When it comes to building leaders, top companies assess the whole leader early in their careers. This includes evaluating leaders’ experiences, competencies, values, and organizational fit. This helps organizations understand the unique needs of their talent pipeline to fuel the right development solutions that move people forward faster. – Aon Hewitt Top Companies For Leaders
Assessment, as explained above, is one of the five key steps top companies take in their leadership approach, according to Aon Hewitt’s Top Companies For Leaders, a 2014 study that named General Electric (US), IBM (US), Hindustan Unilever (India), General Mills (US), and ICICI Bank (India) as the top 5 global companies for leaders. If one of your goals is a leadership role, take note that the best companies identify their high potential leaders early. Are your experience, skills, values, and fit on track with the companies and industries you are interested in?
Since your company may not have rigorous professional development plans for each employee, you need to assess yourself and build your own leadership program. Here are 4 other leadership traits that the top companies for leaders share according to the Aon Hewitt study:
Aon Hewitt: Awareness. Top companies have leaders who demonstrate tremendous self-awareness by understanding their personal strengths and weaknesses and using this information to become more effective leaders.
Do you know your strengths and weaknesses? In my years as a recruiter, I found that many candidates named general strengths as their expertise, such as communication skills. Communication skills can mean presenting, listening, writing, relating, synthesizing disparate concepts, and more. The more specific you can be, the more compelling the strength and the better you can refine and promote it.
Aon Hewitt: Resilience. In today’s unpredictable environment, top companies build resilience in their leaders by creating inclusive cultures where multiple perspectives and ideas are expected and fostered to help the organization meet continued business challenges.
Are you resilient – able to bounce back from setbacks and stay focused in volatile times? Top companies foster a resilient culture, but whether yours does or does not, you can individually raise your resilience quotient. Some of my favorite reads on resilience are Don Greene’s book, Fight Your Fear and Win: Seven Skills For Performing Your Best Under Pressure – At Work, In Sports, On Stage and Renita Kalhorn’s blog, Step Up Your Game Now.
Aon Hewitt: Engaging leadership. Organizations leading the way focus on identifying and building engaging leaders who are stabilizers, demonstrate versatility and stay connected to people and events inside and outside their organization.
Leadership does not happen in a vacuum – the best leaders can relate to varying people and situations. How developed are your relationship skills? How strong are your relationships? Note that leaders are connected inside and outside their organization. Are you connected to colleagues at your competitors? Do you frequent professional association meetings and conferences? Incorporating networking into your day-to-day doesn’t have to be hard; here are 5 tech tools that can help.
Aon Hewitt: Sustainability. Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders focus on building talent programs nimble enough to respond quickly to the market demands, yet sustainable to deliver superior business outcomes.
The top companies for leaders change their leadership development programs to meet market conditions but don’t cancel them due to market conditions. Your own professional development should also be sustainable, and not only when you have extra time or budget. In the next 12 months: which leadership books will you read? Which conferences will you attend? Which professional associations or individual contacts in your broader network will you prioritize? What professional development will you pursue?
Caroline Ceniza-Levine is co-founder of SixFigureStart® career coaching. She has worked with executives from American Express, Citigroup, Condé Nast, Gilt, Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey, and other leading firms. She’s also a stand-up comic, so she’s not your typical coach. Connect with Caroline on Google+.
