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Eisschollenhopping
is a made-up word, consisting of the German words “Eis” (ice) and “Scholle” (floe) and the English word hopping. It refers to jumping from one sheet of floating ice to the next. This metaphor was used by one of our clients to describe his organisation’s current leadership development (LD) landscape, which was built years ago and in which programmes are not connected to or built on each other. Leaders just jump randomly from one floe or programme to the next.
This perfectly matches our perception of widespread incoherent leadership development landscapes within many organisations: they still follow the traditional approach, whereby each target group attends an isolated programme that is designed for its respective hierarchical level based on a “what leaders must know” logic. However, most of our clients claim to promote a culture of integrity and flat hierarchies and see an increased need for collaboration and networking among their employees.
Several studies show the effectiveness of internal networking. Leaders reach beyond their normal scope of job responsibilities, apply themselves in a network setting and step up their skills, such as problem solving and sustaining each other by sharing leadership challenges.
Consequently, LD programmes that incorporate continuous interaction and connectivity among leaders at different levels ensure the growth of the whole organisation.
“Many organisations’ leadership development landscapes consist of multiple isolated programmes!”
Advantages of interconnectivity
Interconnected programmes auto-matically imply increased collaboration, cooperation and networking within the whole organisation. Leaders from both different departments and different hierarchical levels learn together and from each other. Learning from and with each other is especially important, as modern LD programmes and landscapes have the objectives of changing culture and serving strategy. Interconnectivity exists in a variety of ways ‒ horizontally, vertically and diagonally ‒and leaders function as facilitators, mentors, sounding boards or manager coaches. This not only pays off on a personal level, with each leader gaining a broader understanding of the business, but also builds a culture of “oneness” with a shared vision and authentic collegiality.
How can a comprehensive and strategy-serving cross-hierarchical leadership development landscape that interconnects several programmes be built within your organisation?
CLP promotes a design process for interconnected LD landscapes. We start by understanding the big WHY that drives LD initiatives as well as the organisational needs, expectations, and objectives of different target groups and stakeholders. Based on selected key success factors that mirror the organisation’s culture or desired culture, we create learning topics and content and derive learning objectives for each target group’s specific content. The key element of comprehensive LD programmes is the definition of interlinks and connections among programmes. This whole conceptual phase is a highly participative and co-creative process.
As we perceive a high demand for CLP’s comprehensive and interconnected leadership development landscapes, we would like to transmit our expertise and help HR and L&D professionals to become proficient in conceptualising and designing impactful L&D landscapes.
CLP is offering a two-day workshop in which participants can deepen their knowledge and have the chance to build their own organisation-specific landscape. Interested in Design Master Class? See our invitation here