Successful organizations know they have to pay attention to all aspects of their business in order to win. Sales needs marketing, which needs product development, which needs research and development, and so on. Put too much of your organizational energy into select areas while neglecting others might shore up a sinking ship in the short term, but it is a recipe for long-term failure.

To succeed, we have to think holistically about our organizations, especially when it comes to leadership.

Whether hiring a new leader from the outside, elevating from within, or shuffling a team, focusing on the “holy trinity” of recruitment, development, retention is the proper, holistic approach to success.

Recruitment

Smart recruitment includes a well thought-out onboarding process and focusing not just on your new candidate’s skills and experience, but on how they will fit within your culture, as that trumps nearly everything else. (See my post, “After the hire” for more info.)

Part of your recruitment process should also be having a plan in place for executive coaching.  When you consider that key component upfront, it completes the candidate experience and starts engaging the employee immediately.

Development

Moving from recruitment to leadership development is where sophisticated, on-going executive coaching really pays dividends. Following up on a best practices onboarding process, coaching is a means to a successful career journey. The higher the position, the more responsibilities and staff direction that comes with it, the more crucial it becomes to have top-level coaching in place.

After decades of real-world corporate experience, I now specialize in leadership coaching, organizational change, and team development, bringing the best out of the best. I work primarily with mid-level and senior executives: think executive committee members, board chairs, chief executive officers, vice presidents, directors, and promising leaders.

I must be advocating that everybody has an external coach, right? Not at all. Many companies have excellent internal coaches or a well-designed, “well fed” mentoring program that serves its executives well. If you have the internal capability to have a fully functional mentoring program in place, that’s excellent. But I know from experience that is often not the case.

Retention

Keeping key leaders engaged well after the hire is a challenge facing organizations in all industries, at all levels. Once careers reach a certain level, cash is no longer the supreme motivator it once was. Organizations have to think strategically about what they can do to retain key employees, especially those in difficult-to-fill leadership roles, in the tightest labor market in a generation.

Developing a smart retention strategy requires innovative thinking and often times that outsider perspective that can see the big picture you may be missing.

Again, we come back to how important it is to view leadership development in a holistic manner. Working with Leading Edge Consulting provides your organization with that kind of a solution. While I personally specialize in executive coaching, I work with strategic partners who bring their particular expertise to bear on the recruitment and retention aspects of the trinity.

Interested in hearing more about how my team can help you get the best out of your team? Drop me a line today.