CONSTRUCTION OF A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK FOR FRONTLINE

LEADERS

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Henry Chandler

COURSE: HRMA 875

Bernard van der Walt: 26717786

24 July 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

List of Figures ........................................................................................................ i

1. Challenges Objectives and Outcomes .......................................................... 1

2. Leadership Development Framework ........................................................... 4

3. Competency Model ....................................................................................... 6

4. Outcomes and High Level Content ............................................................. 12

5. Measurement of ROI................................................................................... 13

6. Blended learning Model ............................................................................. 15

7. Roles and Responsibilities .......................................................................... 18

8. Conclusion .................................................................................................. 19

References ........................................................................................................... 20

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. i

Figure 1: Global Risk Trends Affecting HR ......................................................... 1

Figure 2: Strategy Alignment of Leadership Framework ..................................... 3

Figure 3: Leadership Development Framework Model ........................................ 5

Figure 4: Core Leadership Competencies ........................................................... 10

Figure 5: Emerging Leadership Competencies ................................................... 11

Graph 1. Leadership Development Outcomes .................................................... 14

Figure 6: ROI Measurement ............................................................................... 15

Figure 7: Types of formal learning ..................................................................... 17

Figure 8: Types of informal learning. ................................................................. 20

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1. Challenges objectives and Outcomes

Challenges.

A leadership development framework faces external and internal affecting factors. External

factors affect business strategy and therefore influences the HR management system and the

Leadership Development Framework (LDF).

External factors Influencing Business Strategy

The marketplace where the business operates in may include skills availability, aging

workforce, economic growth and education level. The World Economic Forum presents a

report each year providing more information regarding the risk environment in which the

business will operate in.

These factors have a more direct impact on the business in total and on the business strategy

that has to deal with it.

Figure 1. Global Risk Trends Affecting Business Strategy, HR management and leadership

Interventions (WEF, 2015).

Aging Population.

Business Strategy

Aging Population

Growing middle class in emerging

economies

Increasing national sentiment

Rise of chronic disease

Religeos polarisation in

society

Rising income disparity

Rising geographic Mobility

Weakening of international governance

Rising Hyperconnectivity

2

Due to better medical care and better food quality the world’s population is aging and

more people will be on pension and will have to be taken care of by government in

future.

Growing middle class in emerging economies.

Expansion of the middle class causes economic stability and more predictable

spending patterns.

Increasing national sentiment.

National sentiment may in countries cause polarisation which in turn may lead to

military conflict.

Rise in chronic disease.

The recent outbreak of Ebola is an example of life threatening diseases that can affect

workforces all over the world as multinational companies are reluctant to move their

employees to areas affected by these diseases.

Increasing polarisation in religion.

As can be seen in the Middle East polarisation has taken place and is increasing to

such an extent that many lives have been lost.

Rising income disparity.

Especially in third world countries the income gap expands and this expansion can

lead to civil unrest.

Rise in geographic mobility.

Experts find it easy to move from one country to the next as they are transferred by

multinational organisations and becomes ex-pat employees.

Weakening of international governance.

The recent example of al-Shabir that escaped the international criminal court as the

South African government ignored international governance.

Rising hyper connectivity.

The effect of technology facilitates the ability of an employee to work from anywhere

in the world.

Internal Factors

The leadership development framework follows the business’ strategy which can be depicted

by the following model. Alignment is essential to achieve any positive output and this is

because the action of HR must assist in achieving the results set down by the business

strategy. Frontline leaders must support this strategy.

Figure 2. Strategy Alignment of Leadership Framework to Business Strategy.

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Business strategies are determined by the external environment. HR decisions and

therefore leadership development decisions are based on these (discussed previously).

Business decisions following business strategies determine the functioning of all the

departments of the organisation e.g. finance, marketing, production and HR.

Supporting HR decisions will naturally follow business decisions, for example the

business wishes to scale down its operations, HR should not be hiring new people at

that stage.

