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Evolving the Future of Succession Planning with the TLD Group

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 07:19:27 GMT

More than momentary change

In today’s fast-evolving healthcare landscape, leadership transitions are more crucial than ever.

Recently, as a senior consultant and faculty member at TLD Group, Kathy guided a major non-profit health system in New York through a transformative CEO transition that was more than a momentary change; it provided the organization with a sustainable strategy for future succession.

Through the development of a tailored CEO success profile, implementation of targeted assessments, and new leader assimilation coaching, Kathy’s work supported a smooth and successful executive transition, with multiple internal promotions. The leadership structure was strengthened with a resilient internal talent pipeline for the future.

"Kathy has been a critical partner," shared Susan Bornstein, former CHRO. "Her guidance allowed us to manage many organizational development initiatives successfully."

Kathy’s commitment to *succession readiness* emphasizes actionable development and accountability, paving the way for healthcare organizations to tackle leadership challenges effectively. "Too often, succession planning is reduced to creating an inventory of names without considering and creating accountability for the development needed to ensure successful transitions," Kathy explains. Focusing on readiness enables organizations to navigate leadership changes more effectively and maintain long-term success.

Explore Kathy's work in succession planning with TLD Group and read the full blog here ->

Too often, succession planning is reduced to creating an inventory of names without considering and creating accountability for the development needed to ensure successful transitions.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Executive Coaching: One Size Definitely Does Not Fit All

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:06:44 GMT

A coach is not a coach, is not a coach, is not a coach. Imagine a professional discipline prompting a Harvard Business Review article called “The Wild West of Executive Coaching.” (HBR, November, 2004). It’s a provocative title, and one that underscores the lack of professional standards in the field. And while some professional accreditation exists, today it is certainly not required.

Under the right circumstances, executive coaching can add tremendous value. Take one motivated adult with a need, add an executive coach with the right skills, stir in some trust and a willingness to move out of one’s comfort zone and you have a recipe for enhanced business performance. That’s my definition of executive coaching, and therein lies the rub, -- the term executive coaching means different things to different people.

Executive coaching means different things to different people.

So here are some useful guidelines for being an informed coaching “consumer”:

Be clear on the coach’s definition of coaching and ensure that it’s a match for your needs. My coaching practice focuses on helping people enhance their business results by making some shifts in behavior. Period. Other people are life skills coaches or therapists, and yet nobody stops all of us from calling ourselves executive coaches.

Understand how coaching is, or would be, perceived in your organization’s culture. In some organizations, getting a coach signals high potential. It’s definitely a good sign, often worn like a badge of honor. In others, getting a coach is like the kiss of death, a last ditch effort to salvage a career. It’s definitely a bad sign, and people understandably don’t want anyone to know.

Know when to use external versus internal coaching resources. Both can be extremely effective, but it’s important to understand the trade-offs. Some things to consider:

Internal capability and fit – Do I have the right skill set in-house?
I nternal capacity / opportunity cost – What’s not getting done if the senior HR executive is coaching the leadership team?
Potential conflict of interest – Am I the right person to coach you if I’m also responsible for your salary administration?
Cost
Integration with other leadership development activities – Does it make sense to keep training alive by using the faculty for ongoing coaching?

Kick a potential coach’s tires. Here are some things to look for:

Record of business accomplishments
Flexes style to meet coachee's needs
Knows how adults learn and develop
Doesn’t have a big ego

Offer to have the executive meet several coaches and choose one to work with. Coaching shouldn’t be “done to” someone. Choice drives the personal connections and sense of trust that are critical to a success .

Create a coaching partnership that includes the coachee’s boss, HR and the coach. Successful coaching isn’t done in a vacuum, and coaching engagements are not forever. Therefore, it’s important for internal stakeholders like the boss and HR to be able to support the coachee after formal coaching ends. Just be certain that the ground rules for

confidentiality are made clear up front.

Today’s world is moving at breakneck speed and the marketplace puts a premium on agility. Selectively providing executive coaching with a coach

whose only agenda is to help the individual be the best s/he can be can truly provide an organization with a competitive edge.

Wondering if coaching is the right solution for you? Let's have a conversation.

The Best of Kathy on Forbes

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 07:02:26 GMT

Kathy Bernhard is a regular contributor on Forbes Coaches Council,

a community of top business and career coaches.

The council empowers passionate, diverse business leaders to gather, connect, collaborate, and grow.

Advice for Coaches

16 Lessons Coaches Learned By Working With Their Own Coach

15 Potent Ways for Professional Coaches to Differentiate Themselves

12 Trust-building tips for Converting Contacts into Clients

15 Trends that will Redefine Executive Coaching in the Next Decade

12 Ways to Facilitate a Culture of Coaching

12 Tips for Starting out as a Professional Coach

Advice for Leaders

14 Practical Steps Leaders Should Prioritize In A Crisis Situation

How Senior Leaders Can Approach Tough Talks With Poor-Performing Managers

How CEOs Can Better Keep Stakeholders In The Loop

11 Ways to be a more Ethical Leader

How to Mind Your Language when Talking to the Team: 15 top tips

15 Ways Leaders Can Promote Creativity in the Workplace

15 Things Senior Leaders can do to Better Support Junior Team Members

15 Effective Ways to Improve Recruiting and Find Good Talent

16 Ways To Remove Unconscious Bias From The Hiring Process

14 Commonly Overlooked Methods for Increasing Business Profits

15 Important Things Every Leader Should Do When Having a Difficult Conversation

11 Decision-making Tips All Executives Should Remember

15 Ways Leaders Can Hone Active Listening Skills (And Why They Should)

How To Optimize Year-End Reviews With Remote Employees To Boost Retention

A better strategy for encouraging creativity is to build a team with a variety of different skills and strengths, and to encourage healthy debate among them. Create an environment where failure is OK, and different points of view are encouraged. Ban the expression "that's not the way we do it here."

