LiveBlogging from the closing session:
Can the Student LPI be compared to LPI? Do you recommend sharing LPI results with supervisor? Why is there not a N/A response?
Barry: We have not done anything yet to compare how The Student LPI maps to the LPI. We may get to that when we have more data but right now we are using two different scales. We'll see where that goes. What we'll be doing in the future is seeing if the relationships we find are the same as the LPI.
As you know, when you take the LPI and you give it to your manager, we can't guarantee the anonymity of that person. We encourage people as one of the outcomes to talk about leadership with your boss. It is a great excuse to have that conversation.
N/A response, let me try to explain this again . . . What we've found generally, particularly in the earlier years, we found that when people were saying N/A it seemed to us they were really saying, I don't observe that. That is in fact a valid response. That is not N/A, that is that I rarely, seldom, fairly often see that. It is not N/A.
We believe that all these things are important to do, so if they don't see it, then they aren't doing it. We ask people to give a 3 for that answer. In the end that is a philosophical place we got to. If we allowed an N/A response, we'd also start having to do some mathematical things for empty responses . . . hope that helps to understand why we do that.
Leadership Challenge is a required course at Staples. Now they are saying what next?
Jim: The Leadership Challenge helps people become aware of their skills and abilities and get a sense of what it is about. What should be next is Inspiring a Shared Vision. That is something that most leaders are still weakest at. The bottom 3 items, 3 out of 4, are Inspiring a Shared Vision--specifically communicating that shared vision. The other area--whether we aren't comfortable or aren't skilled--is asking for feedback. People are going to need to get more comfortable. Look at the LPI results for your individual group and then customize the next step.
Barry: One of the issues for all of us is a commitment to the Leadership Challenge over time. It isn't like, we've done the Leadership Challenge this year and what are we going to do next year? Whatever you think the Leadership Challenge program is, you can take people back through it again, it is a process and there are more and more materials available. The real issue about leadership is to make it a part of the culture of your organization. This leadership stuff isn't just the Leadership Challenge workshop . . .
Jim: Just to reinforce what we talked about yesterday, the next frontier in Leadership development is the practice field. Where are people going to go on a daily basis to practice something? How can we get people to practice 2.7 hours per day, every day for the rest of their lives. Leadership development is a lifelong endeavor and the best leaders are the best learners. We need to find ways to get them to do that on a daily basis.
--posted by Deb Nasitka
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