Building Leaders

Base your leadership development programs on proven-to-work techniques. In Building Leaders, authors Conger and Benjamin examine the very best practices of American and foreign companies to present a comprehensive plan for developing leadership talent at every organizational level. Here, readers will find an in-depth presentation of the specific skill sets that individual managers need in order to lead. They'll also discover which organizational values promote leadership, examine successful strategic interventions, and see what a successful leadership plan looks like. Equally illuminating is the section on plans that are destined to fail, along with the section on the future of leadership that shows readers how to design development programs that are most likely to last. Preface.

The Authors.

The New Imperative: Building Effective Leaders Throughout theCompany.

OUT OF THE CLASSROOM, INTO THE TRENCHES: EVALUATING APPROACHES TOCORPORATE LEADRERSHIP DEVELOPMENT.

Developing the Individual Leader.

How National Australia Bank Develops Leaders.

Socializing Company Vision and Values.

How Federal Express and PepsiCo Socialize Vision and Values.

Strategic Leadership Initiatives.

Ernst Young's Leadership 2000 Strategic LeadershipInitiative.

THE FUTURE IS NOW: BUILDING TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LEADERS.

Action Learning: The New Paradigm for Leadership Development.

What Matters: Competencies for the New Century.

References.

Index. "A must read for all executives and managers, emerging, ascAnding,arriving, and all points beyond! Building Leaders is the singlebest source I know for original ideas on how to develop and retainexemplary leaders."--Warren Bennis, professor, Marshall School ofBusiness, University of Southern California, and co-author ofCo-Leaders

"Highly readable and useful, this is THE book for guidingleadership development decisions within organizationstoday."--Patrick Canavan, senior vice president and director,Global Leadership and Organizational Development, Motorola

"Jay Conger and Beth Benjamin bring clarity and insight to thevast, almost boundless, domain of leadership development. BuildingLeaders helps you both to assess the impact of current approachesand to powerfully build a strategy that will develop leadershiptalent at all levels of your organization."--Mike Morrison, dean,Toyota University JAY A. CONGER is the director of the University of SouthernCalifornia's Leadership Institute and the author of Learning toLead. Named Business Week's Best Professor to Teach Leadership toExecutives, he has served on the faculties of the Harvard BusinessSchool, McGill University, and INSEAD, and is an internationallyrecognized leadership expert. BETH BENJAMIN,Ph.D., is a leadershipconsultant for Booz?Allen & Hamilton and has conductedextensive research with the University of Southern California'sLeadership Institute and RAND Corporation. Companies everywhere are searching for ways to turn effective managers into dynamic leaders. In this book, Jay Conger, named one of the Top Ten Influential Figures in the World of Business, culls the wide variety of methods being developed by top corporations around the globe. Through insightful analysis and extensive case studies, he and co-author Beth Benjamin provide the proven techniques, and common pitfalls to avoid, for building leadership talent at all levels.Based on research conducted at more than a dozen organizations—including Ernst & Young, PepsiCo, Federal Express, the U.S. Army, and the National Australian Bank—the authors identify three principal approaches to leadership education: individual skill development, instilling organizational values that promote leadership, and strategic interventions. In separate chapters, they examine the strengths and shortcomings of each of these approaches and outline their most important elements, from organizational needs assessments to effective workshops and instruction to 360-degree feedback mechanisms. Individual case studies illustrate best practices in an array of business sectors and give readers an inside look at how world-class leadership development programs are created, organized, and conducted so they can benchmark their own efforts. A special chapter studies the popular educational technique of action learning and its potential as a new paradigm for training the leaders of the twenty-first century. How will technology, new leadership requirements, and the flatter, wired organization affect trAnds in the upcoming millennium? The final chapter profiles the future of leadership in corporate America and offers insights to help organizations anticipate and train for the characteristics that will be demanded in the next generation of corporate leaders. Corporations are spAnding billions of dollars on leadership development initiatives. But are these programs paying off? Building Leaders takes a hard look at the successes and failures of more than a dozen organizations—including Ernst & Young, Motorola, the U.S. Army, and Federal Express. It identifies the three dominant approaches to leadership education and provides a blueprint for how organizations can use them to more effectively cultivate a continuous crop of talented leaders.