Co-creation is important. External perspectives provide new and fruitful ideas. For Glenn Ruud in Wilhelmsen the question is not whether to, but how to achieve collaboration between internal and external leadership development.
According to the World Economic Forum 's analysis, over 50% of all employees will need retraining by the end of 2025.
Leadership development is therefore absolutely critical for managers and their skills to remain relevant, and for them to be able to facilitate the development of their employees and their skills," says Glenn Ruud, Director of Competence at Wilhelmsen.
He has good experience of both internal and external leadership development, and perhaps the best experience is when you are able to combine both the internal and external perspectives. According to him, the advantage of external leadership development is the new perspectives that can help to challenge established truths - both in terms of content and methodology. He believes in a good balance between external and internal resources, and he emphasizes the importance of good leadership development in today's job market.
"Change happens incredibly quickly today, and if employees are not given development opportunities, there is a risk of people leaving their jobs," says Glenn Ruud.
Read also: Pros and cons of internal vs external leadership development.
What are the most important aspects of leadership development?
At Wilhelmsen, Ruud works according to four principles when it comes to leadership development. These are the principles he highlights as important points in the collaboration between external and internal management development:
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Leadership development should lead to changes in behavior and better results.
This can mean many things, depending on what the goal is. Better or more motivating performance reviews, managers becoming better at implementing change initiatives, more motivated employees or better results through employees are some examples.
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It's important to think long-term.
Leadership development must be a long-term development of leaders. It cannot be a single event, through a program for a few selected managers. Good leadership development involves continuous work for all leaders at all levels.
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Must focus on raising awareness and building culture.
Managers should become more aware of their own strengths, their own development areas and their own leadership style. They should be true to their personality, their values and the company's values and how to get the best out of their employees. Awareness helps to build culture and teams.
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Use all learning arenas when working with leadership development.
It's important to practice what you learn and not just focus on the learning itself. Knowledge must be applied, otherwise it doesn't mean much. To use all the learning arenas, Wilhelmsen works with a model they call "Learn - Apply - Share", which is based on the 70:20:10 learning model.
- Develop competence
- Practice/apply what you have learned
- Sharing the experience
Collaboration between external and internal leadership development
When it comes to achieving a good collaboration between external and internal leadership development, Glenn believes that the external leadership developers must be able to understand the main challenges of the business they will be working with, as well as the leadership development principles they are working with. And this is where the four Wilhelmsen principles come into play.
"Leadership development can't be a single event or a short-term program. It has to be a journey that starts but never ends, and it has to apply to everyone, not a select few," says Ruud.
Furthermore, he emphasizes the Learn - Share - Apply mindset, and working from a logic where learning is not enough.
Knowledge doesn't mean much if it doesn't lead to a change in behavior. How can you integrate activities that include these learning arenas? It will be difficult to collaborate if an external actor can only offer a course for middle managers, for example. Flexibility and adaptation are important in addition to creative co-creation in all learning arenas," he says.
Knowledge sharing is gold
Glenn has had some good and some bad experiences with external leadership developers. When it has worked well, the external parties have understood the principles they work by, and they have been good at challenging and co-creating with us at Wilhelmsen on what we can do differently in the various learning arenas
"Co-creation is important. As I see it, the external actors must build expertise in how to facilitate management development in more arenas than just the competence development arena - then I think the collaboration can succeed," says Ruud.
