LEAD Awards 2018: Interview with Valarie Willis, Valarie Willis Consulting

Developing Effective Leaders at all Levels

 

What is the overall objective of your program?
To use an evidence based leadership model that develops leaders at all levels within an organization, so that organizations achieve their goals and vision. The goal is to create more effective leaders in the organization. We want something that is simple, but effective that will allow organizations to leverage their talent to achieve goals and objectives.  Leaders make a difference. Great leaders make an extraordinary difference.
 

Who do you impact with your program?
The beauty of this program is that is crosses all levels in an organization. It can be tailored for individual contributors as well as used at the senior executive level. The Five Practices of Exemplary leaders™ are the same, it is how they are implemented/executed that makes the difference.

What are the lessons you’ve learned this year from facilitating your program?
Organizations that decide up front to re-assess leaders within 10 to 12 months increase the ‘stickiness factor.’ Leaders know that the assessment will be coming back around, so they tend to be more focused.  From an emerging leader’s program perspective, an application and interview selection process may be better than someone nominated. It was interesting that we saw better results from a group that had to apply for a program position themselves, vs the group that was nominated by others. Something to keep a watch on. This is not a new learning, but I always remind myself to follow the energy in the room, and link leadership development to current challenges.

How do you measure the return on investment and success of the program?
Organizations set different metrics.  It will depend on why they want to invest in leadership in their organization.  As an example, one organization wanted to develop emerging leaders, so one metric was how many people were being promoted after completing the Emerging Leaders program.  Other clients used sales or engagement scores. For some it is retention. For the leaders who completed the Leadership Practices Inventory™ (LPI), it is important to reassess these leaders within 12 to 18 months.  This allows leaders to see the areas of improvement and opportunity. It is also a metric that measures leadership behaviors.

What lies ahead for the program and how will it continue to succeed?
To keep learning and finding new and different ways to facilitate the concepts. The 6^th edition of The Leadership Challenge was published last year. I am always thinking about how to leverage the authors Kouzes and Posner's great stories with the leaders in my sessions. Every organization needs great leaders to be successful, and we have to continue to provide access to leadership development.  The continued success of this program will be based on truly getting organizations to take it through all levels.