Why Leadership development is currently on the top of the HR agenda
I recently invited Cedric d’Halluin, Head of Leadership Advisory at SpenglerFox, for an open discussion about Leadership Development trends and on how SpenglerFox is adapting to these new trends. In addition to Cedric’s role as Head of Leadership Advisory, he is also responsible for overseeing the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa regions.
Cedric, Leadership Advisory, specifically in the domain of leadership development, has experienced a bit of a renaissance during the pandemic and its aftermath, and continues to be a focus for many organizations today. What is your take on this?
Most organizations went through restructuring in 2020-2021. I am not aware of a single company that said, “everything is right the way it is, let’s not change anything’. As a direct consequence of the impact of the unfolding global pandemic, many companies reduced their headcount, some merged regions into larger clusters of countries, others closed subsidiaries to hand over the business to their distributors. But for most, people development stopped being a priority. It was simply more urgent to make the business survive. 18 Months later, things settled down and most companies are interested again in developing their people.
Why should organizations, small and big, focus on the development of their leadership teams?
As a result of those transformations, everybody is in a different role, facing different challenges, having to adjust to a new world. And this, even without changing role! This creates huge needs for leadership development to ensure that all management teams adjust and perform.
How can SpenglerFox help?
Most of the projects we deliver are related to the assessment of people, and subsequent delivery of development programs. Concretely, it ranges from the assessment of future leaders to fill in the new structures, to the design of programs to accelerate maturation of high potentials, or 360-degree feedback to help a leadership team to better work together. It can also mean coaching an underperforming leader, or to fast-track a manager into a director in a few months. We are engaged by our clients on those topics for both mature and emerging markets indistinctively. Needs are everywhere.
SpenglerFox recently had all their consultants receive intensive training and certification in Saville Psychometric Assessment. This is not a common practice within the executive search community. Why did you go this route?
We do not define ourselves purely and exclusively as a search firm anymore. Our strapline is “Talent, grown.” because we are equally engaged in all talent management aspects. We aspire to cover the full life cycle of employment from executive search and RPO, to leadership development, and even outplacement when the employment ends.
How do you see the future development of Leadership Advisory within SpenglerFox and its global affiliate network?
This evolution required training our entire team of consultants, and that is why we certified all of them in 2021 to Saville tools. All of them are now able to leverage the digital platform to design and deliver assessments, leadership programs or 360-degree feedbacks. This year, we also developed digital tools to deliver those programs remotely. It is a radical change to the traditional and expensive face-to-face way of developing people. Compared to the face-to-face model, the cost per participant is down by 40% and it adds a lot of flexibility.
Cedric, thank you for your time and for your insights.
For more information about SpenglerFox and the range of human capital solutions we provide to our clients, please visit our website. If you would like more information about, or support for Leadership Advisory, please get in touch with Cedric.