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Advice for Challenges You're Facing Now

15 Ways Remote Leaders may be Failing their Teams

15 Questions to Ask Employees if You Want them to be More Engaged

10 Ways to Identify Leadership Gaps Within Your Company

14 Ways to build a Company Culture that Embraces Change

As Boomers Retire, Follow these tips to Ensure a Smooth Transition

Asking more questions, and truly listening to the responses rather than just telling people what to do can strongly contribute to creating a coaching culture. A command culture puts a tremendous burden on the leader to always know the answer, and in today's world, that is simply no longer possible.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Honing Your Skills

15 Concrete Ways To Improve A Business’ Branding Strategy

14 Ways For Junior-Level Professionals To Practice Delegation Skills

15 Skills Employers Seek In 2022 (And Ways To Gain Them Midcareer)

15 Ways Leaders Can Hone Active Listening Skills (And Why They Should)

How To Fix 14 Public Speaking Issues Professionals Commonly Overlook

11 Decision-making Tips All Executives Should Remember

13 Signals for Recognizing when a Business is Scaling too Fast

11 Factors Entrepreneurs should Consider before Pursuing Change

12 Ways to Make the Most of Social Media Advertising

14 Ways to Get Ahead in the Relationship Economy

16 Ways to Remove Unconscious Bias from the Hiring Process

14 Great Examples Of Experiential Learning In The Workplace

Well-Being

13 ‘Benefits’ Employers Offer That Are Actually Just Gimmicks

Nine Strategies Busy Professionals can use to Reduce Stress

15 Tips for Business Leaders to Regin in Stress

A really smart boss once told me, “You get paid to have a point of view.” That made it much easier for me to share new ideas and also to disagree. Try reframing the problem and remind yourself that smart leaders know good ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. In fact, the best ideas often come from the people closest to the work.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Working with Each Other

16 Ways to Change your Negative Outlook on Feedback

The Best Ways to Offer Feedback to a Higher-up

Promoted to Management: 15 Ways to Navigate Workplace Relationship Changes

Prospective Client Not a Good Fit? 15 Ways to Let Them Down Easy

When is it Ok to Say No in the Workplace without Fearing the Consequences?

Propel Your Career

15 Steps Aspiring Leaders Can Take To Start Building A Personal Brand Online

Thinking About Partnering With A Headhunter? 16 Things To Keep In Mind

Sprucing Up Your Résumé For A 2023 Job Search? Follow These 15 Tips

12 Trust-building tips for Converting Contacts into Clients

11 Ways to Stay Up on the Latest Industry Developments

15 Techniques for Boosting Engagement on Linkedin

14 Ways Cost-conscious Solopreneurs Can Gain Brand Visibility

14 Ways to Get Ahead in the Relationship Economy

16 of the Best Reasons to Pursue a Professional Apprenticeship

Are you facing a unique business challenge? Need an Executive Coach? Have a conversation with Kathy.

A Short Story About Development

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 18:49:49 GMT

Do you recognize this little frog?

Women In STEM Leadership Program

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 15:33:34 GMT

Kathy Bernhard is the Curriculum Designer and Lead Facilitator for SUNY Stony Brook's Women in STEM Leadership program, a growing community of thought leaders, mentors and peers who focus on helping women achieve success.

The curriculum is designed to unleash potential, where women explore their concept of self and develop skills to navigate industries, systems, and business cultures that are particularly challenging. To address the obstacles women face, three key themes are woven throughout the program:

Self-Confidence: Women finding their own voices
Self-Advocacy: Women taking charge of their own careers
Becoming a Change Agent: Women who are prepared to make culture shifts to empower female leaders, and make the changes needed in their own career to secure professional growth and development.

Empowering Each Other

Watch this video for some of Kathy's thoughts about the program, the curriculum, it's importance, and relevance. For a full overview of offerings, discover more about the Women in STEM Leadership Program.

The Deceptive Simplicity of Mentoring

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 16:48:57 GMT

Low cost, high impact isn't so simple.

Thoughtfully implemented mentoring remains high on my list of remedies for organizations facing daunting dual challenges of accelerated turnover and scary demographics as more baby boomers approach retirement. Still, mentoring can look deceptively simple, and yield disappointing results when not thoughtfully designed and guided through the organization.

There’s an argument that says mentoring happens on its own when two people take an interest in each other’s careers and that “arranged mentoring marriages” don’t work. While it is certainly true that some valuable mentoring relationships develop informally, leaving it to happen on its own will never move the needle on development and retention significantly enough to matter at an organizational level. The key is to find a way to scale the informal mentoring that is already working sporadically in many organizations.

Designed for Success

Mentoring programs require just the right amount of structure and monitoring to generate value. Both over-engineering and loose management can yield lackluster returns. Here’s what I’ve seen work:

Clear Purpose. Start with a clearly defined purpose(s) for mentoring in your organization and a shared definition of the business problem you are trying to address. It’s hard to know how successful your program is unless there is alignment around the purpose. Development and/or retention? Even knowledge transfer or breaking down organizational silos...some organizations have successfully introdu ced separate mentoring initiatives for different purposes.

Defined Infrastructure. Once you are clear on what you hope to accomplish through mentoring, it’s equally important to provide some basic “infrastructure.” Concentrate on creating scalable processes and related tools that can then be replicated simultaneously in different parts of the organization with minimum incremental effort. These include the selection and matching process, guidelines for goal setting and timelines for formal relationships (YES, formal mentoring relationships should be time bound!) along with supporting workbooks and other materials. Finally, an important part of the process is often a series of “mentoring workshops” to align expectations, review some “power skills for mentoring” (i.e. giving and receiving feedback effectively, listening, questioning and networking skills), and to actually provide dedicated time for pairs to spend together. Despite best intentions, one of the biggest challenges reported by mentoring pairs I work with is scheduling. Carving out “partner time” in a mentoring workshop can be very effective and is routinely appreciated by participants. Pairs should also be encouraged to use this time to do something together.

Monitoring. Monitoring is also a key ingredient for success, monitoring process, not content. Confidentiality is of course pre-requisite to successful mentoring relationships, but assigning someone to “shepherd” each pair can be very valuable. It increases the probability that derailment can be caught and resolved before it’s too late. Second, and equally important, it should provide the necessary metrics to determine what’s working well and what may need to be modified. Is the guideline for the number of meetings working? Is the time period too short? Where do the pairs feel like they need more support? (Hint: Goal setting is the most common answer I see to this question...). Finally, it can be extremely valuable to survey participants at the end of each cycle, analyze trends and tweak your design accordingly.