Leadership competencies at supervisor level should support HR decisions, for

example where HR has been instructed to expand, frontline leadership competencies

must be developed.

Performance requirements determine the output required by frontline leaders which in

turn provides the requirements for leadership development.

The existing culture of front line leaders facilitates or hamper the development of

leadership skills e.g. resistance to change.

After the above process is followed the leadership programmes required can be

implemented to develop competencies of front line managers.

Objectives.

The above objectives filter down to the level where frontline leaders have to achieve these

objectives by implementing them, otherwise these massive objectives of the business is

useless.

Outcomes.

Outcomes of implementing a MODP for frontline leader that supports the LDF will

contribute directly to the output of the organisation which in turn will contribute to

profitability of the organisation.

A strong leadership pipeline will be formed that will provide leaders for all levels in the

organisation.

There will be a high performance attitude by employees created by the actions of front line

supervisors.

Business Strategy Influenced by

external environment.

Business decisions

Supporting HR decisions

Existing culture in the organization with focus on HR

culture.

Performance requirement

journey

Leadership Competencies

Leadership Programmes

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Definitions.

Once leadership has been positioned, it is possible to present definitions.

Leadership

A leader is someone that does not only step up in the times of crises or need but also during

normal circumstances. A leader has a clear vision of the objective to be achieved.

Leaders influence people so that they want to follow the leader willingly and want to share

the leaders’ goals. The leader also provides knowledge and information and manages conflict

of stakeholders and members (Businessdictionary, 2015).

There is no specific definition of leadership because it differs from place to place and from

problem to problem as Warren Bennis states: “Leadership is really a matter of character. The

process of becoming a leader is no different than the process of becoming a fully integrated

human being” (Gini & Green, 2014).

The above definitions of leadership applies not only to political, social and religious leaders,

but also to business leaders and all management levels including frontline managers.

Leadership Competencies

Competencies have main aspects which are defined by the relevant job and required roles.

The behavioural aspect is the actions that results in good or bad performance. The motivation

that the person has to perform these actions and the technical skills to perform the required

actions are the other two main aspects of competencies (Harvard University Press, 2015).

Competencies are the things that a person must demonstrate or master or execute to be able to

complete a task successfully. A frontline manager must make sure that his team members have

competency e.g. to drive a forklift. ArcelorMittal gives their managers international experience

to develop their leadership competencies (Jansen van Vuuren, 2015).

2. Leadership Development Framework

The leadership development framework (LDF) suggested in this work combines

strategies and actions to have a focus on the development of front line leaders instead of

focussing on the total strategy of the company.

Figure 2. Leadership Development Framework Model (Bersin & Associates, 2011).

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Leadership Strategy.

Strategy alignment of Leadership Framework to HR Strategy which is aligned to business

decisions see Figure 2.

Leadership Development Strategy.

- Curriculum design is done by analysing the type of environment in which the

company operates. The industry for example, can be technical mining equipment, or,

an international service delivery corporation.

- Curriculum delivery, formal or informal training will be discussed in detail later in

this document.

- Organisational capability is determined by the current and projected financial

situation that the business faces. If the company is retrenching employees and

supervisors, the LDF will be different as from the business strategy where frontline

managers are hired.

- Portfolio strategy developed in terms of where leadership in the business is required.

In certain departments of the business there might be a shortage of frontline managers

and in other departments a oversupply. This can happen when technology changes

and certain departments in the organisation become obsolete e.g. Kodak retrenched

thousands of employees and frontline managers when they decided to finally close

their film processing shops as digital photography took over.

Leadership development framework for

frontline leaders

Leadership Strategy. -Organisation vision Mission- strategy

Leadership development strategy

- Organisational capability - corporate

LD intiative

Supporting structures and

individual capability

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- Corporate leadership development follows the expected demand in leaders. This is

done by setting up a leadership pipeline and managing leaders through this pipeline,

which will insure that a lack of leadership skills does not develop.

