Developing Leaders

I was speaking with some HR professionals recently and the question of leadership came up… how do you define a leader, can anyone be a leader, why do we not spend more time developing leaders and so on. It was a fascinating discussion with no easy or pat answers but it was a deep and meaningful talk. Recognizing that every company and organization is unique, we started to share some ideas around developing leaders that I found really intriguing and wanted to share some of them here.

One person spoke about how their former company instituted quarterly reviews rather than the more typical annual schedule but, more importantly, that they encouraged their managers to have these types of conversations with their teams even more often than that. They also brought in a component into the formal reviews that had managers actively identify who on their teams had the potential to become (titled) leaders so that they could be offered training and development opportunities. While that means singling some people out, I still applauded the active and intentional efforts to seek out tomorrow’s leadership.

Another individual spoke about how their company looked at employees who had been with their company between 5 – 8 years with the explicit understanding that a future CEO could come from those ranks. As a result, evaluations and training opportunities were instituted to develop that talent. While I cannot speak to the exact time frame they chose to target, the fact that there was an intentional review of employees who had a little tenure under their belt was both refreshing and encouraging.

My contribution to the discussion was more simple and, frankly, a bit embarrassing to admit to… not because it was a bad idea but because I had only instituted it as part of my own management process in the last couple of years (and I’ve been a manager for a lot longer). My simple suggestion? Talk with your people about what they want to do.

What was interesting is that this led to one of the longer discussions in our group. We brought up obvious issues like how interest in becoming a manager does not necessarily mean that the innate abilities are present. We also brought up the very real fact that there are a finite number of management roles so it’s possible in both scenarios that you are setting people up for disappointment by having these conversations. Still, we generally agreed it was the right thing to do.

As we have all likely experienced in our lives, just because something is not talked about does not mean it is not real or present. If you have people on your teams who aspire to something more in their careers, ignoring it – or being ignorant of it – will not make it go away… though your teammate might.

Having these conversations accomplishes several things. First, it allows these “uncovered” thoughts and ideas to be brought out so that everyone is aware of them and they can be actively addressed. Rather than hope that they’ll go away, you meet the topi.c head-on. Yes, it may result in some uncomfortable conversations, but if you are honest and genuine with your team – about their abilities, about what opportunities exist and about what you can do together – then you are truly fulfilling you role as a leader.

That brings me to our final part of our discussion – namely that there is a need for many (probably most) employees to be the doers and not necessarily carry the title of leader… but then to also recognize that everyone has the potential to lead no matter the role they occupy.

Ideally, everyone in your organization should feel like they matter and are making a meaningful contribution to the goals of the company. If we can agree on that, then the role of leading is far less about status and more about ability and contribution. Unfortunately, we often have this innate sense that the people given the job of explicitly leading as somehow being better or more important that the people they lead which is just wrong.

Yes, it makes sense to the extent that people in leadership positions often make the decisions and there’s something to be said to having the final word but that approach fails to value the contributions of everyone along the way, from those who initiated an idea or researched and refined it along the way or even those who will implement it once approved. If any of those things are missing or not done well, then the decision will likely be considered a poor one. What we all do matters and has a direct impact on the success of our companies.

Returning to the original topic of developing leaders, every organization is faced with a very real decision about who and how many. Budget and time constraints are valid reasons to focus your investment. But if we broaden the definition of what leadership is and who can be considered a leader, then we start to recognize how this is woven throughout our organizations and we can start to look at training programs that encourage the development of more of our people.

Know that I’m pulling for you!