Acceleration. I’ve seen programs become contagious as they start to gain traction. One way to accelerate this process is by inviting past participants to share their experiences as speakers in new mentoring workshops. There is no substitute for the type of testimonials these “satisfied customers” can provide. Knowing who will have the best insights and creative ideas to share is an important output of your monitoring procedure.

Some thoughtful design work up front can prepare your organization to nimbly respond to the heightened demand that thoughtful design should generate. Keep in mind that if your design is not scalable, it is unlikely to impact the organization on a large scale!

Do you have questions about designing an effective mentoring program? Let's have a conversation.

Every Manager Must be a Talent Scout

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 16:16:57 GMT

The organizations who compete most successfully in the new war for talent will have a secret weapon: an army of talent scouts at every level of the organization.

They will do this by ensuring that every people manager looks in the mirror and sees a talent scout. In addition to his/her functional role, successful leaders must also effectively attract, grow and retain the necessary talent to execute flawlessly on their individual piece of the business strategy. What was perhaps merely a “nice to have” for the 20th century is now elevated to a “must have” for the 21st century.

Here's Why it's Essential:

In 2008, we experienced the first big wave of baby boomers retiring. The queue behind them is simply not big enough to replace them. The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) projects that the US economy will have six million more jobs to fill than people to fill them due to baby boomer retirements.

The average tenure of managers and executives is decreasing steadily over the past 10 years.

The major reason employees are looking to leave their present employer is lack of career growth and development, often blocked by a bad boss. “It’s the soft stuff that generally retains talent. It’s quality of supervision. It’s systematic advancement and opportunities to learn and grow. It’s recognition, listening and delegation.”

Futurist Jay Jamrog, Executive Director of HRI, the Human Resource Institute at the University of Tampa, predicts what he calls “The Perfect Storm,” a definite shortage of knowledge workers, a probable skill deficit, and maybe a labor shortage on top of that.

In the face of this evidence, organizations can no longer afford to relegate “that people stuff” to the HR team. The stakes are too high not to have every manager, every leader at every level, wearing a talent scout hat and being measured on the results they produce.

References:

"100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers & HR”, Eichinger, Lombardo, & Ulrich

Do you need help developing your team? Let's have a conversation.

Invasion of the VUCAns

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 17:00:30 GMT

What, another generation of Star Trek extraterrestrial humanoids to contend with?

Mercifully, no. Look carefully, and you’ll see we’re not talking about Star Trek Vulcans; rather it is a real life, non-fiction uber-challenging force facing all of our organizations, the advent of the VUCA world. While a fair amount has been written on this topic, the term VUCA is relatively new, having been coined by the military in the 1990s. Not quite yet a household term, most of us recognize and work every day under the conditions it describes: V olatility, U ncertainty, C omplexity and A mbiguity.

The business world has always been punctuated by some periods marked by conditions like these; the difference is that the VUCA world seems to have become a steady state. In the past, we have had the luxury of sprinting through VUCA periods and then getting some respite. More recently, perhaps when we weren’t looking, that sprint morphed into a requirement for a marathon.

And therein lies the challenge. Most of us can rise to the occasion and deal with the stress and challenge presented by VUCA conditions on a temporary basis. Some even find it exhilarating in the short run. Trying to maintain our effectiveness and even our equilibrium in the face of relentless VUCA conditions is an entirely different race.

Sustaining Results in a VUCA World – The Marathon

Sustaining results in a steady state VUCA world will require heightened emphasis on a specific

set of skills and organizational capabilities, coined “VUCA Prime” by Bob Johansen, of the Institute for the Future.
with a skill / element of organizational capability, as follows:

Johansen deftly summarizes “VUCA Prime” by adding that to be successful we will need to be very clear where we’re going while at the same time being very flexible about how we get there. Sounds pretty simple, but as always, the devil is in the executional details.

The Power of Pause

In his book, “The Pause Principle,” Kevin Cashman offers a somewhat counter-intuitive strategy for coping with VUCA, (and implicitly reaching “VUCA Prime”), best summarized as “needing to go slow to go fast.” Cashman persuasively argues that those who cope most successfully in the VUCA world will be those who pause to reflect and to ask the right questions. “Pausing is a methodology for proactively navigating toward openings, and a capacity for turning uncertainty and volatility to an advantage...an opening for something new to emerge.”

Cashman further illustrates with the following “Pause Principle Model,” which measures the amount of pause or reflection on one axis against the degree of complexity on the other.

He goes on to offer that “The sweet spot of management effectiveness and leadership excellence is agilely flexing between the transactive and transformative depending on the degree of complexity. The developmental challenges are often in our hyperactive or hypoactive states when we are either pausing too little or too much.”

Core Questions for Leaders and Teams

The core questions for us and our teams are whether we are spending enough time in the “Transformative” quadrant or too much time in in the Hyperactive and Hypoactive quadrants. Are we delegating enough of the Transactive work to those at lower levels, so that we know that we are not only productive, but productive on the right things? If we are really honest, most of us will own up to spending too much time in the Hyperactive quadrant, having been conditioned that “faster is better.” Faster may have been better when we were sprinting through VUCA periods, but surely no longer so for the VUCA marathon we now face.

My observation from my own leadership development and coaching work is that encouraging leaders to slow down to pause and reflect is a hard sell. Particularly among the more experienced leaders, it seems to go against the grain, as though the suggestion to slow down means taking oneself out of the race. These are often folks who have gotten where they are through a hard charging, driven “on all the time” style. Not only is that not the best fit style for the VUCA world, it is likely not even a sustainable style for many as they enter the later stages of their careers.

Going slow to go fast is a new and different paradigm for many of us and it is up to us as leaders to role model the requisite new behaviors for our teams. Successful athletes often practice interval training, spurts of high exertion followed by periods of recovery. In order to lead the teams who will prevail in the VUCA marathon, we would do well to translate this concept into our organizations and our daily business lives.

Can’t you just hear the coach’s admonition to the team?

“Ready, Set, Pause...”

Not a far-fetched idea at all....

Are you facing a unique business challenge? Need an Executive Coach? Let's have a conversation.

