You Can be Great If You Really Want To

The demand for leadership talent greatly exceeds supply. If economic growth continues at a modest 2 percent for the next 15 years, there would be a need for one-third more senior leaders than there are today. Who will replace your retiring executives, and how will you keep your company’s leadership pipeline full?

The demand for leadership talent greatly exceeds supply. If economic growth continues at a modest 2 percent for the next 15 years, there would be a need for one-third more senior leaders than there are today.

Baby boomers have already started to retire. Most large companies will have to scramble to meet gaps in senior leadership talent. Who will replace your retiring executives, and how will you keep your company’s leadership pipeline full?

To make matters worse, the global and more dynamic economy of the 21st century requires executive talent with a more complex skill set:

* Greater technological literacy
* A sophisticated understanding of global marketplaces
* Multicultural fluency
* Relationship savvy, with extensive networks of alliances and stakeholders
* Leadership skills over a delayered, disaggregated and virtual organization

Succession Planning in the 21st Century

In response to these challenges, organizations have a renewed interest in succession planning systems. While these systems functioned merely as replacement charts in the past, and were HR executives’ function, there are two critical differences today, emphasizing:

1. Leadership development at all levels (not just senior executives)

2. Responsibility and involvement for leadership development within the work group, with the person’s manager and team members (and no longer an HR function)

Distinct Leadership Levels

Most development models fail to consider leadership requirements at all levels. As a person is promoted from line manager to business manager to functional manager, skills and requirements change.

Companies mistakenly focus on leadership traits, styles and technical competence. They commit a major error when promoting successful individuals without acknowledging required skill set differences at different levels of leadership responsibilities.

The Leadership Pipeline

Hiring gifted people makes sense as a tactic, but not a strategy. Companies need to build leaders, not buy them. Research and experience demonstrate that potential is not fixed.
The more people achieve, the more they learn. Their willingness to tackle new challenges increases. To capitalize on potential, companies must define the true work requirements at each key leadership level. Succession planning systems must spell out what’s needed to make a successful transition from one layer of leadership responsibility to the next.

Succession Planning to Fill the Pipeline

The following five-step plan will facilitate succession planning:

1. Tailor a leadership pipeline model to fit your organization’s succession needs.
2. Clarify standards for performance and potential, in your own language.
3. Document and communicate these standards throughout the organization.
4. Evaluate succession candidates through a combined potential-performance matrix.
5. Review plans and progress of the entire pipeline frequently and seriously.

The economic slump is likely to affect businesses with a recession in the horizon. Because of this, businesses are rethinking operations to provide quality services and products while lessening the volume of workers.

Human resource and development centers like the Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness (CMOE) have training options that reflect the actual requirements of professionals in different work situations, assisting to improve their careers and aiding promising leaders to:

* Understand their functions’ significance in the system.

* Enhance trust within the culture.

* Maximize communication channels.

* Build up weaknesses and make excellent application of strengths.

* Understanding the various kinds of leadership and appreciating them.

The ultimate goal of the training is to develop practical leaders who are abreast with the trends and privy to the changes around them and in the corporate world.

The Organization’s Need for Leaders

Businesses require CEOs who embody the dynamics of the business in terms of behavioral competencies. In the organization, potential leaders are built up with regards to what they can do in terms of team management and decision-making. Thus, the emphasis is no longer on individual leadership, but instead on developing leadership skills to distribute tasks.

Regardless of how leadership is defined, organizations look at leadership as the driving force that would place the business well-established in the industry and a step ahead of competition. Towards sustainability and profitability is the course leaders are meant to provide for the business.

Emphasizing too much on preparing individuals for leadership positions will lead to failure, unless the organization creates a positive stance on developing leadership skills. This is the main goal of any organization – using leadership development in all circumstances of the workplace.

Creating Leaders in Businesses

As categorized by Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Professor David Perkins, the following are the primary leadership roles:

* The Exemplar – the role model.

* The Gatekeeper – makes decisions on the movement of personnel, from promotions to exclusions.

* The Visionary – leads the organization towards new channels.

* The Fixer – solves problems effectively and creatively.

* The Truth-teller – keeps the integrity of the organization.

* The Enforcer – makes sure that rules and standards are enforced.

* The Connector – can tap connections and pinpoint potential leads.

Organizations are attempting to uphold standards and do more with less resources and manpower with the economic difficulties ahead. This leads to the search for leaders who are realistic and practical, but are also aware of the organization’s future needs.

Whatever your organization requirements, there is a CMOE training option that is suited to developing leaders, assisting them do what they do best.

There are so many communication and organization tools available today. Which ones do you use? When it comes to this type of programs most users think about email, instant messenger, a scheduler and internet telephony with Skype.

It can be a hard task to add all different data, like appointments, notes, tasks and contacts into a single tool and don’t lose the overview. This often results into several tools, one for its own type of data. This way of organization may result in a higher level of confusion. When your different tools aren’t synced with each other, you need to ask yourself which program is holding the information you currently need.

The answer is clear: yes and no. It’s depending on which tools you’re using and how adequate they are supporting you with your daily organization. Ask yourself: “How long does it take to find a contact’s email or phone number?” “How difficult is it to find a free time slot for a new meeting?” There are quite a lot of users, which still use MS Excel for planning and organization. When you’re belonging to the ones who use Excel for daily organization you should rethink your workflow process and start using tools which have been developed fort the organization (Excel is good when it comes to calculating, but not for organization).

There are a lot of free and commercial tools available which only have been created to make your workflow smarter and support you with your daily work. These applications are called Personal Information Managers (PIMs) and will put your organization on a new level.

PIMs consist of an email client, an appointment, a task, contact and note manager, offer a rich set of functions especially for communication and planning. Think about a scheduler which can be synced with others and that shows you with one click when several users have time for a new meeting. Think about a contact manager with search and filter options that let you initiate a chat or Skype session with just a few clicks. Sounds good? Then take a look on the available PIMs and give it a try. The most known PIM is MS Outlook, but there are some alternatives to it like Pimero, iCal or Lotus Organizer.

Gerard Schwabe is senior project manager at soft-evolution, an innovative provider of team management software Pimero.