- Objectives and metrics. In the last few years technologically advanced metrics and

analytics have been developed to measure leadership performance. As objectives for

the development of frontline managers is set, there must be ways to measure the

achievement of these objectives. Software developers have developed packages like

Workforce Analytics from SAP and PeopleSoft from Oracle to measure the successful

achievement of objectives.

- Assessments must be performed accurately to base future decisions on. This is done

through using metrics and analytics based on accurate data.

- Sharing information on leadership development and assessment with functional

departments builds a stronger framework. Input and feedback from functional

departments is then used to determine future strategy.

Supporting Structures and Individual Capability.

- Ethics and corporate governance must support leadership development to such an

extent that morality issues does not develop. Major issues developed in SA like poor

service delivery, corruption as nepotism.

- The individual capability of the frontline leader must be at such a level that it is

beneficial to supporting the development of a leadership framework. If the leadership

development framework is not supported by the ability of the individual frontline

leaders it will not be able to function at full potential.

- The support of performance management is important in the sense that it determine

the success through measurability of the framework.

- Some organisations develop a leadership brand which attracts HiPo’s such as Google

or Microsoft. In the same way a leadership culture can be established that attracts

future leaders. Some organisations give bursaries to HiPo students at tertiary

institutions to make sure that they will join the organisation. This alone is a status

symbol for the future leader (Bersin & Associates, 2011).

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3. Competency Model

CORE LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES.

These competencies remain reasonably constant over time, from place to place and from

situation to situation. It is important to note that these competencies must be aligned to the

business strategy and the required skills. Anticipation by the leader of approaching threats

and opportunities is important. Challenge, strategic leaders must challenge the status quo.

Different interpretations should be made to re-invent management. Leaders must have the

ability to align with stakeholder’s tolerance and expectations of change (Harvard Business

Review, 2013).

Ethics

Ethical behaviour is extremely important for a business leader to foster trust in the

organisation and to cause shareholder value. This is however not necessarily the case

in the South African business environment where employees are sometimes left to

starve as the directors steal the money. South Africa has an Ethics Institute trying to

rectify the situation.

The frontline leader must incorporate ethical leadership into his department in the the

culture of the organisation as new employees will become leaders in the organisation

through leadership development in the future.

The frontline leader must develop this leadership competency to strictly act ethically.

If the frontline leader doesn’t act ethically the credibility of his department will be lost

as well the total credibility of the organisation. The frontline leader must make sure

that the ethics of the company is transferred to new employees in the process of

induction training. SAB has a one week induction training programme whereby the

ethics of the organisation is transferred and whereby new employees are trained to

speak the language of the organisation.

Vision

Only visionaries can lead people, otherwise they would be followers, examples are

Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs etc.

The frontline leader must be a visionary that connects the corporate and HR vision to

his unit.

Connect the HR vision to the strategic vision of the company and this in turn will

determine how the workforce planning will be done in the HR management process.

Goal Achievement

Entrepreneurial and commercial awareness.

Focussing on goals which are linked to the strategic objectives of the organisation will

give leadership direction and goal achievement.

A leader in business can be compared to the ability of an athlete to perform at top

level. The athlete earns millions of dollars when they win, the winner of Wimbledon

Tennis tournament is paid R 18 million in prize money. The same goes for business

leaders who gets million of Rands when their organisations perform well. A frontline

leader in turn can earn substantial bonusses.

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The frontline leader must focus on goals from the functional department and must

have the competency to achieve and to manage the process in his department.

Judgement

Judgement is based on the ability of the leader to evaluate a situation and to make a

decision based on the situation and information provided.

In certain circumstances it is necessary for the leader to make a judgement call based on

incomplete information. Good analysis skills are essential to make the best possible

decision.

As bad judgement calls will have a detrimental effects on the organisation. The frontline

leader should undergo leadership training that includes judgement training to equip the

leader with judgement abilities.

Passion

Success in business leadership and in many other walks of life is dependent on having

passion for the subject. This can be seen in the work of many artists, sports people and

business people.