WEBINAR: The New War For Talent - Implications for Succession Planning

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 16:31:13 GMT

Free webinar in partnership with The Leadership Development Group

Presenter: Kathy Bernhard

Session Overview:

As companies reimagine what the future of work requires, meaningful succession planning is a competitive differentiator. In contrast to what succession planning used to look like, today’s best practice organizations go far beyond the simple “replacement inventory charts.” To truly add value, succession planning has to focus on what it will take to be successful tomorrow, not just today. And we know tomorrow’s success criteria may be quite different from what has typically been required. This means being clear about specifically what needs to happen to ensure that successors are actually ready to step up when the time comes. No matter where your organization is starting from, this session can help you move your succession planning practices to the next level--even if you have nothing in place today.

You'll Learn How To:

Position succession planning for competitive advantage

Identify differentiators between “value-added” and “not so much value-added" succession planning

Evaluate “best fit” practical tools for your organization

WEBINAR: How to Thrive, Flourish and Prosper in a COVID World & Beyond

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 08:39:31 GMT

FREE Webinar from

SUNY Stony Brook Women in STEM Program

Presenters: Al Pisano, Kathy Bernhard, Kathryn Mayer

Session Overview:

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, particularly for women and women in STEM professions. Listen in as leadership development professionals Kathy Bernhard and Kathryn Mayer discuss strategies that can bring you out of the pandemic stronger.

Topics include:

Self-care
Self-advocacy
Letting go of perfectionism
Utilizing your professional network
Intentionality
Shifting from letting things happen to making things happen

PRESENTATION: Accelerated Executive Transitions - Keys to Retention, Effectiveness, and Leadership Success

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:53:08 GMT

Download Free Resources

Get Kathy's presentation on how to best support executives as they transition into new roles.

What's covered in the deck:

How to develop strategies to maximize effectiveness of new leaders

The steps for accelerating executive transitions in your organization

Tools and techniques to support leaders in transition

Making the Business Case for Acceleration

PRESENTATION: The Future of Work and Managing Risk - Thoughts on Succession Planning

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:46:00 GMT

Download Free Resources

Get Kathy's presentation on how to develop succession plans for the future.

What's covered in the deck:

What We Know about the Future of Work & Associated Risks

Succession Planning Best Practices and Tools

Learn Some Common Traps and Pitfalls to Avoid

Deepen Your Understanding of What Works and What Doesn’t

Learn How to Assess Your Organization’s “Succession Planning Maturity”

Discover how to take Your Organization’s Efforts to the Next Level

PRESENTATION: How to Succeed in Succession Planning - Lessons from the Trenches

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:28:37 GMT

Download Free Resources

Get the presentation Kathy gave at NYATEP (New York Association of Training and Employment Professionals).

Find out:

How to define Succession Planning and Its Role in the Organization

Best Practices and Tools

Common Traps and Pitfalls to Avoid

What Works and What Doesn’t

How to Assess Your Organization’s “Succession Planning Maturity”

PRESENTATION: Not Your Parent's Succession Planning

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:19:53 GMT

Download Free Resources

Get the slides from Kathy's webinar for the Leadership Development Group.

What's covered in the deck:

How to position succession planning for competitive advantage

How to identify differentiators between “value- added” and “not so much value-added” succession planning

Succession Planning Then and Now

Succession Planning Tools

Common Pitfalls

A Best Practice - McKesson

Self-Awareness & Feedback: Who's Staring Back in the Mirror?

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:18:47 GMT

I recently read a stunning headline summarizing a study where more than half the participating leaders assessed themselves in the top percentile of leadership skills.

At first blush, that’s somewhat startling, but upon reflection, it shouldn’t be so surprising.

The fact is that most of us continue to work in “feedback poor,” not “feedback rich” environments. Timely and accurate feedback remains a scarce commodity in most organizations, despite the fact that we know that enhanced self-awareness that is the byproduct of quality feedback drives better business results.

So What’s a Leader to Do?

Quality feedback can range from simple to more comprehensive. At the simplest end of the scale, it can consist of nothing more than “Here are the things I think you should start doing, stop doing and continue doing to be more effective.”

Most of us are happy to wait for feedback until it’s offered, and have a tendency to sit back and wait. The strongest performers are simply more proactive; when they are not naturally getting feedback, they go seek it out.

In terms of comprehensive feedback, many organizations have had great success building regularly scheduled 360-degree feedback into their standard operating procedures. For most people, if they’re getting any regular feedback, it comes from a single source -the current boss. Even if that person is skilled at giving feedback, (and in most organizations, that’s not a given,) s/he still has a limited vantage point. 360-degree feedback can enhance the boss’s feedback by adding the perspectives of other raters, people like direct reports, peers, and even customers. Their feedback may be the same or different, based upon their expectations, as well as the circumstances where they interact with the person. The person getting the feedback is able to drive their own self-awareness by comparing their self-assessments with those of each of the other rater groups.

MORE ABOUT 360-DEGREE FEEDBACK

The power of the feedback is often that the person getting it now knows how s/he is perceived by others. It’s up to him/her to decide whether they’re ok with these perceptions, or whether they want to do something to change them.

Getting 360-degree feedback is like a long hard look in the mirror. Our reactions can be anywhere from “Yeah, that’s pretty much the person I see in the mirror when I brush my teeth every morning,” to “I don’t recognize the person being described.” For most of us, the reaction is somewhere in the middle; we can predict a lot of what others will say about us, but there are generally some surprises as well.

A common misperception about 360-degree feedback is that its purpose is to identify someone’s flaws or what they aren’t very good at. To the contrary, it is equally about identifying the strengths someone has to leverage, the things that they should continue and do more of.

We also know from research that self-ratings tend to be the least accurate; we all have blind spots. Quality feedback (and particularly 360-degree) can minimize the blind spots that can derail careers. The simple truth is that the only way we can become aware of our blind spots (and ideally address them) is when we hear about them from others.

Mirror, mirror...

on the wall...

Can that really be me?

The answer is we won’t know until we get some feedback, and 360-degree feedback debriefed with a skilled facilitator can be a very effective tool for finding out. We strongly encourage people to get 360-degree feedback “early and often,” before those blind spots morph into fatal flaws.

Some useful tips to remember:

Before embarking on a 360-degree initiative, think through what happens after the results are in. There’s no payback on the investment unless the 360-degree is accompanied by development planning resources designed to help strengthen development needs. The value lies in including 360-degree as an element of a comprehensive development strategy, not as a stand alone effort.

