Spotting the leaders of tomorrow
Sean Mills, client director at the Centre for High Performance Development (CHPD) looks at how to take the guesswork out of promotion and know how today has the potential to do a great job tomorrow.
There are lots of ways to assess whether someone is good at their job, but it’s much harder to know if they’ll be good at the next level up until they’ve actually done that job. Making the wrong choice can be costly. There are however, ways that you can identify who has the potential to be tomorrow’s leaders and then develop them accordingly.
The most effective way to determine a person’s leadership potential at the next level is to create an environment at that higher leadership level and then see if the individual demonstrates the capability to lead effectively. This can be done through an assessment centre. Such an objective approach not only gives an accurate picture of their potential, but will also highlight areas for development.
While assuming that your potential leaders are technically capable of doing the job, there are key leadership behaviours that will demonstrate superior performance. The people that demonstrate these behaviours have the most potential to succeed at a higher management level.
These leadership behaviours can be split into four clusters: thinking, developmental, inspirational and achieving and all can be learnt.
Thinking cluster
The three behaviours in this cluster are crucial to strategy formation, planning and the ability to see the '‘bigger picture’. Whilst they make the highest contribution to performance they are often the least developed and least valued in organisations. When these are not well developed, organisations are constantly fire-fighting, the workforce is often confronted with many un-coordinated initiatives and lack of information leaves the organisation’s strategy vulnerable.
Developmental cluster
This cluster of behaviours is relevant to flat, flexible, team-based structures which have to integrate with other teams. They improve the performance of people through development of their skills and creation of an atmosphere of learning. When these behaviours are not well developed, an organisation can become fragmented and less than the sum of its parts. For an organisation which relies on the quality of its people, under-development of this cluster represents an absolute limit to its growth.
Inspirational cluster
The behaviours in this cluster relate particularly to building confidence and excitement throughout the team and are crucial to achieve ‘buy in’ to ideas. In a crisis where decisions are required quickly, these behaviours create an atmosphere of confidence within the team. Without these behaviours you will see confusion, pessimism, lack of resources and direction.
Achieving cluster
These behaviours make things happen and break through bureaucracy. They ensure that tasks are structured and that plans and ideas are implemented. They give people responsibility and encourage continuous attention to improving the performance of all aspects of the team. If this cluster is not well developed there may be a lot of talk and little action, a lack of empowerment and too much focus on non value-added activities.
These clusters of High Performance Behaviours are not innate characteristics – in other words something you are born with – but, learned behaviours. With in-depth assessment, strengths and weaknesses can be identified and following on from that, development plans can be agreed.
All potential leaders should have strengths in some of these behaviours, however no one will be strong in everything. The important thing is to understand which behaviours are key for your organisation’s future success and then match the potential leaders’ capability to the organisation’s needs.
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