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RIGHT COURSE 2016 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER
The need for leaders
Dan Pontefract, chief envisioner at Telus: the current succession-planning challenge is an opportunity to redefine what it means to be a leader | SUBMITTED Lewisa Anciano, vice-president of people, Coast Capital Savings: “career development is a joint responsibility” | SUBMITTED
1,630 are of the boomer generation. Among the organization’s top executives, five of 25 are over the age of 50 years. “We have a corporate identity that appeals to the younger generation,” says Lewisa Anciano, Coast Capital’s vice-president of people. That doesn’t mean the credit union is complacent on the issue of leadership development. On the contrary, Coast Capital has, over the past 18 months, moved steadily to up its investments in building leadership capacity within its ranks. It has even gone so far as to declare leadership development a key priority as the organization looks to stay on course in a dramatically
changing banking industry, where “a new genre of leader” has become a necessity, says Anciano. Leaders Who Inspire is one of the programs the organization has brought in. The program exposes select internal candidates to six months of intensive training, and hands-on leadership and mentoring. The organization also has set an ambitious target of 100 per cent completion of company-wide individual development plans by the end of the year. The plans are designed to help all employees set professional goals and break down the steps they need to achieve them. “We use that as an opportunity to have a discussion of where they want to go – maybe not now, but when they are ready. It’s an opportunity to have that discussion: ‘What does it take to get you ready for this position?’ Because career development is a joint responsibility,” she says. Broadly speaking, UBC’s Daniels says employers need to start investing in their leadership development pipelines earlier in the developmental stage of the candidate and focus on internal succession planning. “It turns out that injecting meaning, purpose and recognition in the workplace can lead to better talent retention outcomes than simply throwing money at them,” he says. “Smart companies will focus more on these factors to keep the talent they already have.” É
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