To be able to be a leader the person must have passion to be able to achieve his

objective and those of the organisation as the competition in the market eliminates

people and businesses without passion.

Any person must be passionate in what they do to achieve success and so the frontline

leader needs passion to work with people and to inspire them.

Team Builder

To build a team that performs is difficult in any circumstance and requires a high

level of leadership ability.

Effective networking, relationship building and communication skills.

Frontline leaders needs to have the aptitude and attitude to achieve the tasks at hand.

Accountability

Leaders should take responsibility for their actions. This is not always the case in SA

as leaders avoid taking accountability for outcomes e.g. Eskom leadership. It has

become regulated in certain countries that leaders remain accountable for their

decisions e.g. King III report (which is rarely implemented).

Frontline management is regulated to a certain extent by laws like the Labour

Relations Act but the frontline leader must feel personally responsible for their action

and behave that way.

Development of people

A leader has the ability to influence people and they are willing followers. This gives

the opportunity that the followers can be influenced to achieve personal growth or to

learn from the examples that the leader set. People development is one of the main

tasks of frontline leader.

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Frontline leaders must develop people in order to do succession planning or to make

sure the talent pool in the company is sufficient to support the requirements of their

unit.

EMERGING LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES.

Global Leadership skills

This is the most important new leadership skill as multinational corporations require

leaders that can exhibit this skill as the leaders can not only operate in one country but

must develop and lead globally. Effective communication, presenting and persuading

skills. Global corporations have specific programmes to develop the skills of their

leaders so that they can communicate clearly with their employees internationally and

get their commitment to the tasks at hand.

The frontline leader must also be sensitized to the global requirements of leadership

and must be able to develop these skills in his department.

Figure 4. Core Leadership Competencies (Bersin & Associates, 2012).

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Agility

Adapting and responding to change. The leader of today must have the ability to adapt

to different situations and move between roles and circumstances. Today the leader

will be in one situation in one part of the corporation and tomorrow the leader might

be in another situation in another location or in another part of the business.

The frontline leader must be able to adapt to change quickly and develop the ability to

manage change in his business unit, as required by circumstances.

Cultural Diversity

Sensitivity to culture has become more important as companies are operating globally.

Cultural differences vary to such an extent that it can make the opening of a new

facility in a foreign operation impossible. For example, in Kenia tribal leaders had to

Core leadership

competencies

Ethics

Vision

Goal Focussed

Good judgement

Passionate

Team Builder

Action Accountable

People Development

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give permission for a road to be build by a Chinese company before the government

gave permission.

Frontline leaders must develop cultural sensitivity skills and be able to train

employees to use these skills.

Figure 5. Emerging Leadership Competencies (Bersin & Associates, 2012).

Innovation

The frontline leader must not only be aware of the latest technological innovations but

also be able to innovate leadership techniques to make sure new challenges are

managed. Innovation happens more often with new technology. Various governments

sponsor innovators with immigration benefits if their innovations get accepted.

The frontline leader should use innovations to increase the effectiveness of his

department and to develop leadership competencies.

The frontline leader must be aware of innovation in all fields of the organisation and

be able to sensitize employees to these innovations. Metrics and Analytics is some of

the tools that the frontline leader can use to incorporate innovation into the leadership

competency development process.

Emerging Leadership

Competencies

Global Skills

Agility

Cultural Diversity

Innovation

Emotional Inteligence

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Emotional Intelligence

China has an oversupply of thousands of engineers and scientists who can work all

over the world but only 10% of them are employable because 90% of them have a

very low emotional intelligence. The Chinese education system focusses on academic

and technical ability by letting students study 14 hours per day but neglects emotional

development which develops during periods of play and sports activities. The

emotional intelligence components used by ArcelorMittal to determine emotional

intelligence is: Interpersonal (social awareness), Intrapersonal (self-awareness),

Stress Management (emotional management and regulation), Adaptability (change

management), General Mood (self-motivation), (Jansen van Vuuren, 2015).

