tirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with exami

As government agencies work to develop effective succession plans, they must keep in mind the high performance organization of tomorrow and not the static government organization of today. In his book, High Performance Government Organizations, Mark Popovich describes high-performance organizations as groups of employees who produce desired goods or services at higher quality with the same or fewer resources.

As Popovich writes, “Their productivity and quality improve continuously from day to day, week to week, and year to year, leading to achievement of their mission.” Hence, succession planning and management can help the organization become what it needs to be rather than simply recreating the existing organization.

At best, most succession planning efforts in the government so far have focused on developing programs that teach individual leadership competencies, but offer few strategies for practicing and maintaining individual leadership behavior that shapes performance outcomes and facilitates a cultural change.

There is a shift taking place in the management ranks now. Influence in organizations is no longer top down, but becoming more decentralized thereby creating a core power controlled by employees. This trend is creating an opportunity for workers at all levels to exercise increasing influence over themselves and their tasks. And, as the number of supervisors and managers in the federal sector continue to diminish, employees must learn to self-lead themselves towards performance outcomes.

In a recent survey of 429 public managers, a majority of respondents agreed that the self-leadership strategies listed most accurately described them. For example, 49% establish specific goals for their own performance; 43% use their imagination to picture themselves performing well on important tasks; and 48% focus their thinking on the pleasant rather than unpleasant aspects of their job activities. Over 50% think about and evaluate the beliefs and assumptions they hold.

Without a doubt, employee empowerment has increased in importance as competitive demands increase. With an increased emphasis on performance-based contracting, performance-based budgeting and pay-for-performance, is self-leadership practice the new succession planning tool for meeting these demands? Could it be the leadership development tool that prepares a workforce for the high-performance government organization of the twenty-first century?

Perhaps.

The Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA), a sub-component of the Veteran’s Administration, is an example of one non-profit agency that has, to some extent, integrated a form of self-leadership practice into its succession planning efforts. The VHA provides a broad spectrum of medical, surgical, and rehabilitative care to its customers. The agency’s goal is to share information about these benefits and services to make it as easy as possible for veteran’s to receive the care they need.

Like most government agencies, the VHA will be facing a gap in its leadership ranks because of a high number of projected retirements. The VHA reported a 38 percent senior executive retirement eligibility rate through 2008 and projects that 24 percent of its Nurse Executives are eligible for regular retirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with examin

eveloping programs that teach individual leadership competencies, but offer few strategies for practicing and maintaining individual leadership behavior that shapes performance outcomes and facilitates a cultural change.

There is a shift taking place in the management ranks now. Influence in organizations is no longer top down, but becoming more decentralized thereby creating a core power controlled by employees. This trend is creating an opportunity for workers at all levels to exercise increasing influence over themselves and their tasks. And, as the number of supervisors and managers in the federal sector continue to diminish, employees must learn to self-lead themselves towards performance outcomes.

In a recent survey of 429 public managers, a majority of respondents agreed that the self-leadership strategies listed most accurately described them. For example, 49% establish specific goals for their own performance; 43% use their imagination to picture themselves performing well on important tasks; and 48% focus their thinking on the pleasant rather than unpleasant aspects of their job activities. Over 50% think about and evaluate the beliefs and assumptions they hold.

Without a doubt, employee empowerment has increased in importance as competitive demands increase. With an increased emphasis on performance-based contracting, performance-based budgeting and pay-for-performance, is self-leadership practice the new succession planning tool for meeting these demands? Could it be the leadership development tool that prepares a workforce for the high-performance government organization of the twenty-first century?

Perhaps.

The Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA), a sub-component of the Veteran’s Administration, is an example of one non-profit agency that has, to some extent, integrated a form of self-leadership practice into its succession planning efforts. The VHA provides a broad spectrum of medical, surgical, and rehabilitative care to its customers. The agency’s goal is to share information about these benefits and services to make it as easy as possible for veteran’s to receive the care they need.

