Leadership
strategy + business issue 36
content management
70
Leadership Is a Contact Sport
The “Follow-up Factor” in Management Development by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan
Leadership is not just for leaders anymore. Top
content management
2
companies are beginning to understand that sustaining peak performance requires a firm-wide commitment to developing leaders that is tightly aligned to organizational objectives — a commitment much easier to understand than to achieve. Organizations must find ways to cascade leadership from senior management to men and women at all levels. As retired Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter eloquently noted in the previous issue of strategy+business, this ultimately means we must “create 100 million new leaders” throughout our society. (See “Leading Witnesses,” s+b, Summer 2004.) Organizational experts Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard have defined leadership as “working with and through others to achieve objectives.” Many companies
are stepping up to the challenge of leadership development and their results are quite tangible. In Leading the Way: Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), a study of the top 20 companies for leadership development, Marc Effron and Robert Gandossy show that companies that excel at developing leaders tend to achieve higher long-term profitability. But it sometimes seems there are as many approaches to leadership development as there are leadership developers. One increasingly popular tool for developing leaders is executive coaching. Hay Group, a human resources consultancy, reported that half of 150 companies surveyed in 2002 said that they had increased their use of executive coaching, and 16 percent reported using coaches for the first time.
Illustration by Robert Goldstrom
Marshall Goldsmith (marshall @marshallgoldsmith.com) is a founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, a leadership coaching network. He has worked with more
content management
70
Leadership Is a Contact Sport
The “Follow-up Factor” in Management Development by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan
Leadership is not just for leaders anymore. Top
content management
2
companies are beginning to understand that sustaining peak performance requires a firm-wide commitment to developing leaders that is tightly aligned to organizational objectives — a commitment much easier to understand than to achieve. Organizations must find ways to cascade leadership from senior management to men and women at all levels. As retired Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter eloquently noted in the previous issue of strategy+business, this ultimately means we must “create 100 million new leaders” throughout our society. (See “Leading Witnesses,” s+b, Summer 2004.) Organizational experts Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard have defined leadership as “working with and through others to achieve objectives.” Many companies
are stepping up to the challenge of leadership development and their results are quite tangible. In Leading the Way: Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), a study of the top 20 companies for leadership development, Marc Effron and Robert Gandossy show that companies that excel at developing leaders tend to achieve higher long-term profitability. But it sometimes seems there are as many approaches to leadership development as there are leadership developers. One increasingly popular tool for developing leaders is executive coaching. Hay Group, a human resources consultancy, reported that half of 150 companies surveyed in 2002 said that they had increased their use of executive coaching, and 16 percent reported using coaches for the first time.
Illustration by Robert Goldstrom
Marshall Goldsmith (marshall @marshallgoldsmith.com) is a founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, a leadership coaching network. He has worked with more