A lack of emotional intelligence causes feelings of inadequacy, stress and irrational

decision-making by the leader. A lack of developing this competency causes real

damage to the organisation.

Emotional intelligence is probably the most important leadership competency because

if someone is not emotionally mature they will never be a business leader. They may

however be a charismatic or political leader. The frontline leader must have emotional

intelligence as he or she must be able to deal with emotionally strenuous

circumstances like retrenchments.

Leadership competencies consist mainly of core and developing competencies. There are still

a lot of other competencies identified not discussed in this paper but the most important aspect

of leadership competencies is that the frontline leader incorporate leadership competencies into

his management process. It is further important to realise that the frontline leader develops

these leadership competencies to increase the effective functioning of the organisation. The

changing global demographics also demands more from the frontline leader she will now not

only develop leadership competencies locally but will also have to develop them on a global

scale taking factors such as cultural diversity into account. Measurement of the development

of leadership competencies has also become possible by using software developed for these

purposes like Oracle PeopleSoft and Workforce Analytics from SAP.

Leadership Competencies for Frontline managers used in this assignment:

Emotional Inteligence,

The emotional intelligence components used by ArcelorMittal to determine emotional

intelligence competency is: Interpersonal (social awareness), Intrapersonal (self-

awareness), Stress Management (emotional management and regulation), Adaptability

(change management), General Mood (self-motivation), (Jansen van Vuuren, 2015).

A lack of emotional intelligence cause feelings of inadequacy, stress and irrational

decision-making by the leader. A lack of developing this competency cause real

damage to the organisation.

Emotional intelligence is probably the most important leadership competency because

if someone is not emotionally mature they will never be a business leader. They may

however be a charismatic or political leader. The FLM must have emotional

intelligence as he or she must be able to deal with emotionally strenuous

circumstances like retrenchments.

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Ethics,

Ethics is the moral fibre of each population or country it represents. The deduction

can then be made that if a business’ ethics is a discipline of ethics it will vary from

country to country and from first world countries to third world countries and from

business to business.

To be able to live their lives ethically a leader must be transparent in their values and

actions and to communicate their beliefs and feelings to others which will show their

integrity. Ethical leaders will admit mistakes and will confront unethical behaviour

(Goleman, Boyatzis & McGee, 2012).

Goal focused,

Leaders who are goal focussed set high standards for themselves and drive themselves

and their team members to achieve these standards, they calculate risk so that to make

sure that their goals are attainable (Goleman, Boyatzis & McGee, 2012).

Individuals and groups perform at a certain level when they are committed to

achieving certain goals. Goals give energy to groups as it focusses their attention and

action towards the goal and away from non-goal achievement activities. People or

groups which are goal oriented are more persistent and overcomes objectives easier.

Action accountable,

Leader should take responsibility for their actions. This is not always the case in SA

as leaders avoid taking accountability for outcomes e.g. Eskom leadership. It has

become regulated in certain countries that leaders remain accountable for their

decisions e.g. King III report.

How? The HR manager is regulated to a certain extent by laws like the Labour

Relations act but the HRM must feel personally responsible for their action and

behave that way

Team builder,

“Leaders are team players…….are themselves models of respect, helpfulness and

cooperation” (Goleman, Boyatzis & McGee, 2012).

To build a team that performs is difficult in any circumstance and requires a high

level of leadership ability. To be able to draw team members into willing, active and

positive collaboration is essential if the frontline leader wants to develop a strong

team. Effective networking, relationship building and communication skills are

required.

The HR manager needs to select FL leaders that has the aptitude and attitude to

achieve the tasks at hand.

People Development,

To be able to develop others the frontline manager must understand the strengths and

weaknesses of all team members, they must also have a keen interest in those they are

helping.

The development of team members managed by the frontline leader is important as it

contributes to the success of the team, the work quality, motivation and morale of the

individual.

The development of employees may include personal development and any of the

learning interventions presented in the leadership development framework.

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4. Outcomes and High Level Content

With all the scandals in recent years there has been a loss of faith in business leaders

from Enron to AIG, Ponzi schemes and Tesco.

