Practice Preach Leadership Development

Practice Preach Leadership Development

On this episode, #22 of the Lead the Future Podcast, Dr. Vince Molinaro is joined by special guest, James Prior, Global Head of Talent and Leadership at Gilead Sciences, for a deep-dive discussion into James’ expertise in leadership development and the role it plays in the growth of organizations who embrace its complexities. 

James shares his insights from his experience in leadership development roles over his careers and views on the pitfalls and traps many organizations fall into when addressing leadership development. He also shares his advice for leaders and how to navigate the living and breathing reality that is leadership development within your organization. 

“If you’re not growing yourself and doing your own leadership development work, how can you lead a system or a team or an organization through supporting other leaders’ growth. – James Prior

Key leadership insights to listen for

  • Buy-in for creating and sustaining a leadership culture comes from the top leadership committing and modeling the expectations.
  • The timeline of leadership development can’t take too long. It needs to be weaved into the fabric of the organization organically, meeting the organization where it is and growing from there.
  • Leadership frameworks need to be a living, breathing strategy, not a stagnant plan that is unrealistic with the ever-changing business environment.
  • The “hurry up” driver with data and technology allows us to see problems faster but can create a disconnect with the problem-solving process of taking a step back, getting the team involved, and looking at the problem in a number of way before solving it and moving onto the next problem to solve.
  • Leadership organization traps and advice on how to overcome them with strategy, leadership development, and attention.
  • Strategies on how to pace the development of leaders within your organization and how this can shape and mold the scale of development within the culture of an organization over time.
Meet the Leader: James Prior

James Prior has been the Global Head of Talent and Leadership at Gilead Sciences since October of 2021, having spent four years at Novartis leading their leadership development for some time-based in Switzerland. He joined the pharmaceutical industry early in his career as a sales representative on selling therapeutics to physicians and other healthcare professionals and quickly moved into managing a training team. Since then, he’s held various roles in the leadership development space with AstraZeneca, Barclays, Unilever, Novartis, and Dentsu Media. He’s a visiting lecturer with Cranfield Military Academy alongside the Aston Business School at LSE. He has a master’s degree in leadership and development from Middlesex University and other degrees rooted in science. James has a diverse set of experiences in leading leadership development in large companies. 

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