First the bad news: A person who works exclusively in staff jobs throughout a career is less likely to develop important leadership competencies than a person who works exclusively in line jobs (or in a combination of staff and line jobs).1 Life as a staff professional is developmentally impoverished.
The consequences of having developmentally deprived staff professionals are serious. It means it is more difficult to find strong staff leaders, with all the implications for staff performance that this entails. It means we are wasting future talent; the pool of potential leaders for senior management positions is being restricted because women and other minority executives, who have primarily entered organizations via staff positions, are finding it difficult to make it into the senior-potential pool. And it means that in many cases staff professionals, willing but unable to move into line positions, are being career frustrated.
The good news is that this needn’t be the case. The development of staff professionals can be greatly enriched. It is essential we do so. Staff executives need to be full partners in understanding and running organizations. With the increasing complexity and rate of change that organizations face, the distinctions between line and staff executives are beginning to blur. Strong, broad leadership is needed to meet present and future demands.
In this paper we will describe the developmental gap and explain why it exists. We will also offer twenty-two recommendations for how the gap can be closed. Our ideas are based in part on many years of experience in executive development and in part on the insights provided by various studies done by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). We hope this paper will contribute to the development of leadership from the staff pool by being used by development professionals and staff managers responsible for development, as well as by general managers of staff units, and staff professionals seeking to help themselves (see the summary of uses that precedes this introduction).