The graph below presents the outcomes required to achieve successful leadership

development and the capability development areas that focus on the LDP for frontline

leaders.

1. Measuring the effectiveness of learning and development areas.

This measurement will directly contribute to ROI.

2. Developing basic leadership skills across the employee base.

Front line managers should have the basic leadership skills.

3. Rapidly getting new employees up to speed.

4. Forecasting skills needed in the near future by front line managers.

5. Building leadership talent.

6. Passing on knowledge from older to younger employees.

7. Fostering a culture that supports learning and development.

Graph 1. Leadership Development Outcomes (Oracle 2012).

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Outcomes in %

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5. Measurement of the ROI from Leadership Development.

Busy employees are not necessarily productive employees, it is therefore essential to measure

the performance of employees and their first line managers when they operate in a business

unit. Analytics is used to measure the ROI of leadership development.

Activities that the frontline manager have to be involved in shown in Figure 5.

Figure 6. ROI Measurement (Oracle, 2012).

Goal setting, planning and tracking.

On boarding of new employees.

Setting up development centres

Ongoing coaching by line managers

Learning facilitation

Performance management

decisions

Competence decleration

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To measure all of the above the results can be quantitatively or qualitatively analysed. The

quantitative process is called Quantitative Human Capital Analysis. Quantitative results, from

each business unit, which were set on production, financial, or quality goals can be measured

by using metrics or analytics.

Software programmes have more than 2000 HR reports to measure ROI of leadership

development. Examples may include: reduced supervisor turnover by %. Increase in the

number of HiPo’s over the past year by what %. Improvement of engagement by what %.

The above metrics can be incorporated in further analytics, for example: What is the

correlation between employee engagement and supervisor turnover.

Another option is using qualitative research where questionnaires or interviews can be held

with more senior managers reporting on goal achievement like production output.

6. Blended Learning Model

Blended learning is a combination of formal and informal learning. The blended

learning model is based on curriculum delivery which in turn is based on curriculum

design.

Employees, frontline leader or external candidates get selected to be part of a leadership

development programme using various techniques such as:

Psychometric Testing

Registered Tests, these test can only be provided by a registered psychometrist. An

example of these teste is the Mayers Briggs Type Indicator or Rorschach (which is

rarely used).

Publicly Available Tests

Selection by most companies is done by using these types of tests. Examples include

Personality Indicator (PI) and Jarvis Tests.

Using learning methods blindly is not advisable as each might have a different effect on

the learning outcome in terms of learning quality and absorption.

When selecting learning types to use when you will be doing leadership development

for frontline managers, it is important to determine what will define the successful

outcomes of learning.

After learning programmes have been implemented it is important to determine the

success of the learning otherwise money would have been wasted and the success of the

organisation will be negatively influenced. Measuring learning success is done by using

learning analytics (LA) (Educase, 2011).

LA uses data from computer systems which provided learning to students. To be able

not to lose good students and to be able to assist weak students the data that were

collected in the big data network or in the cloud is compared to the results of the

individual system.

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LA is confined to electronic learning that provides data to be analysed. To apply this to

frontline managers would be to let them follow formal and informal learning modules

as long as the data can be analysed.

The goal of LA is to determine at-risk students which have the potential for achieving

success but they are uncertain about the requirements or actions they should take or

how they should approach their trainers (Educase, 2011).

Technology facilitates training in various ways formally and informally examples of

this can be from webcasts, for learning frontline managers to demonstrate the operation

of new machinery to exams which the frontline manager have to pass to be able to fulfil

certain tasks. In the following figure it can be seen what the possible impact if

technology is on learning.

Figure 7. Types of formal learning (Kruger, 2015).

Formal learning

Accredited Institution

Virtual Classroom and

Assesments

Course presentation

Critical Reader

Moderation

Teaching

Communicationg Course Material e.g printed books

Reserch

Evaluation

Moderation and Feedback

TechnologyNon technology based

learning

Assesments

Coaching

Simulations

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Formal learning to be used in this assignment:

Virtual classroom:

Classes can be attended and questions answered from all over the world.

