I have delivered hundreds of leadership programs and noted that about 20% of the people participating in them do in fact have leadership qualities. This ‘spray and pray’ approach results in wasted resources based on assumed leadership.
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s start by examining what we know about potential leaders that never make it to the starting line, let alone to the top.
- 1 in 6 sports scholarships get turned down in the United States because these potential stars are constrained by the effects of poverty and other perceived barriers (http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?lang=&viewcastid=206)
- Canada’s highly educated immigrants often end up driving taxis, in retail, or in low-skilled medical jobs costing us $2.4 billion (http://www.canadianimmigrant.ca)
- Young talented ‘leaders’ in organizations with no assumed track record get 20% of the resources while prescribed leaders with a ‘manager’ title get 80% (http://www.shrm.org/leadership/)
Managers on the leadership track (assumed leaders) are still being evaluated and promoted based on technical expertise and not leadership qualities or potential. Leadership potential can and should be recognized in a number of different ways. These indicators need to include a range of soft and hard skills including a facilitative leadership style, creativity, forward-thinking, career activist, high EQ, high complexity + integrative thinking and a reputation for getting the job done. Often, high potential young leaders leave the organization or disengage prematurely because they don’t get the opportunities to stretch their leadership muscle fast enough. Organizations are inefficient at translating their potential into return (also referred to as a low capitalization rate).
But what if … we were efficient at recognizing and capitalizing on high potential leaders?
What does this look like?
Take the 1st step forward by asking:
1. Are the right leaders in place?
2. If not, are we exploring all leadership possibilities in our workforce?
3. What are the leadership indicators ?
4. Who shows leadership potential?
5. What are we doing to increase their capacity to lead?
6. What opportunities do they have to lead?
7. What coaching or mentoring support are we providing?
3 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
The ability of defining and harvesting low capitalization is what lies at the heart to the best leaders. Jim Collins talks about ‘putting the right people on the bus’ and I think that is the absolute first step in building sustainable organizations. However, it is not who people are, but what they might become that is the power of leadership. The best leaders focus attention on what our challenges are going to be, both individually and as an organization, so that we are able to begin a change process that will ultimately lead to higher leadership capitalization rates.
As a Millenial myself (or NetGeners as Don Tapscott describes) entering the workforce, I feel young leaders bring with them a skill set centered on high inter-personal skills and specific needs. It’s essential to view these ‘differences’ as opportunities to better harness the latent energy of tomorrow’s leaders.
I wholly subscribe to the ‘hedge hog’ concept from Collins book in terms of being an effective leader. After spending 9 years @ a fortune 100 company my observation has been those being promoted spend their time doing things that get noticed and acknowledged (marketing themselves). I think organizations evaluation systems are geared to promote the extroverted self marketer and overlook the individual that puts his head down and works behind the scenes to ensure a teams success.
Self marketing definatly has a role in the leadership mix – but, corporations need to do a better job of recognizing those with the ‘hedge hog’ metality and it’s leadership potential in order to farm the leadership capital within it’s own system.
Continuing the Discussion