Centre for Leadership Development: A Vision for the Future
With an eye on the future, KPC strives to promote personnel programmes that are designed to identify and develop potential human resources and executive leadership talents from the country’s oil-sector workforce.
The establishment of a Centre for Leadership Development (CLD) has been a dream come true for the Chief Executive Officer Mr. Saad Al-Shuwaib, who took avid and active steps upon assuming his tenure as KPC’s CEO to launch the Centre and make the dream a reality. He described establishing the Centre as the single most legacy he would like to leave behind by saying: "If there is one legacy I would like to leave behind, it would be the formal establishment of the process of leadership development based on state-of-art practices that will serve the requirements of not just the Oil Sector but the State of Kuwait."
To ensure the meticulous execution of the CLD’s goals and objectives Al-Shuwaib assembled a team of highly driven and dedicated Human Resources specialists who shared his passion and vision headed by Mrs. Salma Al-Hajjaj.
The team went on to design and execute several unique and innovative training programmes that are aimed to hone the intrinsic leadership potential, nurture talents and prepare a second line of leaders.
The Centre facilitates identification of potential Executive leaders of the Oil Sector and provides them opportunities for learning and development. The CLD is an independent corporate body reporting directly to the CEO. The sole purpose of the Centre is the management of executive leadership skills. Development of active land potential leadership talents, as well as, the planning of succession processes in the country’s oil sector are amongst the primary objectives of CLD.
In the following interview, Mrs. Al-Hajjaj sheds more light on the Centre from its early beginnings to its goals and objectives.
Whose brain child is the Centre for Leadership Development? And why did it occur to him?
Leadership development has become a critical success factor in any organization.
Leadership development is vital because organizations take on the personality of their leaders. Leadership training and development can maximize productivity, shape a positive culture and promote harmony. To achieve this, key people must lead individuals and teams using an appropriate leadership style. During executive appointments in 2007, the absence of a formal and structured process of leadership development was glaringly felt. It was then that the newly appointed CEO decided to make establishment of a formal process of leadership development based on state-of-art practice as his personal responsibility. In November 2008, the CEO formally established the Centre for Leadership Development with the purpose of focused development and succession planning of leaders in line with the strategic direction and vision of the Oil Sector.
How did you go about setting up the Centre dedicated to leadership development?
Before formally establishing the centre, a team was formed to undertake extensive research of best practices in the process of leadership development. The team undertook fact-finding visits to various IOCs such as BP, Shell, Dow, Statoil etc in addition to studying literature and publications on leadership development.
What is the main purpose and objectives of the Centre?
The Centre for Leadership Development shall serve as a platform for:
“Executive Talent Management” through creation of a common executive talent pool to respond to the demands of the business;
“Identification” of potential executives and provision of opportunities for leadership development.
“Fairness & Consistency” in our approach to ensure that our current and future leaders accept and embrace the process as fair and transparent across the K-Companies.
Centre for Leadership Development shall have the following objectives:
To assist in identification of potential MDs/DMDs/Managers through established and approved assessment tools and templates – gap identification;
To ensure that each executive has an agreed and approved individual development plan and develop/organize tailor-made training activities to suit the requirements of the oil sector as well as individual needs - development;
To map executive talent supply against oil sector demands – succession planning;
Does this conflict with the current training activities being undertaken at the oil sector?
Absolutely not, there is a full-fledged Training Sector in the oil sector that is responsible for training of oil sector employees. Training & Development of employees is a huge task and the sector is busy organizing training. The centre will be setting the strategic direction for leadership development and most implementation will be taking place through the Training Sector. There is absolutely no overlap, in fact there will be close coordination to ensure the quality of leadership training is enhanced.
What are the areas you would want the future leaders to develop in?
The centre began its activities by first studying the attributes needed for the success of the oil sector and the competencies that will help us achieve our strategic objectives. This was done through a series of interviews and workshops with MD and DMD’s to understand what our leadership Imperatives are. The outcome of this research resulted after much deliberation with four main competencies that was felt would be the driving force of the oil sector; these were:
Takes Ownership
Drives performance
Focuses on people
Creates integrated value
This has become the oil sector’s leadership model. Each of the competencies has two behavioural statements that define the expectation of the competency. These are the competencies we would like to see developed in all our oil sector leaders.
We understand that the oil sector has used 360° assessment tool, why was this tool used and how successful was the exercise?
Following the development of the model, the next step was to find tools to measure our talent pool against the model to identify the gaps. 360° assessment tool is one of the most widely used tool internationally, however we used this tool exclusively for identification of development gaps. As a newly introduced leadership model gaps were bound to be there, and our focus in using this tool was to identify development needs against the leadership model and not to measure current performance. However, this is just one tool that has been used to identify gaps, we will be using many other tools including third party assessment that will provide completely independent and objective assessment of existing gaps.
Having identified the gaps what is the next step?
Well having identified the gaps each oil sector executive is required to put together a development plan that will ensure bridging these gaps or improving further on the identified areas of strength. Moreover, we are also developing an essential leadership learning curriculum something that one would find at a university or academy. Every oil sector executive will need to accomplish certain essential leadership learning structured into different modules. A number of these courses will be delivered by our own internal experts; which is also a valuable tool in developing their own leadership capabilities.
How did you get all the senior executives aligned on this critical topic of leadership development?
All the senior executives were engaged right from the beginning including developing the leadership model which was development through an extensive exercise that involved interviews with the senior executives and brain-storming sessions. In addition, we have established 5 leadership development committees constituting 6-7 senior executives each that have been assigned the responsibility of overseeing the development of leaders at various levels of the oil sector.
How are the oil sector executives able to focus on leadership development despite their busy schedules?
As you may recall “Focus on People” has been made one of the four leadership competencies that the oil sector executives are required to develop. Moreover, we have introduced a unique concept of “coaching”. Through this process we have assigned lower level executives to higher level executives as coachees. This is the first time an executive of one subsidiary/sector of the oil sector has an opportunity to discuss his/her personal and professional development needs and receive guidance from a senior executive from another subsidiary/sector. This will facilitate development of two competencies, Focus on People and Create Integrated Value. It also aims at transferring and capturing knowledge and passing experiences onto future generations. We’ve shared the experience with some of our counterparts in other organizations locally and world wide and it has proved to be a leading approach in organization leadership development. We’ve received several calls from companies who have learnt of this initiative and would like to learn from it.
We have heard that the KPC Board is also involved in the process, could you elaborate on this?
Yes three members of the KPC Board as well as the CEO are members of the highest level Leadership Development Committee and this committee oversees the development and eventual recommendations on succession of Managing Directors. Development never ceases and moreover it is more important to strengthen one’s strengths in order to pass on the legacy to posterity. This committee meets regularly and they have recently held one to one meetings two hour meetings with each of the Managing directors to get a better understanding of their own personal career aspirations; the challenges they are facing and their future prospectus for the oil sector. Notably, at the recommendation of the CEO himself; he did not attend these meetings so that the discussion could be held in a neutral way and not influenced by his presence. This demonstrates the culture change in the organization and moving towards more transparency and openness.
What results do you expect to achieve through this process and how successful do you think it will be given the various external influences on the oil sector?
The least we expect to do is to ensure development of a pool of competent & talented leaders to support KPC mission, vision & strategic goals and be able to serve the oil sector and the State of Kuwait better. We’ve identified strategically as an organization where we want to be; now what we need to do is equip the people with the knowledge and know how of how to get us there. We expect there to be challenges; but we are confident that with continued support from our current leaders we will be able to make this critical endeavour happen.