The follow-on to providing development planning resources is to build in accountability for doing something different as a result. While it’s not necessary, nor even advisable, to have someone share their 360-degree results broadly, it is definitely best practice to share the elements of a development plan and invite feedback on ongoing progress. People are not mind readers, and development is not always a steady progression of improvements. We all require ongoing, real-time specific feedback about what’s working and what isn’t to enable true progress.

We know that raters often tend to be fairly “gentle” in their ratings when an organization first introduces 360-degree feedback. Once the first cycle has been completed and people realize no one got penalized for the ratings they gave, ratings often tend to drop in the next cycle as people become comfortable being more candid.

There are many good 360-degree feedback instruments available, but my advice would be to select one that allows raters to provide narrative comments to support their ratings. In my experience, the narrative comments often represent the richest part of the feedback and they provide a context for the person getting the feedback to understand it more deeply.

Most 360-degree tools have a shelf life of no more than two years, so it’s important not to rely on data that’s too old.

So back to those leaders with the over-inflated sense of their leadership skills (do the math - half of the folks can’t be in the top percentile!) My fear for them is that their blind spots will one day come back to bite them and they’ll never even know what hit them. The honest truth is that organizations are less tolerant of leadership weakness the higher an individual progresses. Suddenly, the super star’s “signature strengths” are no longer enough to compensate for the now more visible leadership deficiencies, and another career derails unfortunately. What a shame nobody held up a mirror for the person when there was still time.

Have questions about 360-Degree Feedback? Don’t know where to start? Let's have a conversation.

Leadership Development is the Ultimate Perk

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 02:15:29 GMT

“Development is the ultimate perk...it can’t be taken back once given, and it leads to other benefits.”

So say Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel in “The Leadership Pipeline,” (Jossey-Bass, 2001, pg. 163). We would go one step further, and argue that leadership development can indeed be a potent retention strategy.

Today’s business press is full of admonitions that talent retention is once again ripe to become an overriding corporate challenge, across industries as well as across geographies. We hear about lots of expensive perks and golden handcuffs, yet in many cases, this one is there for the asking. So many organizations have environments rich with development opportunities, yet not enough are focused on making sure that the right people are getting them at the right time in their careers, and that they get the maximum learning from them.

In his book “High Flyers,” Morgan McCall asserts that “development is not so much about building new systems (the inundation-in-bureaucracy approach) as it is about using what already happens in a wiser manner.” (Harvard Business School Press, 1998, pg. 79). We couldn’t agree more. Research has consistently shown that the most significant development comes from challenging experiences on the job, starting with the original AT&T studies and confirmed by long term studies at the Center for Creative Leadership. The organizations that prevail in the new “War for Talent” will be those who focus on managing assignments as a development strategy, who take some risks with “stretch assignments,” and who view occasional mistakes as an investment in development. In short, they will be the ones who succeed in creating a development culture.

Have questions about leadership and leadership development? Let's have a conversation.

The Care and Feeding of High Potentials

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 05:54:29 GMT

A startling statistic was presented in the 2006 U.S. Job Retention Poll released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and The Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal.com (12/19/06). Their respondents, a combination of over 800 employees and HR professionals, believe that more than 75% of employees are looking for new jobs. If you’re like me, your immediate reaction is “not my clients, not my company - it must be those unenlightened guys in some of those businesses stuck in the dark ages.”

Not so fast. Maybe you’ve implemented a broad-based retention strategy that’s begun to yield results. Let’s be generous and say maybe the figure is a little lower for your particular organization, industry or geography. Yet reduce the figure by a third, or even cut it in half and you still have a substantial problem if the employees entertaining moves are the wrong ones. What would it do to your organization’s ability to deliver on today’s commitments and execute on tomorrow’s strategy if you lose too many of your high potentials? What if they just become less engaged while considering other career options?

What would it do to your organization’s ability to deliver on today’s commitments and execute on tomorrow’s strategy if you lose too many of your high potentials?

What if they just become less engaged while considering other career options?

Know Your Talent

Be clear on what constitutes high potential in your organization. What are the skills and traits the future leaders of your business will need to deliver outstanding results down the road? Hint: the highest performers do not always equal the highest potentials; some of the highest performers are in fact “high professionals,” functional experts with neither the desire nor the capability to take on a broader role. This distinction is a good thing, in that these “high professionals” represent the backbone of many organizations.

Once the criteria are established, use a structured data-based method to assess people against them, thereby identifying your pool of high potentials. Next, determine the individual development gaps and put in place a comprehensive development action plan for each person. Since it is well established that most real development happens on the job, the best plans are heavily skewed toward new assignments with supporting coaching, mentoring and carefully timed, thoughtfully chosen formal training.

Don’t leave yourself open to the scenario where a former employee goes on to set the world on fire elsewhere, leaving you scratching your head because you had no idea s/he was so capable. That’s a true risk of not knowing the talent.

Differentiate Your Talent

Differentiate your talent taking particular care to nurture the talent you can’t afford to lose.

Conduct regular retention and career discussions with high potentials and high professionals. Ask about career aspirations and “care abouts” on the job. Find out what would cause the person to seriously consider a call from a recruiter. While you certainly can’t promise that the organization can deliver what the person wants when s/he wants it, having the information is a whole lot better than managing blindly. What you learn may surprise you; there’s nothing worse than grooming an individual for a big job s/he doesn’t want. In addition, the very act of asking serves as a deposit in your “goodwill bank.”

Use training opportunities and assignments to send signals about potential. GE is one organization who does this very effectively. It is widely understood that being invited to attend certain courses at the famous Crotonville executive training facility is a gateway to higher level positions.

Seriously differentiate with both monetary rewards and assignments and consider some type of deferred rewards to drive retention.

Conduct regular retention and career discussions with high potentials and high professionals. Find out what would cause the person to seriously consider a call from a recruiter.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Decide to “Tell” or “Not to Tell.”

This is the age-old debate about whether organizations should actually tell people they are considered high potential. I personally come down on the side of stopping short of using the term, but advocate going right up to the line. I’m in favor of telling people that while there can be no guarantees, with continued strong performance we can envision a lot more “runway” in their careers. Then let your actions speak for themselves.

While telling is riskier because it can be interpreted as a commitment and because some people will inevitably disappoint over time, it can certainly be done effectively. It simply takes more careful management, and a culture where leaders have the courage to tell people when they are no longer considered high potential.

