Follow along with Scot Rourke’s latest blog series on leadership development in 2020.

Over the years, Scot Rourke has participated in and facilitated leadership development programs.  He strongly believes that leadership development is integral to an individual’s drive and key to a company’s success.

What is Leadership Development?

Leadership development is the practice of improving the performance of an organization’s leaders through assessments and exercises.  Much like business coaching (a service provided by Scot Rourke’s advisory team, Elevara), leadership development is an opportunity for a company to invest in its employees.  When a leader’s skills are strengthened, their value to the company improves exponentially. By implementing leadership development programs, both the individual leader and the organization they lead benefit tremendously.

When Scot Rourke designs leadership development programs, he follows a tried and true format.  Although the programs are often custom tailored to meet the specific needs of an organization in question, the primary components are as follows:

Self-assessment

At this stage, leaders are tasked with completing a self-assessment.  This requires the leader to make note of their strengths — and their weaknesses.  Often, Rourke will provide participants with a list of questions regarding real world scenarios.  The questions often require responses that demonstrate how he/she would react and utilize their problem solving skills.  This dives deep into the participant’s true strengths and weaknesses, which helps Rourke to pinpoint what areas and methods need improvement.

Team Discussions and Workshops

Participants are joined by their fellow colleagues at this stage in the process.  Working together as a team, leaders and employees complete mock exercises. This helps leaders to register the importance of each individual team member’s role within the company.  When leaders understand the process behind the work that their employees are completing, they are better able to lead. This helps not only the leader, but the team as a whole.

Individual Mentoring and Coaching

• Strategic Planning
• Developing and Navigating Innovative Business Models
• Supply Chain Management
• Corporate Governance
• Merger and Acquisition Processes
• Turnaround Management

Following the analysis of the aforementioned stages, Rourke takes time to assess the true strengths and weaknesses of the participants.  From there, he develops potential projects and strategies that will benefit the leaders in terms of improving their productivity and efficacy.  Leaders are then paired with individual mentors or coaches. These experts provide program participants with guidance while they work to implement Rourke’s proposed strategies.

Scot Rourke believes that leadership development programs are incredibly valuable to all organizations.  Regardless of a leader’s level, all professionals can benefit from the refreshing nature of self-assessments, real world exercises and coaching opportunities.  In essence, leadership development programs help companies to reassess, realign and revamp their productivity, potential and profits!