Like most government agencies, the VHA will be facing a gap in its leadership ranks because of a high number of projected retirements. The VHA reported a 38 percent senior executive retirement eligibility rate through 2008 and projects that 24 percent of its Nurse Executives are eligible for regular retirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with exami

strategies listed most accurately described them. For example, 49% establish specific goals for their own performance; 43% use their imagination to picture themselves performing well on important tasks; and 48% focus their thinking on the pleasant rather than unpleasant aspects of their job activities. Over 50% think about and evaluate the beliefs and assumptions they hold.

Without a doubt, employee empowerment has increased in importance as competitive demands increase. With an increased emphasis on performance-based contracting, performance-based budgeting and pay-for-performance, is self-leadership practice the new succession planning tool for meeting these demands? Could it be the leadership development tool that prepares a workforce for the high-performance government organization of the twenty-first century?

Perhaps.

The Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA), a sub-component of the Veteran’s Administration, is an example of one non-profit agency that has, to some extent, integrated a form of self-leadership practice into its succession planning efforts. The VHA provides a broad spectrum of medical, surgical, and rehabilitative care to its customers. The agency’s goal is to share information about these benefits and services to make it as easy as possible for veteran’s to receive the care they need.

Like most government agencies, the VHA will be facing a gap in its leadership ranks because of a high number of projected retirements. The VHA reported a 38 percent senior executive retirement eligibility rate through 2008 and projects that 24 percent of its Nurse Executives are eligible for regular retirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with exami

tury?

Perhaps.

The Veteran’s Health Administration (VHA), a sub-component of the Veteran’s Administration, is an example of one non-profit agency that has, to some extent, integrated a form of self-leadership practice into its succession planning efforts. The VHA provides a broad spectrum of medical, surgical, and rehabilitative care to its customers. The agency’s goal is to share information about these benefits and services to make it as easy as possible for veteran’s to receive the care they need.

Like most government agencies, the VHA will be facing a gap in its leadership ranks because of a high number of projected retirements. The VHA reported a 38 percent senior executive retirement eligibility rate through 2008 and projects that 24 percent of its Nurse Executives are eligible for regular retirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with exami

tirement beginning in 2005. To compensate for this leadership drain, VHA leadership convened to develop a strategy to address this challenge. After conducting an extensive literature search and benchmarking with several leading private sector firms, VHA created a new competency model for its employees.

Implemented in 2002, the High Performance Development Model (HPDM) was designed to develop a highly skilled, customer-focused workforce for the twenty-first century. It is used as a model for succession planning for managers. VHA used a model similar to Stephen Covey’s “inside-out” leadership approach, which suggests that for any self-help program to be effective, it must begin inside. That is to say, rather than looking towards our problems as being out there (an outside-in approach) we must start with examining our own character, paradigms, and motives.

The VHA model comprises eight global competencies that form a natural progression toward interpersonal and organizational excellence. The eight competencies are interpersonal effectiveness, customer service, systems thinking, flexibility and adaptability, creative learning, organizational stewardship, personal mastery, and technical competency. Dr. Christopher Neck, a leading self-leadership theorist and co-author of the book Mastering Self-Leadership, provided the personal opinion that five of the HPDM competencies (personal mastery, interpersonal effectiveness, flexibility and adaptability, technical skills, and creative thinking) relate to self-leadership.

According to a regional director at VHA; personal mastery, which involves employee self-knowledge, taking responsibility for mental and physical health, self-motivation, and non-reliance on external forces, has been identified by employees as having the greatest payoff. However, this is based on verbal feedback. No quantitative measures have been taken to confirm the actual impact these competencies have had on employee performance. In fact, a manager in the VHA training division expressed that because the HPDM is a philosophy, it is difficult to formally evaluate. In essence, the VHA have evaluations of certain programs or components of the succession plan that incorporate the HPDM, but are not be able to directly attach their results specifically to the HPDM.

Despite these limitations, there is evidence emerging to support the notion that self-leadership in the non-profit arena is one trend to keep an eye on.