Many company directors should reflect on exactly what style of leadership they need in the company in general and in each professional in particular. Companies are constantly looking to improve their competitiveness, productivity and profitability, and little by little, they have come to understand that this can only be achieved through adequate leadership development. Allen Woo, a specialist in business skills and competencies, explains how these two factors can be effectively developed.

Woo explains that the first step in developing the skills and competencies of leaders is to “understand what the direction of the organization is, with the perspective that business strategies and all human beings and professionals are different.” Everyone has the ability to exercise leadership according to their knowledge structure, experience and behavioral, and emotional structure.

Even so, there are determining elements to predict how the leader should be within the organization. Of course, this leadership style must be aligned to the culture, structure and performance indicators.

In fact, each area within the organization opens up possibilities of style and even more so when thinking about a specific position. It is common to find companies where the head, the middle and the base of the pyramid go different ways (in terms of vision and culture), where ambiguity is the order of the day and where all activity is limited to putting out fires, moving like weathervanes wherever the wind blows.

“Through many years contributing value to organizations with different human processes of identification, diagnosis, talent management and executive, leadership and team development; experience and practice have led us to understand that each professional needs different doses, contents and processes. The processes of human development, and in this case speaking of leadership development, have no delimitation,” assures Woo.

There is no chronological structure of closed times and movements. There are no ABC procedures in every person, in every organization, in every skill or competency, and if personal and emotional situations are involved, all the more so. This is due to the fact that the nature of the human being goes against logical reasoning, with which sometimes people would like to see everything.

It is a mistake to try to accelerate times by a date or an event, or to align the process to an indicator. It is even a mistake to think that by “magic” or “overnight,” at the end of the process, the person will meet the expectations of those involved. “We all have different expectations, and it would be very delicate to condition or justify development processes to a specific performance,” Woo asserts.

Companies have adopted a methodology that is constantly becoming success stories worldwide, which contains some of the best practices and success stories in developing leaders. First of all, the development objectives of each of the executives must be fully identified. It's important to have understanding leaders as an organizational system, to counteract the fact that different languages are spoken.

In other words, isolated executive development has little effect unless there is true alignment with at least three levels within the organization. It has little effect when directors, managers and other leaders in the company have different paths and seek different results; per se, the results will be poor or, to put it colloquially, “let's cheer up and go.”

“Then you need to establish how participants can turn the program into results for their company and specific jobs, which we easily call ROI (Return Of Investment),” Woo states. “In addition to the program's return on investment, it also focuses on action planning within their own day-to-day work.”

The main idea is to achieve tangible results, setting goals for improvement in revenue, time management, costs, results, quality, innovation, customer activity, change, staff development and leadership. It is also necessary to find individual and professional growth, in the work team, in the business as such and in the organization.

Woo believes that results will always be accompanied by the development in executives of the skills and competencies that the company is expecting. As well as the transmission of the model to future generations and the improvement of leadership within the culture, structure and the magnitude of achievements that the company is expecting.

About Allen Woo

Allen Woo is a self-taught expert in business and personnel management. Originally from Canada, he has spent much of his adult life honing his innate skills in motivation and personal growth. Woo dedicates his time to helping businesses and individuals make significant improvements in their daily interactions, constantly exploring new methods to motivate and enhance teams. When he's away from responsibilities, he likes to focus on inner growth and enjoys outdoor activities that exercise the body and the mind.

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