Overpayments and Tax Hikes Have More Nonprofits Leaving their State Unemployment Systems

Leadership development has always been a huge priority within the nonprofit realm. Always looking towards growth opportunity and mission advancement, most nonprofits place heavy emphasis on grooming their potential leaders.

Though prioritizing leadership development is a step in the right direction, nonprofits must simultaneously analyze and define both strategy and leadership development procedures in order to transform goals into achieved reality.

Nonprofits often lose momentum and general direction after failing to go over the specifics. More often than not, leadership development procedures fall into generalized categories. Because no one strategy or goal is alike, it’s important to identify the specific skills required for every set objective.

When looking at future development plans, your organization must develop a consensus around what skills your employees, leaders, and future leaders currently possess, and what behaviors will be required for future endeavors. Identifying the gap between present and future skill sets will better allow you to create a plan of action to achieve such skills.

Bridgespan created a process to help organizations both analyze potential changes in business strategy, and create a leadership development plan to address these organizational shifts.

When looking to the future, ask yourself these questions:

• What major strategic changes(s) is your nonprofit planning on making?
• What behaviors and skills will be required to execute these strategic changes?
• What behaviors will be required of both current and future leaders to transition smoothly and successfully implement these changes?
• Which leadership needs will be required of each future leadership role? Will we be able to develop the needed behaviors and skills through internal grooming of current staff members? If we are unable to do so, what will the course of action be in reaching out to those possessing such behaviors?

Overall, you must think of strategy and leadership development as a package deal. Greatly affecting one another, strategy and leadership development must consistently be analyzed side by side.

By closely monitoring your organization and its future leadership training process, you can decide what’s effective and what still requires improvement. Attention to detail is the key ingredient to identifying potential weaknesses, harnessing current strengths, and bridging the organizational gaps.

Learn more about linking leadership development and strategy here.