Leadership upskilling gaining currency for succession planning

To tide over the challenges arising from leadership shortages, more and more companies are conducting prorammes to up-skill existing leaders to create an internal succession pipeline, says a survey. According to a survey by talent assessment firm Mercer-Mettl, 49 percent of organisations treat up-skilling and re-skilling of their new and existing leaders as the primary objective of their leadership development programmes, while 31 percent use leadership development to create a robust internal succession pipeline, and 20 percent of them use it to identify individuals with leadership skills.

According to the survey, while 23 percent of organisations focus on enabling leaders to become key drivers of business growth, 18 percent use it to enhance the interpersonal and behavioural skills so that they become more effective leaders. The survey reveals that while most organizations struggle to develop a team of effective leaders, those that do manage to create strong leadership face the risk of attrition on account of the present leaders are either baby boomers (around 50 percent), are on the verge of retiring or millennials who prefer to change jobs frequently.

About 30 percent of organisations find that their present senior management are unable to recognise leadership development as a critical business imperative, while around 25 percent feel long duration of leadership development programmes is a challenge, and 22 percent consider high cost a major deterrent..