratch, develop a new market, embark on a new line of business, or create a new business entity.

To make a contribution to our organization, we have to be successful in the world of work. World of work competencies are taught in MBA programs in business schools and in executive education programs. However, mastering lessons in the world of work is not enough to be an effective leader.

Experiencer Explorer

The Experience Explorer Solution Set includes a facilitator’s guide and one deck of 99 cards. Experience Explorer™ equips a facilitator with a simple, energizing tool to help managers explore their most memorable workplace experiences and what they learned about leadership from those experiences. This tool is based on proven research and offers the opportunity for preparing leaders by accelerating leadership development and enhancing leaders’ ability to learn from experience at all levels. Experience Explorer™ is much more than a personal inventory of experiences and lessons. It emphasizes the specific types of experiences and dimensions of lessons identified by CCL research as common to leading in organizations.

Join Meena Surie Wilson and Anand Chandrasekar in their webinar, Learning from Experience: Making Leadership Development Intentional, Not Incidental, where they take a closer look at learning from experiences and how to use Experience Explorer™.