Donna Karlin, an executive coach officing in Ottawa, Canada, recently posted on FastCompany about Leaders and who corporations promote into leadership positions. http://blog.fastcompany.com/experts/
(Are Leaders Made, Born, or Appointed?).
Here is my take: three types of leaders move up in organizations:
1. The ‘technical’ expert. Theory: if you’re good at, say, customer service, then logic says eventually you should manage a team of customer service people. Reality: leading people requires a dramatically different skillset than an individual contributor role - not everyone makes this transition. Action: make sure you have good transition/training programs and a mentor when giving these people leadership roles.
2. The ‘get it done’ expert. Theory: if someone accomplishes all the goals a company gives them: financial, operational, project management, etc., then they’re good at leading people. Reality: are these leaders measured on ethics, stemming turn-over of their high potential employees, promoting their best people (net exporter of talent) replacing their disengaged employees? Do people want to work for/with this leader? These skills are equally important. Action: behavior skills assessment and training.
3. The ‘promoter’ expert. Theory: if people like you enough, they’ll follow you anywhere. Reality: one cliff at a time. Charisma helps, but if you can’t connect with those you’re leading to accomplish the goals of the company, nobody wins. Action: great change agents; may need a strong ’second’ to get goals accomplished.
The other critical leadership factor for companies is to ensure they are giving their people the right goals, because with great leadership and teams, they just might accomplish them!
Joe Raasch :: Jan.04.2007 ::
Leadership ::
3 Comments »