Virtual Assessments:

This is done online by students completing questionnaires. Every time the

questionnaire is completed to achieve a certain mark the student loses points.

Virtual Research:

PhD and Master’s degree students can submit their work online for moderation.

Formal classroom teaching:

This is done especially in more junior levels of education of where the students

have no accessibility to technology.

Simulations:

Where there is a need for a mentor providing examples e.g. assembly of a

complicated piece of machinery not all the elements of the process can be done

online. The student is then examined on his ability to achieve successful results.

Informal learning to be used in this assignment:

Social embedded learning:

This type of learning develops when the learner learns as part of his social environment

for example a person growing up in a butchery where his parents work in will learn the

“tricks of the trade”.

Blogs:

Also called watercoolers is used especially at academic institutions where questions and

answers are presented to provide students with more information.

Social media:

Facebook blogs are set up to present information to students regarding a variety of

subjects.

Job rotation:

Leaders learn related skills through this process. It also provides the ability to substitute

frontline leaders when leave is due or supervisors cannot attend.

Ex-pat assignments:

Leader get assigned to learn the skills relevant to managing in different parts of the

world and are therefore more able to travel wherever the organisation has a shortage of

frontline leaders.

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Figure 8. Types of informal learning.

7. Roles and Responsibilities

There is a number of roles that a frontline leader must fulfil:

Translate goals set by management to be understandable by employees. Simplify, if

necessary.

Provide a clear vision of goal alignment between the goals of the business unit to the

business goals.

Be prepared to create agile goals for the business unit as demanded by management.

Be involved in coaching staff.

Facilitate training where necessary.

Be involved in performance reviews (Oracle, 2012).

Informal learning

Virtual communities

Blogs

Wiki's

Webcasts

Facebook groups

Pinterest

Communicating Course Material

TechnologyNon technology based

learning

Social Embedded Learning

Job rotation

Mentoring

Action Learning

Ex-pat assignments

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To be able to be a frontline leader the person will need the following attributes:

Ability: The supervisor needs the inherent ability to be able to be developed as a leader.

Willingness: If there is a resistance to leadership development it is a waste of time and

money.

Knowledge: If the supervisor does not have any knowledge of the product he will not be able

to assist anyone in his business unit regarding the products produced.

Decisions: Will have to be able to make decisions based in limited information.

Learning: Must be able to learn quickly and to transfer that learning to employees.

Interpret: Interpret instructions given by management and translate it to his department.

Recent development in responsible leadership brought the following elements to the

foreground. These are also relevant to the frontline leader.

Inclusive cultural diversity have to be managed as technical skills from all over the

world are allocated to specific teams where the frontline manager is the supervisor.

An example of this is found at ArcelorMittal where people from Poland are employed

because of their technical ability in the steel industry as the industry is the same in

Poland as in South Africa.

The frontline leader is responsible to realize the consequence of his or her actions on

the team that they supervise and on the organisation. Examples of this can be moral

issues (Voegtlin, 2011).

An important responsibility of the frontline leader is conflict resolution. This is done

by discussion with the relevant team members or if necessary following disciplinary

procedures.

A responsible frontline leader will have a positive effect on the job satisfaction and

performance of the team members (Voegtlin, 2011). The performance and job

satisfaction is important for the functioning of the team and therefor in contributing to

the effectiveness of the organisation.

8. Conclusion

Without a leadership development framework, leadership development will have no structure.

This framework puts leadership development in context in relation to the total functioning of

the organisation.

Developing a leadership development framework for frontline leaders involves all the

elements of leadership at any level. There is differences however when evaluating the

challenges and objectives e.g. global leadership of a multinational firm requires a strong

strategic focus and global skills vs a small local engineering works.

Roles and responsibilities and performance measures have to be in place to measure the ROI

of frontline leaders so that future leadership development interventions can be determined.

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References

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