Challenge:

While working as the HR Business Partner for Enterprise vertical of a leading technology firm, I was tasked with  designing the Leadership Development program, aimed towards providing a succession pipeline for the Regional  Sales head roles in the Enterprise vertical.

Only a few developmental interventions were being driven for the identified talent pool. These interventions were  not holistic in nature, and were not consistent when observed across different regions. Hence, the grooming of  talent to build a robust talent pipeline emerge as a major concern.

Selection:

I tool that I used to design the Program was the Mind-map. The rationale was as under:

 The target role/ outcome of the program was pre-defined, i.e. – Developing robust talent pipeline for the

Regional Sales head roles. This provided us with detailed insights of what was expected from the participants,  i.e.:

o Skills to be developed  o Competencies to be demonstrated  o Experiences to be gained, etc.

 Secondly, we had collected large amount of data regarding the available talent pool:

o Individual profiles which have shown success in these roles in the past  o Characteristics of the future talent pool available within the organization  o Assessment of these individuals on these skills, and the observed gaps vis-à-vis the target role

With the large amount of information available at disposal, coupled with clarity regarding the expected results,  Mind-map became an obvious choice.

Application:

As shared earlier, the target role – Regional Sales Head – had a predefined set of skills, competencies and  experiences that one needs to develop/ demonstrate/ gain in order to success in the role.

This role formed the center/ core of our mind-map, with the skills, competencies and experiences forming the  branches. These were further split into the components of the respective skills, competencies and experiences.

Let us take example of the competency – Account Management. In our context, this competency encompasses  the ability to independently manage/ lead discussions with CXOs in a given account, and act as a consultant to  them while doing your sales pitch. Thereby, the 2 sub-components became Stakeholder Management and  Consultative selling. These formed the sub-branches of the Account Management competency.

In this way, my mind map had 11 branches – 4 competencies, 4 skills and 3 experiences, which further split into  around 30 sub-branches (or parameters that defined them at the granular level).

As the next step, I looked at the assessment details that we had received while assessing the top 15 individuals  being considered for this program. These were broadly their strengths and development areas, as identified during  a development center. I tried clubbing them under either of these 30 parameters. I was able to map close to 90%

of the strengths / development areas of the individuals under the identified parameters in the mind-map. The  remaining 10% were mostly on the softer personality traits, which would have to be covered outside the purview  of this leadership program.

Once this was done, my mind-map was complete, and ready to be used to derive the next steps.

Insight:

The mind-map prepared in the previous section helped me analyze and backtrack the common strength areas and  development areas for majority of the participants. This laid down the foundation/ bedrock for the program, as  these common points were to be my anchors to keep the program in check, i.e.:

 I was able to easily prioritize the areas to be worked upon and those to be leveraged for their peer-learning;   The mind-map also helped me identify the areas that were pivotal to success of each of these individuals, and

would have to be leveraged for their self-learning.

The biggest learning was that the program cannot be one-size-fits all. It has to serve to the individual’s personal  developmental needs, while also catering to the larger group’s development needs.

While compiling these insights, as I went through the entire mind-map, I was able to identify the elements that  would form the part of their learning journey over the duration of the program. Each sub-branch and the  corresponding branch provided a link towards how to build the competence/ skill/ experience for the group, and  also for the individual.

This helped me in designing a holistic intervention that encompassed the journey of an individual from the role of  a manager to that of a leader.

Approach:

The mind map has shown me how to think openly, and be methodical at the same time. It helped me save a lot of  time, resources and energy, and helped deliver the program within the provided time window. The program was  resounding success, with 75% success rate.

Currently I’m studying the journeys of different leaders in my organizations – how they have been through  different forms of development interventions in the different stages of their careers, and how those interventions  led them to where they are today.

Their stories are inspiring and intriguing, with each leader having a significantly different journey than the other.  But the key messages in majority of these journeys are same – Believe in yourself, take the punt and stay  committed to your goal. These stories not only inspire, but also motivate me to do more. I believe the same can  be useful for everyone.

Hence, next time I will be adding storytelling to my plan along with Mind-mapping, as these two, if clubbed  properly, will form the key to more such successful programs.