Whether it makes more sense to tell or not to tell in your culture, the most important thing is consistency. Make sure that the leadership team has the discussion and makes a conscious decision about which way to go. Skipping this step can lead to some messy situations which could have been avoided.

Keep a Laser-Sharp Focus on the Right Talent

Even the best organizations have limited resources to devote to developing and retaining talent, so they apply those resources disproportionately where they will produce the highest return.

The good news is not all of the most effective retention and development strategies are expensive. A good example is the practice of regular Retention and Career Discussions described above. Exposure to senior management is another relatively low-cost technique. Be sure the entire executive leadership team knows who the up-and-comers are in every market, and that they take the time to get to know them in the course of regular business travel. Whether my organization is one that “tells” or not, I know that I’m well thought of when every SVP who comes to town seems to take time to grab coffee or dinner with me.

Put your money where your mouth is by incentivizing managers for retaining and developing high potentials and high professionals and penalizing them when they don’t.

How well do you know your talent? Do you know who’s a flight risk and who isn’t? Some turnover is inevitable, and what’s more, some is healthy, but losing the wrong talent is honestly not hard to prevent.

Need help? Have questions? Don’t know where to start? Let's have a conversation.

Mentoring: The Goldilocks Solution

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 13:56:38 GMT

So what, you ask, does that cute little blonde fairy tale kid have to do with a corporate activity like mentoring?

Her signature tag line had something to do with the temperature of her cereal:

“Not too hot, not too cold - just right.”

(C’mon, when was the last time you actually heard someone use the word “porridge?”)

When it comes to the effectiveness of corporate mentoring, I see a direct analogy.

Not too much, not too little.

Mentoring programs need “not too much, not too little,” but just the right amount of both structure and monitoring to produce optimal results. When we break the code on just the right amount of this secret sauce (forgive me for another food reference), mentoring can be one of the most effective low cost / high impact development solutions I know - perfect for the volatile economic conditions that still plague most of our businesses.

Sadly, in my experience, many organizations have been disappointed at their inability to point to as large a return on their mentoring investments as they had expected. Often this results from a combination of unrealistic expectations along with a failure to provide sufficient structure and monitoring for the process.

Align Expectations and Outcomes

Here are some things to keep in mind to drive better alignment between expectations and actual outcomes:

Mentoring is not a panacea or a “one size fits all” development remedy; in fact it is a better fit for some development goals than for others.

It is also probably most effective when a part of a larger comprehensive development strategy, rather than standing alone.

Moreover, mentoring is not merely a series of pleasant conversations, although uninformed mentoring can easily deteriorate to just that. Rather, the most productive mentoring relationships are very much goal and outcome focused.

Finally, mentoring is in no way a substitute or replacement for the boss relationship. The goal is for the mentoring relationship to supplement the mentee’s relationship with the immediate manager, and ideally to reinforce some of the manager’s messages.

Mentoring is not merely a series of pleasant conversations, although uninformed mentoring can easily deteriorate to just that. Rather, the most productive mentoring relationships are very much goal and outcome focused.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Best Practices

Here are some best practices to guide your efforts:

Have a clearly defined purpose(s) for mentoring in your organization. Be clear on whether you’re trying to enhance the mentees’ development, work performance, career progression, or assimilation to a new role. Maybe you’re afraid of people bolting once the job market loosens up and are looking to mentoring merely as a retention strategy. Good reasons all, but it’s hard to know how successful your program is unless there is alignment around the purpose. You might even consider separate mentoring initiatives for different purposes across the organization.

The word “mentoring” means different things to different people. It’s no different than if I say the word “breakfast” and I’m thinking dry cereal and you’re picturing Eggs Benedict (I guess I’m hungry today...). The best way to ensure alignment of expectations is to invest in an orientation / training session for all new pairs. That way everyone will leave with the same mental picture of “mentoring.” It is also a good time to allow people to brush up their “power mentoring skills,” such as giving and receiving feedback effectively, listening, and questioning. Finally, where possible, a great way to get the program off to a solid start is to give the pairs the “gift” of some alone time to get to know each other better and schedule their mentoring sessions so that they leave ready to hit the ground running.

Consider assigning someone to “shepherd” each pair and monitor their progress. The monitoring is exclusively about process, not content. A simple phone call to each party every few weeks can ensure that the pairs are meeting and staying on track. Nothing worse than finding out after the fact that something came up and the pairs stopped meeting. Better to know that real time, so that appropriate adjustments can be made.

Finally, be sure that you take the time to answer some core questions before you officially launch your mentoring program. In addition to defining the business purpose for the program, consider things like how long the program will last, how people will be nominated and matched with a partner, and your stance on confidentiality between the pairs. Often a key question relative to confidentiality is what happens if the mentee tells the mentor s/he is considering leaving the company? What about a “no-fault divorce” clause? I have seen different companies answer those questions differently, but the point is they should be debated and resolved up front so that everyone knows the rules of the road going in.

The Effort Pays Off

A well thought out, appropriately managed mentoring program can provide a rich development experience for both mentor and mentee. Novices beware -it looks deceptively simple, when in fact it’s just a little bit more complicated than that -kind of like making a soufflé!

Need help? Have questions about starting a mentoring program? Let's have a conversation.

Helping New Executives Hit the Ground Running: The Business Case for Transition Plans

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 09:52:50 GMT

Organizations routinely spend thousands of dollars in recruitment / executive search fees, intent upon finding the perfect candidate. Yet far fewer do enough, if anything, to maximize the return on that investment by thoughtfully planning for a successful transition. Best practice organizations address this issue and create competitive advantage with transition plans designed to quickly and efficiently ramp up new leaders to full productivity.

The stakes are high and the odds are uninspiring. A commonly cited statistic is that turnover among newly hired executives within the first three years of taking a new job is as high as 50%. (1)

Reducing that rate even by half is fertile ground when you consider the costs of filling an executive position, often cited as at least a full year’s salary. In his highly acclaimed book, “The First 90 Days,” Michael Watkins introduces the concept of a breakeven point, the point at which new leaders have contributed as much value to their new organizations as they have consumed from it. Initially, new leaders are net consumers of value; as they learn and begin to take action, they begin to create value. Hopefully, from the breakeven point forward, they are net contributors of value to the organization. (2)

What would it be worth to your organization to have new leaders at all levels become fully productive sooner, even one month earlier?

