Building Leaders

New businesses fail for a myriad of reasons, usually because they run out of money before they reach critical mass, but other reasons include poor planning, poor management practices, and ill-conceived or over-aggressive expansion.

Many new businesses never reach their full potential – or even fail – simply because those who start the business fail to develop leadership within the company. In his book The E-Myth, Michael Gerber describes the decision that most entrepreneurs face – to work in the business or to work on the business. The difference is doing the everyday work of the business as opposed to actively planning the growth and development of the business. Most entrepreneurs will find it difficult, if not impossible, to do both.

Similar problems exist in organizations of any size. How can we continue to grow? Where will the talent come from? Most importantly: How will we develop new or additional leaders? Many businesses find themselves far too busy with the everyday details of business to adequately address the development of new leadership.

Question: Do you currently have a plan to develop new leadership within your organization?

Typically, new managers (leaders) are chosen based on knowledge, skill, or performance – in other words, for reasons that have nothing to do with managing people. Needing a new manager, an executive or business owner will often look around the department and choose an individual who knows more than the other employees, or has developed their skills more completely than the other employees (all things being equal, the next filter is tenure…makes sense, huh?). Sales departments are often the worst offenders. The company’s best salespeople are often tapped to become sales managers – on the basis of sales performance alone.

How about you? When you became a manager, were you chosen based on your ability to develop and lead people? Or were you chosen because of your performance, knowledge, or skills in the department?

It is not that knowledge, skills, and performance are unimportant to the success of a manager, it is that these areas – by themselves – do not create a great manager. Managers become responsible for people; therefore, they need to have (or acquire) skills in dealing with and leading people. These skills are almost never evaluated as a part of the process of hiring a new manager.

In this era of very low unemployment and a scarcity of talent, it is absolutely critical to develop strong leaders within your organization. Those companies that develop great leaders will attract and retain talent while those that fail to develop great leaders will watch as their talent pool slowly disengages and is attracted to companies with strong leaders.

Have you identified your next leaders?
Have they been trained to develop people?
If not, do you have a plan ready to provide that training?