
Why leaders should learn to value the boundary spanners
Entrepreneurial talent who work with other teams often run into trouble with their managers. Here are ways to get the most out of your ‘boundary spanners’...
by Tania Lennon Published December 11, 2024 in Brain Circuits • 2 min read
The first step is to identify which skills are needed to keep ‘performing’ or improving the core existing business while ‘transforming’ by identifying and developing opportunities for creating new revenue streams. This is known as ‘dual transformation.’
CEOs who excel here tend to exhibit optimization and transformation behaviors across all aspects of leadership (strategy, execution, leading people and teams, leading stakeholders, and leading self).
The application of new technology, including game-based assessments and the application of GenAI to assessments, can produce a better candidate experience and richer insights into leadership performance and potential, serving as the basis for progression planning and career development.
New technology offers greater precision and deeper insight for three reasons:
An important element of the development process is that candidates are ‘progressed’ rather than succeeding someone, which implies promotion.
Progression also gives flexibility for the candidate to be developed in different dimensions, rather than only in a linear direction (promotion).
This widens the range of possibilities for development to ensure sufficient breadth of experience, which research has shown to be directly correlated with leaders’ propensity to deploy both optimization and transformation behaviors.
Leaders face a proliferation of responsibilities and expectations to capitalize on economic and market changes while managing in an unstable and evolving geopolitical world. These demands can be met through innovation talent assessment and development strategies to identify, assess, develop, and sustain a pipeline of top talent to future-proof the business.
Executive Director of the Strategic Talent Development initiative
Tania Lennon leads the Strategic Talent team for IMD. She is an expert on future-ready talent development, including innovative assessment methods to maximize the impact of talent development on individual and organizational performance. Lennon is a “pracademic”, blending a strong research orientation with evidence-based practice in talent development and assessment.
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