What would it be worth to you as one of those new leaders?

Breaking Even

The good news is that it’s not so hard to get some traction on this issue. Since the goal is to reach the breakeven point as rapidly as possible, it will be important for the new leader to act and learn as effectively and efficiently as possible. To do so effectively, s/he must define what to learn ensuring a focus on the right things. To do so effectively, s/he must define what to learn ensuring a focus on the right things. To do it efficiently, s/he must identify the best available sources for learning and then figure out how to extract maximum insight quickly. (3)

Whether you yourself are the leader in transition, or you are supporting someone who is, here are some elements to include in a strong transition plan:

Schedule a facilitated “Ease-in Session” for the new executive and his / her team. The goal is to help the executive become a value-added contributor more quickly by providing a forum to surface issues that typically wouldn’t be discussed until a problem arose. Discussion topics can include things like communication styles, hot buttons, definitions of success, what the team wants the new leader to know, etc. A successful session ends with a series of written commitments from the new leader to the team as well as from the team to the leader.

Develop an interview protocol for the leader to use with key stakeholders. The output should help the leader efficiently understand important history, identify landmines, biases, and the all-important “how things work around here.” Be sure to include customers, both internal and external.

Help the new leader to diagnose the business situation s/he is entering. Watkins has identified four different situations and organized them into what he calls the STARS model: Start-ups, turnarounds, realignments and sustaining successes. He argues persuasively that the appropriate leader behaviors will vary based on the diagnosis. For example, start-ups and turnarounds require people to move quickly and take early risks. In sharp contrast, it is much more important to use subtle influence skills and focus on understanding the culture and politics of an organization when dealing with realignments and sustaining successes. (4)

Help new leaders diagnose the business situation they are entering and what's expected of them.

Help the new leader to understand the expectations of the leadership level s/he is assuming. Far too many leaders fail as a result of continuing to do exactly what worked for them in the past when the new situation calls for something very different. In their book, “The Leadership Pipeline,” Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel identify a series of hierarchical career passages or pipeline turns. Each represents a change in organizational level and complexity of leadership. Each successive turn also represents significant behavioral change related to new job requirements which demand new skills, time applications and work values. Help the new leader determine what adjustments will be needed in terms of skills, time and values.

Commit the plan to writing, building in checkpoints to ensure that the new leader gets feedback early and often.

There is no “one size fits all” in this arena. Figure out what you can make work in your environment and get started. Go with one or two steps, or commit to all of them. Get outside help or inside help, or go it alone. Provide newly hired and promoted leaders with Watkins’ “The First 90 Days” and make it required reading; that alone can have an impact.

Finally, remember that when the stakes are high and the odds are not impressive, some planning trumps no planning any day. As our friends at Nike counsel, “just do it.”

Footnotes

(1) Kates, Ann and Downey, Diane, “The Challenges of General Manager Transitions,” in “Filling the Leadership Pipeline,” edited by Robert B. Kaiser, Center for Creative Leadership, 2005, pg. 45.

(2) Watkins, Michael, “The First 90 Days,” Harvard Business School Press, 2003, pgs. 2-3.

(3) Ibid., Watkins, pg. 37.

(4) Ibid., Watkins, pgs. 61-62

(5) Charan, Ram, Drotter, Stephen, and Noel, James, “The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company, Jossey-Bass, 2001, pgs. 15-31.

Need help? Have questions about leadership assimilation and onboarding? Let's have a conversation.

Worth the Visit

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 08:35:56 GMT

TalentTelligent

The Talent Strategy Group

KornFerry

Gartner for HR

The Leadership Development Group

Society for Human Resources Management

Harvard Business Review

Q4 Psychological Associates

Essential Reading

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 08:32:52 GMT

The Business Classics on Kathy's Bookshelf

Personal Styles and Effective Performance

David W. Merrill and

Roger H. Reid

The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job

Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, et. al.

The Leadership Machine

Michael Lombardo and

Robert Eichinger

100 Things You Need

to Know:

Best People Practices for Managers & HR

Michael Lombardo, Robert Eichinger and Dave Ulrich

High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

Morgan McCall

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company

Ram Charan, Steven Drotter, and James Noel

Why CEOs Fail

David Dotlich and Peter Cairo

Leadership Passages

David Dotlich, James Noel

and Norman Walker

The Leadership Factor

John Kotter

The Heart of Change

John Kotter

Good to Great

Jim Collins

Bad Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Beyond the Wall of Resistance

Rick Maurer

Developing Global Executives

Morgan McCall and George Hollenbeck

Results-Based Leadership

Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Smallwood

The Future of Staff Groups: Daring to Distribute Power and Capacity

Joel Henning

Leading the Way, Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders

Robert Gandossy and

Marc Effron

The First 90 Days

Michael Watkins

What Got You Here

Won't Get You There

Marshall Goldsmith

Execution: The Discipline

of Getting things Done

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Alpha Male Syndrome

Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson

The No Asshole Rule

Robert Sutton

The Asshole Survival Guide

Robbert Sutton

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Adam Grant

Brene Brown

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Marshall Goldsmith

Robert Lefton and

Victor Buzzotta

Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It

Peggy Klaus

Managing at the

Speed of Change

Daryl Conner

One Page Talent Management

Marc Effron and Miriam Ort

Becoming a Manager

Linda A. Hill

From Bud to Boss

Kevin Eikenberry and

Guy Harris

Human Resource Champions

Dave Ulrich

Relax, It's Only Uncertainty

Philip Hodgson and

Randall P. White

Radical Candor

Kim Scott

Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up

Jerry Colonna

Searching for the Rosetta Stone of Leadership Styles

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 08:16:24 GMT

Wouldn’t it be terrific if, after so many decades of intense effort by so many dedicated practitioners and academics, finally someone broke the code and identified the true key to leadership effectiveness?

Find that Rosetta Stone, just tell us all the formula, and we’ll blissfully and gratefully follow that religion forevermore. Seriously, after all these years of trying, wouldn’t you think someone would’ve figured it out by now?

The truth is that we probably have figured it out, but the answer may sound like a cop-out to some. Put simply: There is no one right style. This is far from a cop-out; what it means is that leadership effectiveness is situational, and alas, there can be no “one size fits all.” What works well under one set of circumstances may be just the wrong prescription for the next.

