3 Signs Your Company Needs a Leadership Development Consultant

Rick Lepsinger — December 27, 2016 Follow @onpoint_llc

Your company can have a well-loved, successful product or service and a solid strategy in place, but without the right leadership at the helm, you are gambling with your organization’s future.

Identifying, developing and retaining talent are some of the most critical issues facing businesses today. Research by McKinsey reveals that 30 percent of companies admit they have been unable to fully take advantage of international business opportunities because they don’t have enough competent leaders. Yet, many companies fail to invest the necessary resources to ensure leaders and managers at all levels are as effective as possible.

Unlike other important business issues — like knowing when to revamp your strategy or make product improvements — figuring out if your company could use outside leadership development assistance can be a little less clear.

Here are three signs your company needs a leadership development consultant.

1. You’ve Experienced Rapid Growth or Acquisition Recently

Substantial company growth or a recent merger or acquisition in the past year has likely resulted in a greater amount of staff and multiple locations, which can present you with two major issues — the need for more virtual teams and meetings and the need to assess the leadership potential of your new and existing staff.

OnPoint’s own research has found that nearly half of company stakeholders reported their virtual team leaders were not as effective as they could be, and about one in four virtual teams is not fully functional.

The right leadership development consultant can help give you a clearer picture of what your teams are doing well and where they need to improve. A consultant can also help build trust, enhance accountability and manage conflict within your virtual teams.

2. Your Company Needs a Strong Talent Pipeline

If your company lacks a robust succession plan, it will likely spend more money recruiting — and possibly replacing — leaders who turn out to be the wrong fit. In fact, only one in seven of your highest performers are actually high-potential employees, and 55 percent of high-potential employees will drop out of a development program within five years due to being incorrectly identified.

Promoting and recruiting the wrong candidates can certainly have a costly effect on your organization, but not engaging high potential employees and failing to assess that comprehensively evaluate a candidate’s performance and qualifications can have the same negative effects. Not only that, identifying and preparing the right employees to make a transition to leadership can seem like an overwhelming task. That’s where a leadership development consultant can help.

A leadership development consultant can assess those employees to help you identify your next leaders, and help them enhanced their skills and keep them engaged.

3. Your Company is Struggling with Change Management

Whether your organization is growing, has been acquired or needs to implement new processes and procedures, it’s going to face a number of change management initiative. For many managers, the idea of implementing change can be daunting. In fact, our research found fewer than half of the nearly 650 leaders we surveyed felt their organization was successful at change management.

Resisting change can have dire consequences. Take former mobile giant Nokia, for example. The company failed to expand its market share in the US in a timely manner. This resulted in it losing its position as an innovator, and eventually being absorbed by Microsoft.

Implementing and managing change successfully requires commitment from leaders at all levels of an organization, attention to detail and buy-in from employees. A leadership development consultant can offer a third party view of your ability to prepare for a manage change, which can help to clarify strengths and uncover areas for improvement.

If your company has experienced issues like those above or needs to tackle a different organizational and leadership development issue, OnPoint Consulting can help. We offer a variety of assessments and workforce development programs customized for your business. They’re cost-effective and can be implemented quickly both online and in person, and most importantly, produce measurable results that directly impact your bottom line.

(63)