Accelerating The "Safe Path" Of Leadership Development

The best guide to improving leadership performance dates back to 1500. Milo (Milo of Croton) was the most famous wrestler in ancient Greece in the sixth Century. In its Occupation In his career, he participated in the 6 Olympic Games, the 7 Pythian Games, and other Greek national competitions, winning 32 wrestling championships. His method of training is to carry a calf on his shoulders every day, from the time he was born, until he was born into a bull, then carried it through the Olympic arena valiantly.

Milo was not only born with divine power, but also intelligent. He realized that if he wanted to be physically strong (similar to strengthening management and Leadership), he had to make plans, arrange time, and accumulate goals step by step.

Milo has two advantages: on the one hand, he is a unique athletic athlete and has the power and potential to become a wrestling master. On the other hand, he has developed a training program equipped with tools and experience (anti bull training) to help him achieve his legendary career.

The same principle applies to today's leaders in improving leadership performance. In the light of our experience in Korn/Ferry and the study of leadership development (LD), we will make recommendations on the development of leaders' mistakes and the best practices that should be adopted in order to achieve the best results.

Two cases that should be taken as warning

Let's take a look at two cases that need warning.

Case 1: Monica, a technology company in the middle of a billion dollar annual sales, is recognized as the second in command (Monica). She is considered to be a key figure in promoting the acquisition strategy and doubling the company's revenue in 5 years. The Board considers her to be the candidate to take over CEO in an emergency. If growth strategy is to succeed, the company must establish a new salary system, recruit top talents, and ensure that leadership development becomes a core competitiveness. But the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) is not competent enough, so CEO hopes to find someone he trusts to shoulder the heavy responsibility.

In the end, he chose Monica, but she had no experience in the field of human resources, but achieved some results by "making mistakes". From the perspective of development, Monica should have accumulated business achievements and win the trust of the board of directors. For this reason, she should bear the responsibility of profit and loss, but now she has deviated from this direction. Her goal of achieving her goals will determine about half of the company's success, and she will be farther away from the career path leading to the future CEO. Can Monica succeed? Yes, maybe, but she has to take a big risk. Her career development and company succession plan may deviate from the right track. Main point: CEO should consider not only the short-term expediency of the organization, but also the long-term best interests. There should be enough room for learning and development for the development objects, but not enough for them to slack off and destroy their future.

Case 2: this case emphasizes the importance of time or duration of development. In a large scale company Mike (Mike) proved himself to be a mature leader and an efficient team builder, so he was classified as a high potential training object. In the face of paralysis in the IT sector, he applied his leadership skills in accordance with the company's requirements, and in less than 1 years the Department was renewed. The company should commend Mike for his success, reassign his development tasks and hand over IT work to a visionary technical leader. However, the company's "reward" for him is to continue to serve as Chief Information Officer (CIO), making technology a competitive weapon in the market, but he has neither foresight nor IT skills.

Two years later, the original hero became a disaster for people. The digital revolution has changed the whole market, but the company has fallen behind this revolution and his reputation has plummeted. Ironically, the company's initial transfer of Mike to the IT sector is at a low risk because he clearly has the management and leadership skills needed to reverse the decline. But when his role transforms from a short-term firefighter to a longtime technological dreamer, his advantage is useless. In this case, the executive probably deviated from the successful career path, and at the same time, the organization also lost a valuable high potential leader.

　 Security path

Fortunately, we can take the following 5 steps to avoid these scenes that ruin personal careers, threaten company leadership and succession plans.

1. pay attention to stars.

Every organization has performance stars or high potential talents. They are the future leaders of the company. Some leading companies have established a comprehensive talent assessment and selection system, and established parallel processes based on the strategy to decide the skills needed to guide the company's future development. More and more evidences (including improvements in business performance and increase in profits) indicate that quantitative and non qualitative assessment of leadership potential should be conducted. In addition, we believe that this approach is more equitable for all people, including those who have not been selected, so that perhaps some of the managerial talents who are capable and highly valued, but may not be regarded as future leaders, will lose less.

　 2. first evaluate learning acuity.

To evaluate the key talents of a company, we must first examine their learning acumen. People with high alertness are open minded, willing to learn, curious about the world, willing to experience new things, and have excellent interpersonal skills to tolerate different opinions. Our research and practice in Guanghui international have strengthened the importance of learning acuity. It is believed that it can identify high potential leaders accurately and reliably predict senior executives' success than traditional indicators such as intelligence quotient, EQ or educational background. There are only 15% employees with high learning sensitivity. Therefore, the company must be good at identifying and cultivating these talents in order to cope with the changing needs of the global market and establish a reserve echelon of leaders.

　 3. development on demand.

The acceleration of leadership development is a very personal and very human process. In the end, two goals should be achieved at the same time: 1) ensure that the key leadership positions in the future are all the most competent executives; 2) help the development objects to achieve personal aspirations and career goals. These two objectives are indispensable and necessary for each other.

The development of any executive must raise the following questions: what is the future of the company to deal with? What direction should the company go in? What kind of leaders will we need? In addition, this process must be rooted in the hopes and dreams of the development objects. What are their prospects for the future? What are the motivating factors? What are their abilities and what goals do they want to achieve?

4. draw up development maps.

Develop development plans that meet the strategic needs of both organizations and individuals, so as to develop relevant working skills and macro management skills. To develop a plan for accelerating leadership development, first of all, we must have the goals agreed by both sides, and then conduct regular consultations and feedback to assess progress. Leaders should allow and encourage them to take risks and learn from them when undertaking malleable tasks.

5., strengthen leadership.

In terms of weight lifting training, speeding up leadership development should include 4 factors: 1) overweight: breaking the boundaries of habit, stretching muscles (new development experience and challenges arising therefrom); 2) gradual progress: increasing strength in a safe and regular way so as to avoid stagnation and ensuring progress; 3) specific: setting specific targets for training, regular assessment of progress; 4) rest and recovery: leaving time for growth and change of physical or intellectual muscles.

Even the best leadership development acceleration plan is unlikely to get instant results. Its emphasis should be on security development, including providing appropriate advice and counselling, making good preparations for future leaders, not letting them fail, or being publicly derogated or humiliated.

If the company takes the high potential talents who have great hopes of becoming successors to pull away from the necessary development path, the efforts they will make for the succession of managerial positions will be destroyed. Successful succession is not only a state of mind, but also a process. The key is to train leaders from generation to generation, not just to find a person to meet immediate needs.

Your leader Where is the position in the continuum of challenges, risks and opportunities? Do you make the right trade-offs, strike a balance between speeding up the development and inspiring potential talents who are likely to succeed in development tasks? Are you developing the most competent leaders to lead the company in the future?