The implications for leaders, and particularly new leaders, are profound.

The first “aha” for many is the realization that “Wow, everyone isn’t just like me!” Effective leaders learn that employees differ along many dimensions ranging from what motivates them, to how they learn and process information, to their preferred methods of communication.

Many of us will admit learning this lesson the hard way, after getting nowhere trying to force fit what suits us onto someone else. A more effective (and less frustrating) strategy is simply to take the time upfront to engage people in conversation, asking them questions like:

What gets you excited on the job
When receiving information, do you prefer a lot of detail, or are you a “just the headlines” kind of person?
Do you prefer email, voicemail, face-to-face or telephone communications?
Are you most comfortable learning by trial and error, learning from other people, or reading the users’ manual?
Do you typically like to go with your first instincts, or do you get a better result after mulling things over for a while?

Savvy leaders are constantly using their radar to scan for cues others give out about what they want and need. They usually accomplish this with well developed questioning, probing and listening skills, in addition to keen observation skills. The concepts are simple. Figuring out where people are and what they need, then meeting them there and giving them just what they need leads to more productive business outcomes. And make no mistake, this is far from a touchy-feely, feel good strategy; it’s a rational investment of your time because it creates more productive business results.

It gets just a tad more complicated when we realize that sometimes the same people need something different depending on the task. This is the essence of “situational leadership” where Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey teach that people need different degrees of direction and support depending on how much skill and commitment they have to a particular task. Ask me to administer 360-degree feedback to a team of executives, and I don’t need much direction or support. Ask me to lead the company’s annual inventory process and I need a whole lot of both from my boss. As Ken Blanchard counsels, “different strokes for different folks, and different strokes for the same folks on different tasks.”1

Despite the best efforts of many capable management gurus, my guess is that we never will agree on any one best style. Given that prediction, the most successful leaders will continue to be those who are the most versatile, able to read their audiences and adapt accordingly. Whether dealing with bosses, peers or direct reports, these folks have fast-forwarded beyond “it’s all about me.” They’re the ones who know that when it comes to bringing out the best in people, it’s all about the other guy, and the other guy is often a moving target.

1 Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership®, 1994 Blanchard Training and Development, Inc.

Need help? Have questions about leadership and leadership development? Let's have a conversation.

kfb-leadership-solutions-wip

Evolving the Future of Succession Planning with the TLD Group

More than momentary change

Too often, succession planning is reduced to creating an inventory of names without considering and creating accountability for the development needed to ensure successful transitions.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Executive Coaching: One Size Definitely Does Not Fit All

Executive coaching means different things to different people.

The Best of Kathy on Forbes

Kathy Bernhard is a regular contributor on Forbes Coaches Council,

a community of top business and career coaches.

The council empowers passionate, diverse business leaders to gather, connect, collaborate, and grow.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Asking more questions, and truly listening to the responses rather than just telling people what to do can strongly contribute to creating a coaching culture. A command culture puts a tremendous burden on the leader to always know the answer, and in today's world, that is simply no longer possible.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

A Short Story About Development

Do you recognize this little frog?

Women In STEM Leadership Program

The Deceptive Simplicity of Mentoring

Low cost, high impact isn't so simple.

Designed for Success

Every Manager Must be a Talent Scout

The organizations who compete most successfully in the new war for talent will have a secret weapon: an army of talent scouts at every level of the organization.

Here's Why it's Essential:

Invasion of the VUCAns

What, another generation of Star Trek extraterrestrial humanoids to contend with?

﻿

Sustaining Results in a VUCA World – The Marathon

The Power of Pause

Core Questions for Leaders and Teams

WEBINAR: The New War For Talent - Implications for Succession Planning

Free webinar in partnership with The Leadership Development Group

Presenter: Kathy Bernhard

Session Overview:

You'll Learn How To:

WEBINAR: How to Thrive, Flourish and Prosper in a COVID World & Beyond

FREE Webinar from SUNY Stony Brook Women in STEM Program

Presenters: Al Pisano, Kathy Bernhard, Kathryn Mayer

Session Overview:

Topics include:

PRESENTATION: Accelerated Executive Transitions - Keys to Retention, Effectiveness, and Leadership Success

Download Free Resources

PRESENTATION: The Future of Work and Managing Risk - Thoughts on Succession Planning

Download Free Resources

PRESENTATION: How to Succeed in Succession Planning - Lessons from the Trenches

Download Free Resources

PRESENTATION: Not Your Parent's Succession Planning

Download Free Resources

Self-Awareness & Feedback: Who's Staring Back in the Mirror?

I recently read a stunning headline summarizing a study where more than half the participating leaders assessed themselves in the top percentile of leadership skills.

At first blush, that’s somewhat startling, but upon reflection, it shouldn’t be so surprising.

Mirror, mirror...

on the wall...

Can that really be me?

Leadership Development is the Ultimate Perk

“Development is the ultimate perk...it can’t be taken back once given, and it leads to other benefits.”

The Care and Feeding of High Potentials

What would it do to your organization’s ability to deliver on today’s commitments and execute on tomorrow’s strategy if you lose too many of your high potentials?

What if they just become less engaged while considering other career options?

﻿

Conduct regular retention and career discussions with high potentials and high professionals. Find out what would cause the person to seriously consider a call from a recruiter.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Mentoring: The Goldilocks Solution

Mentoring is not merely a series of pleasant conversations, although uninformed mentoring can easily deteriorate to just that. Rather, the most productive mentoring relationships are very much goal and outcome focused.

Kathy Bernhard

President and Founder, KFB Leadership Solutions

Helping New Executives Hit the Ground Running: The Business Case for Transition Plans

What would it be worth to your organization to have new leaders at all levels become fully productive sooner, even one month earlier?

What would it be worth to you as one of those new leaders?

﻿ Help new leaders diagnose the business situation they are entering and what's expected of them.

Worth the Visit

Essential Reading

The Business Classics on Kathy's Bookshelf

Searching for the Rosetta Stone of Leadership Styles

Wouldn’t it be terrific if, after so many decades of intense effort by so many dedicated practitioners and academics, finally someone broke the code and identified the true key to leadership effectiveness?

FREE Webinar from

SUNY Stony Brook Women in STEM Program

Help new leaders diagnose the business situation they are entering and what's expected of them.