How to Determine the Level of Development Your Up-and-Coming Leaders Needs

You might be curious as to what these pictures and labels mean. It’s an easy way for you to determine the level of professional development your employees need. I want to give credit to @Stephanie Allen, a Fractional COO, who shared this with me - I've adapted it a bit. This exercise is a huge hit with my @Vistage audiences. Every time I have a group assess their leadership candidates, the conversations are very lively, and nine times out of 10, there will be more than a few individuals who will say, “Oh, I'm going to take this back and do this with my own group!”

So here's what you do when you're assessing individuals in your organization and determining what level of development they need. You're going to classify them as a line cook, a home chef, or a professional chef.

Let me expound.

✅ A line cook does a job? They flip the hamburgers, they're in charge of the fries, they do all the prep work, etc. They are a very good individual contributor. They know their job well, but that's all that they do. They're going to need to learn a lot of other skills in the kitchen; they will require the most development to get to the level of a professional chef.

✅ If you have a home chef, that’s a person who can do meal planning, follow a recipe, procure ingredients, and coordinate various tasks so that all the elements of the meal that require different prep times and cooking processes will be put on the table at the same time. A home cook may plan four or five days in advance, they can accommodate special requests if necessary, but they have a limited, project-based focus. They are quite a bit more skilled than the line chef but in a very defined “space.” They will need to expand and refine their current skills.

✅ Finally, we have the professional chef. A professional chef is a person who knows the front of the house, the back of the house, they can do procurement on a massive scale, they can give instruction to 14 different people because they know all of the positions, they generally know more than one cuisine, and have studied under multiple other chefs to expand their capabilities. It takes years to become a professional chef because of all the knowledge and skill required.  You can put a lot of faith in this level of employee, asking them to venture into areas in which they aren’t skilled, but because of their body of knowledge they’ll confidently figure it out.

So, now that you know the definitions, how do you execute this in your organization and why?

WHY - This is an easier way for managers to conceptualize performance reviews and,
HOW - using these three labels to determine what kind of development their folks need, and to what level.

✅ The individual contributor will benefit from a variety of professional development opportunities.

✅ The home chef has a lot of good skills but will need to bring them up a few levels. They’ll need to improve consistency, quality, variety, and perhaps begin to specialize (although my preference is to “grow” generalist business professionals, not specialists).

✅ And the professional chef should be utilized to coach and mentor the others. Capitalize on their extensive experience and knowledge to uplevel their younger/newer peers.