Developing Direct Reports

Strong leadership is essential to the success of any organisation and in today’s world strong leadership must be realised at all levels.

When leadership development fails, performance gaps increase. This adversely impacts company culture, delivery of organisational objectives and the bottom line.

This book was written to change the way leaders think about and drive performance development for their leaders. It takes the guesswork out of performance development and the critical conversations needed to support behaviour change.

Written for leaders who lead leaders, this book addresses the 12 most common, globally recognized leadership derailers:

• Staller – analysis paralysis
• Controller – command and control
• Cyclone – bull at a gate
• Doer – can’t delegate
• Avoider – conflict averse
• Fence-sitter – indecisive leader
• Know-it-all – closed to other ideas
• Guardian – inability to innovate
• Micromanager – management on a leash
• Poker face – showing no emotions
• People burner – poor people skills
• Tactician – poor strategic thinker

Good leaders advise their direct reports how to reach their potential. Great leaders inspire their direct reports to unleash their own potential for themselves. This book shows you how it’s done.

Human behaviour is complex. Developing leadership in others takes more than knowing the theory, having a few quick conversations and authorising the training budget. Bringing out the best in your leaders can be challenging and time consuming and often leaders give up because it is too hard or they simply don’t know what to do.

This book is for any leader who is serious about improving the leadership capability in their team or organisation. Developing Direct Reports really does take the guesswork out of leading leaders.

Drawing upon their extensive experience in leadership development, the authors share their proven approach for having meaningful development conversations that deliver sustainable performance improvement.

Packed with examples, insights and recommendations – and supported by a practical framework – this book will help you to:

• understand what’s really driving the common dysfunctional leadership behaviours you observe in the leaders you lead
• become a catalyst for behaviour change that sticks
• take the guesswork out of developing your direct reports into better leaders.

Compiled as a ready reference to address leadership development challenges in the moment, regular application of the mindset, principles and strategies in this book delivers benefits for both the reader and their direct report leaders. The book invites the reader to take a committed approach to leadership development and to improve his or her own leadership capability as well. With its inclusive approach to leadership development this book supports leaders to become skilled at catalyzing behavior change thereby unleashing performance potential at an individual and organisational level.