Is good leadership nature or nurture?

The new P3 Leaders Model from Right Management identifies leadership traits and practical solutions to predict, develop and measure leadership effectiveness. Following it’s launch, we spoke with Ian Symes, Right Management’s General Manager, UK and Ireland to learn more about how the model can help organisations identify and develop their leaders.

Firstly, please could you talk us through what the P3 Leader Model is?

Right Management’s P3 Leader Model stands for People, Purpose, and Performance. From our point of view, these are the elements that organisations need to drive leader effectiveness in today’s world of work. The model provides a systematic way for organisations to build strong leadership pipelines by identifying talent with the greatest potential for success, helping them develop a focused set of capabilities, and managing their performance by measuring and rewarding relevant outcomes.

Why the need for a new leadership model?

We believe that existing methods of identifying and developing leaders are not working as they should. Our research shows that 40% of company leaders are unprepared to meet the business issues they will face over the next three to five years, and only 20% of managers identified as high performers successfully advance to higher levels of leadership.

Many existing models were developed for more stable business times. However, changes in the world of work are accelerating at a pace and scale never seen before. The challenges facing businesses today demand increased agility and a new set of criteria to identify and prepare leaders to navigate the challenges, risks and opportunities ahead. Our Leader Model has been specifically designed to respond to today’s uncertain and dynamic world of work.

How does Right Management’s approach differ from existing models?

Our approach differs in three key areas: business outcomes are defined not only in financial terms but also in metrics that measure the impact on human motivation; inherent enablers are aligned to the challenge of leading in times of certain uncertainty; and coachable capabilities are narrowed to those that matter most to deliver the desired outcomes.

Right Management was also determined to develop a methodology that is practical for businesses to use. Our model was relentlessly refined to arrive at a highly focused set of components that enables organisations to realise maximum business impact with a realistic investment of resources. We have distilled and simplified what leaders need to focus on to be effective.

Please could you talk us through each of the three key areas in more detail?

Let’s start with ‘Business Outcomes’. As talent is the most valuable asset in organisations today, we believe it should be reflected in leadership performance metrics. Measuring a leader’s impact on talent-focused outcomes is just as critical as evaluating financial metrics. Leaders should consider implementing KPIs to drive: an individual and organisational sense of purpose, an increased level of engagement, meaningful career management, and a more humane organisational culture.

What about Inherent Enablers?

These are an individual’s attributes that help predict future success and lay the foundation for the development of leadership capabilities. In assessing these traits, you are essentially putting the individual’s leadership DNA under the microscope. Enablers are what the person is and how they are hardwired. The P3 Leader Model assesses four key enablers: drive, adaptability, brightness, and endurance.

And what are Coachable Capabilities?

These are the actions a leader takes to help the organisation succeed. In contrast to Inherent enablers, they are highly teachable. The core capabilities within the Right Management P3 Leader Model are focused squarely on accelerating an organisation’s ability to compete in a dynamic global marketplace. To be effective today, leaders have to: accelerate performance, dare to lead, and unleash talent.

What challenges does the P3 Leader Model help clients solve?

The P3 Leader Model is rooted in world of work trends, and connects to key issues that concern our clients while providing a straightforward framework to build their leadership pipelines that other models don’t provide. The P3 Leader Model helps clients to clarify their leader development and cut through all the industry ‘noise’ found in competing models. We’ve minimised complexity by focusing on a small number of high-impact attributes and capabilities, rather than the lengthy and complicated models of the past. Last but not least, this model offers a single, comprehensive system that aligns and connects all elements – from candidate assessment, to capabilities, to outcomes measurement – whereas competing models assess only one or two leadership elements.

And finally – who can benefit from the P3 Leader Model and why?

The Right Management P3 Leader Model is a framework that organisations can use to support the
identification and development of their leaders by helping them to: identify talent with greater potential for leadership effectiveness; focus development time and resources on nurturing capabilities; create a culture of career to ensure a pipeline of leaders at all levels; hold leaders accountable for outcomes that impact profitability, growth and career development; and realise a greater return on investment and faster time to value.

Find out more about the P3 Leader Model on the Right Management website.