Can We Measure the ‘Talent to Lead’?

Dear Looking for Leaders,

Sadly, Development Dimensions International’s own Global Leadership Forecast 2014 | 2015 shows that only 18 percent of organizations feel they have the right supply of leaders to meet their future business goals. So we agree with the “Yikes”!

Can we quantifiably measure “talent to lead? The answer is yes, you can — and we did — quantify the effect of better leadership. The Global Leadership Forecast surveys more than 1,500 organizations worldwide. We found that those organizations with high-quality leadership were six times more likely to be in the top 20 percent of companies in terms of financial performance. Throughout the report, we found that leader quality helps predict financial performance and positive leader experiences amplified the link between leader quality and financial impact greatly: Organizations with both high levels of leadership quality and leader engagement/retention were nine times more likely to outperform their peers financially.

The report also identified that leaders need more preparation to face VUCA — or volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity — challenges. Of the 1,528 global HR representatives surveyed, more than one-third report that their leaders are not VUCA capable. Forty percent said their leaders are not capable meeting the challenge of volatility, 32 percent sited uncertainly, 36 percent complexity and 31 percent identified ambiguity as the challenge their leaders are not prepared to face.

What does this mean for organizations? Organizations whose leaders are VUCA-capable are three times more likely to be in the top 20 percent of financial performers.

SOURCE: Rich Wellins, Development Dimensions International, Pittsburgh.