In order to provide effective service delivery, agencies need to ensure its employees are energized, focused, and committed to their program as well as to the agency mission as a whole. An excellent way to enhance and maintain employee interest and expand on an agency’s base of organizational leaders is to develop a Leadership Development Program. As you begin evaluating this concept, remember that these programs are meant to focus on the development of a broad array of leadership skills that an employee can apply to his/her current position or incorporate into his/her career development plan.
Before beginning to develop a leadership development program you need to ask,
"What makes someone an effective leader in our organization?"
Talk with or survey agency managers, executive staff, program directors or other pertinent technical experts in the organization about what makes an employee successful and a leader people turn to.
Once you have identified the skills or competencies that are of value to your organization (e.g., effective communication or listening skills, self-management, initiative, ability to successfully mediate or negotiate, public presentation/speaking skills, etc.), you can begin to develop your initial leadership development program initiatives. As you begin to outline your program goals, there are several additional areas of consideration to assess and include in your plan:
- Who is the program to be designed for and how can you maximize your leadership pool?
- Represented staff
- Non-represented staff
- Exempt staff under FLSA
- Non-exempt staff under FLSA
- Current managers
- Must be permanent staff (not probationary employees)
- All or a combination of the above
- How will training to staff be provided? Through work experience such as a mentoring program, through a schedule of formal classroom training, or a combination of both?
Mentoring Programs:
- Identify program area(s) where a mentoring program can be implemented; note that the program area(s) may change from session to session depending on agency needs and available resources.
- Identify a project outcome or benefit the organization will gain.
- Determine how much time or the length of each mentorship session (e.g., # of hours per week for one month, three months, etc.), assessing activities such as:
- Meeting attendance;
- Project work time beyond the employee’s current workload;
- Evaluate how an employee’s current workload may be distributed (in part or whole) to other staff during an employee’s participation in the mentorship program;
- Other considerations.
- Determine who is eligible to be a mentor and how many persons are available to serve in this role during a given session. Look at both technical experts as well as managers.
- Determine who is eligible to apply for the agency program as an "intern/trainee" and how many persons will be accepted to participate during each mentorship session.
- Develop a structured application and selection process. Through the application process, there should be a means to verify and document the support of the employee’s current supervisor for participation in this program.
- Identify the organization’s promotional strategy for this program.
- Develop an evaluation tool for the mentor and program participants.
- Assess who will provide the training, including the associated costs and logistics.
- Internal technical or program experts
- Internal managers or supervisors
- External vendors
- Utilize established state training programs and agency trainers
- Determine where the training will be provided. Options include in-house, other state agencies, vendor training sites, etc. Again, be sure to assess costs and other logistics.
As leadership development is not a new concept for state civil service agencies, we are providing you with a list of agencies that we have identified as having a variety of formal leadership development and career development plans at the time of this review. Please utilize these contacts as you begin to develop or revisit your leadership development plan.
Agency Models:
Links:
Enterprise Leadership Academy: http://www.ela.wi.gov
Enterprise Management Development Academy: http://www.emda.wi.gov
Office of Personnel Management: http://www.leadership.opm.gov
