Building Leaders – Part II

In an article addressing leadership development, authors Gina Hernez-Broome and Richard L. Hughes from the Center for Creative Leadership offered the following observation:

“Activities like coaching, mentoring, action learning, and 360-degree feedback are increasingly key elements of leadership development initiatives.

Developmental relationships primarily take two forms: coaching and mentoring. Coaching involves practical, goal-focused forms of one-on-one learning and, ideally, behavioral change.”

Translation? If you want or need new leaders in your company, they need to be developed. To develop them, you should ideally create a positive and productive (developmental) relationship with the individual that will allow them to learn effectively. And, learning that changes behavior is driven by 1-on-1 coaching and interactive, on-the-job practice.

Can leaders be “built”? It’s a good question. The answer, I believe, is yes – assuming that the individual has some requisite “leadership” talents. In other words, some skills can be taught, but some talents have to be native to the individual.

Some of those required talents are:

1. Decisiveness
2. Assertiveness
3. Intelligence
4. Critical thinking
5. Vision

Leadership skills that can be taught:

1. Effective communication
2. Coaching/mentoring
3. Relationship skills
4. Defining expectations
5. Strategic thinking

These are, by no means, exhaustive lists of the talents needed or the skills that can be taught. It does, however, give you a sense that “leaders” must be 1) identified, and then 2) developed.

The more important question is whether or not you have the mechanisms in place to identify future leaders and develop them effectively? If not, you will likely be left with too few leaders and very little insight as to who should fill those positions. What is often overlooked is the leaders in an organization determines its capacity. Business owners or executives sometimes make the mistake of thinking that great employees make for great organizations, which is true – IF you have great leaders. Great employees won’t go to work for average or weak leaders. If they make that mistake, they usually don’t stay long.

Not to worry, however. When you need a dynamic and competent leader, you could just draw straws.