RESOURCES

It’s no secret that leadership capacity is critical to organisational success, but little research has been compiled about the long-term impact of leadership on organisational productivity and profitability. 

In response, The Ken Blanchard Companies embarked on a study to answer some important questions about leadership and its role in supporting the overall success of an organisation. The study focused on four questions

For years, coaching has been regarded as a useful strategy for individual and organiSational development. Unfortunately, most organisations struggle with getting their managers to adopt and use coaching behaviours. In order to further understand the impact of leader coaching behaviours, the researchers at The Ken Blanchard Companies® embarked on a study to identify the correlations between leader coaching behaviours and the resulting correlation between trust, affect or emotion, and work intentions of their followers. This paper finds that coaching is a powerful managerial tool.

How a Systemised Approach to Coaching Can Help Organisations Get a Better Return on Their Investment When Coaching Is No Longer an “If” but a “How?”

The more challenging the situation, the greater the need to communicate clearly and effectively. Most communication weaknesses and failures in our organisations and teams can be linked to individuals lacking the skills to engage in open dialogue about difficult subjects.

One solution is increasing your organisation’s conversational capacity. Conversational capacity is the ability of an individual or a team to remain both candid and curious under pressure.

Mastering the art of leading change doesn’t need to be mysterious or complicated. Acknowledging that people go through predictable and sequential stages of concern— which can be anticipated and addressed—can help your organisation accelerate change.

By training leaders on how to address the stages of concern and respond with strategies to increase involvement and influence at each stage of the change process—and build the capacity for future change—organisations can dramatically increase the probability of successfully initiating, implementing, and sustaining change.

Each day we are having to invent new ways of working, new ways of interacting, new ways of living. We are having to be courageous, curious, agile, and gritty. We have to react almost hourly, on the fly, to new policies or rules that often were implemented without consideration of the impact they would have on us, without our voice at the table.

High involvement is at the core of Blanchard’s approach to Leading People Through Change. We believe change leaders need to hear the voices of those impacted by the change as we make the change. If that is unrealistic, we need to anticipate the questions and concerns of those impacted by the change. We also need to develop a change mindset that demonstrates to others what is needed to be resilient in the face of change.

“One of the first things I did at my new job at WageWorks, was meet with senior leaders to determine the top three things I needed to focus on to support the company. It was very clear that leadership training was at the top of the list,” says Deanna Miller, director of learning and development. Because WageWorks (recently acquired by HealthEquity) provides administration services to manage health savings and consumer-directed benefits such as flexible spending accounts, the L&D team’s main focus had been product training. However, Miller’s research indicated they now needed to be deliberate about creating a focused, scalable leadership training program for all leaders in the organisation.

“My challenge was summed up in two words: sonic boom,” says Brian O’Neill, director of learning and organisational development at Aimco. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Aimco is one of the largest owners and operators of apartment homes in the United States. The company serves nearly 250,000 residents in 22 states and the District of Columbia.

H&R Block is committed to elevating talent and culture as a key to its successful future. It’s making good on that commitment by making an investment in its leaders so they can unleash the potential in their associates.

Virtual learning has become mainstream. A study by Chief Learning Officer magazine revealed that seventy-five percent of responding organisations used virtual learning. According to Training Industry, virtual learning has become a $56 billion industry, with learning professionals claiming it is the second most effective training method they use.

When done effectively, organisations find it can reduce time away from the office and decrease the cost of training by eliminating the need for travel. Studies show virtual learning can also reduce instruction time, save energy, and increase the learners’ retention of the content.

The practice of performance review has been around for more than a century. Although the practice didn’t become mainstream until the 1950s, the primary function of performance appraisals was to provide a process for organisations to rate the effectiveness of their employees. The problem is most organisations don’t do them very well. In 1972, legendary organisational behaviour researcher Douglas McGregor published an article in Harvard Business Review titled “An Uneasy Look at Performance Appraisal” in which he outlined the pitfalls of traditional performance review.

Activating optimal motivation is far more than a feel-good proposition for individuals and organisations. It provides a pragmatic and skill-based framework, course of action, and solution to helping shift a workforce that costs organisations an estimated $350 billion annually in lost productivity. Organisations will spend $750,000 to $1 billion to fix a problem whose source many of them do not understand.

The Millennial Generation (born 1981–1995) is 76 million strong, and many managers seem to have great difficulty understanding and inspiring them. And that creates a problem, because they comprise 36 percent of today’s workforce, a percentage that will grow to 46 percent by 2020. Managers who learn how to truly inspire Millennials to contribute their talents to address the many challenges facing organisations today could far outperform their competitors.

Since the inception of SLII®, we’ve been asked about the validity of our concept of development level. This white paper will provide a deeper understanding of the concept of development level, as well as a recap of the relevant academic research* that supports the four components of development level.

Performance management is a key leadership responsibility. This survey suggests that significant gaps exist between employee expectations and what they are experiencing at work. Left unaddressed, these gaps represent a drain on overall organisational vitality through lowered employee intentions to stay, endorse, and apply discretionary effort as needed.

Online learning allows organisations to provide a consistent, convenient way to educate their employees. In fact, some experts believe that online learning is the way of the future. When designed effectively it can be just as powerful as, if not more powerful than traditional classroom training in addition to saving your organisation time and money. Following a few smart guidelines will enable you to design and deliver effective online learning experiences that meet the needs of learners.

The organisation and The Ken Blanchard Companies (Blanchard) deployed Blanchard’s Employee Work Passion Assessment in order to benchmark current levels of satisfaction in several key areas.

Goal achievement is central to our positive self-concept and self-esteem. In general, MSF works because when individuals see a gap between their feedback ratings and the desired goal, they generally work to reduce the gap as a way of maintaining a positive sense of self-esteem. Individuals have a natural tendency to correct a certain behaviour when they get feedback that doesn’t align with a standard they’ve held for themselves regarding who they want to be versus how they are perceived.

Employees want more meetings with their boss. That’s one of the key findings from a survey conducted by Training magazine and The Ken Blanchard Companies. More than 700 subscribers of Training magazine were polled to learn about their experiences having one-on-one meetings with their managers. Readers were asked what they wanted out of their meetings and how that compared to what was really happening.

New research from The Ken Blanchard Companies reveals the true impact of self-focused versus other-focused leader behaviours on the people they lead and the correlation to employee work intentions.

Peak learning experiences have the capacity to transform us, help us to grow, and, ultimately, optimise our lives. In a professional setting, learning gives individuals a chance to accelerate their success and expand beyond their current knowledge and skills. Yet so often those who teach don’t understand how to effectively transfer the knowledge or content in a way that learners can effectively integrate it, utilise it, and sustain it after the learning experience.

Working in the oil and gas industry is not unlike operating a motor vehicle—inherently but not necessarily dangerous. Many people go entire careers without a lost-time accident or injury while others experience recurring incidents. Each day requires a high level of competence and renewed commitment from each person to masterfully complete tasks that seemingly become routine. The focus on both safety and productivity must be in rigorous alignment with no lack of clarity.

One of the biggest challenges training professionals face when they propose new leadership development initiatives is convincing CEOs of the financial impact of the proposed initiative. Without a clear sense of the positive financial impact, it is easy to dismiss a new proposal as being too disruptive, too expensive, or too time consuming.

Organisations around the world are being forced to change the way they do business. Shrinking budgets, downsized workforces, customers who exhibit totally new buying behaviours and expectations, and employees who may be unclear of what’s happening next are forcing organisations large and small to innovate and find new ways to save–and make–money while rallying their troops for what lies ahead.