Idea 80: Developing today's and tomorrow's leaders
You are not born a leader, you become one.
Proverb of the Balimbe tribe in West Africa
The seventh function of strategic leadership is to select and train leaders at strategic, operational and team leadership levels. Again, as a strategic leader you should take ownership of that challenge – and it will be no surprise to you that here as elsewhere you should lead from the front.
The position is that we do know how to train team leaders, based on the three circles model of the generic role of leader, though largely through ignorance that hard-won know-how is grossly underused. That is the foundation.
Practice and reflection are the ways in which those individuals with an aptitude for leadership at operational and strategic levels prepared themselves – or are prepared – for these roles.
Some chief executives make the mistake of regarding only themselves and their fellow directors as leaders and the rest as managers. Diligent readers of this book will not fall into that common fallacy. Indeed, looking even beyond the all-important team leaders, it is possible to see all of your employees as leaders in their own way. That makes you into a ‘leader of leaders’.
Few organizations are really geared toward developing to the full the leadership potential within them. Sometimes this may be due to the fact that they place little or no premium on it, assuming either that it is not important or that the conventional management training will provide it. Only the best organizations show a real and sustained commitment to selecting and developing their business leaders. Why? Because those organizations know from experience that effective leadership at all levels is essential for their continued success.
Seize opportunities for talking to your managers about leadership, not in an academic sense but about what it means to you personally and why you think it is important. On a one-to-one basis with your operational leaders, do not hesitate to offer them advice drawn from your own practical wisdom.
In both success and failure, there are leadership lessons to be harvested.
Checklist for developing today's and tomorrow's leaders
- Do you have a clear strategy for developing leadership at every level?
- When selecting people for management jobs, do you assess them in terms of their leadership abilities (task, team and individual) and the associated qualities of personality and character?
- Are appointed team leaders given a minimum of two days of leadership training?
- Always.
- Sometimes.
- Never.
- Do you have some system for career development so that future senior leaders broaden their experience and knowledge?
- Are all line managers convinced that they are the real leadership trainers, however effective they are in that role?
- Is there a specialist ‘research and development’ team that is keeping the organization and its line managers up to date – and up to the mark?
- Has your organizational structure been evolved with good leadership in mind?
- Do leaders, actual or potential, realize that they are the ones who ‘own’ their self-development?
- Would you say that there was room for improving the organizational culture or ethos?
- A great deal.
- Some.
- None.
- Are your top leaders really behind leadership development?
- Wholeheartedly.
- Half-heartedly.
- Not yet.