Like every other aspect of a successful, forward-looking organization, leadership development has to scale. Leadership coaching should not be a luxury reserved for the top brass only. Its benefits should trickle down among the ranks, positively impacting managers and employees at every level.

Leadership development helps midsize organizations the most.

“The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development.” – John C. Maxwell

Leadership development is the most important component of long-term organizational success. Talent recruitment is also part of the success recipe, but raising employees as leaders and continually developing them opens up limitless possibilities for any company, big or small.

Midsize Companies Stand to Benefit the Most from Leadership Coaching

Research says that organizations that have implemented effective talent planning practices perform better than companies that haven’t.

Leadership coaching can have the most impact on fast-growing, middle-market companies. These are the organizations with the most acute need for better leadership with a scaling-oriented culture.

Scaling is an Existential Issue for Midsize Organizations

Middle-market companies often find themselves hitting a glass ceiling growth-wise. Even as their formula for success continues to bear fruit, they reach a stage where scaling becomes a necessity. Without scaling, they tie up their leaders in the hopeless grind of day-to-day operations that rob them of the chance to grow as leaders, scale their company, and groom the next generation of executives.

More importantly, the lack of an effective scaling solution robs the company of its future, guaranteeing its demise once its current recipe of success expires.

Therefore, leadership development should favor scaling overgrowth alone while exposing the differences between the two.

Leadership Training Scaling

An organization can never hope to effectively address the pains and challenges of growth through scaling without the corresponding scaling of its top brass.

Leadership training scaling isn’t without its challenges, however. For a middle-market organization, these challenges may seem even more daunting than for larger market cap companies.

• Leadership development scaling may involve costs and time-wise investments smaller organizations may not be able to afford.
• While the immediate impact of leadership coaching is desirable for larger organizations, for a midsize organization, it’s must.
• Effective leadership scaling addresses the needs of different generations, cultures, backgrounds, and abilities.
• Some organizations may have to involve a large number of leaders in the learning process.

Overcoming the Challenges That Leadership Development Scaling Presents

To effectively scale leadership development, leaders have to define a consistent leadership mold and communicate it throughout every segment and level of their organization.

This leadership blueprint has to define the following:

• The leadership capabilities the organization needs to succeed.
• The behaviors that effective leadership of the organization entails on every level.

A scaling-friendly leadership development program aligns its messaging and content according to these requirements and the specific needs of various organizational roles and levels.

Building Leadership Development Programs to Scale

To create scaling-focused programs, leadership development professionals should consider:

• Providing a range of learning opportunities. Include face-to-face interaction, live delivery, and self-paced activities that allow employees to integrate these opportunities into their workdays.
• Building their leadership development programs with a flexible structure. Consider a modular structure that allows participants to switch between different modes of delivery according to the scaling needs.
• Grouping learners strategically. Depending on the goals of the program and the scaling requirements, leadership development professionals may want to group their trainees by organizational role, geographic location, or background.

Leadership and Employee Empowerment

Scalable leadership development programs focus on turning leaders into eager teachers. This way, knowledge can cascade down unimpeded through the organizational ranks, while the leaders gain a deeper understanding of the various concepts by teaching and explaining them to others.

The best way to understand something is to teach it. 

Such an approach empowers leaders as well as employees of various levels to share their knowledge and proactively forward the common organizational cause.

Accounting for Change from the Beginning

Scalable leadership development programs take changes in audience and delivery methods into account from the start. Professionals formulate such programs knowing from the beginning how they will roll them out, align them, and allocate human resources to them.

Leadership development is not a privilege reserved for a few top executives. It should achieve a quick effect across a large group of people, covering the entire organization. Only scalable leadership development can achieve such results.

For more on leadership development, take a look at my books and blog posts.

Back to blog