Step One in Your Succession Plan
When I work with clients or even when I am speaking at an event, I always incorporate an activity where I ask people to name things that they think leaders need to possess or demonstrate and ask them, What does a leadership skill look like?
Typical responses are...
* They have emotional intelligence.
* They are open-minded and willing to change.
* They have a growth mindset.
* They are charismatic and have influence.
* They are people focused.
* They are selfless.
Then I ask the audience to take a mental step back and look at that list overall and see if they see a theme or a label that they can give it.
Inevitably, there is an a-ha light bulb that goes off and they say, “These are all characteristics or behaviors.” These are not skills. So why are we always hearing in the popular press, in advertisements, in marketing that you must teach your folks leadership skills when really the ‘skills’ are behaviors?
We know a ‘leader’ because of his or her behavior. One of my favorites to bring up for discussion is “A leader is ethical.” When do we ever teach somebody to be ethical? How do you teach someone to be ethical? Across the board we expect a leader to demonstrate that they have ethics, but we never really define it or teach it to them.
That is step one in your succession planning.
First and foremost, you must define what a leadership characteristic or behavior looks like in your organization. The last part -in your organization- is the important part because every organization has a different style and culture, not to mention different stakeholders with their expectations. Ethics in a healthcare organization is going to have a little different flavor than ethics in a manufacturing organization or in a broadcasting organization.
So step one is to be very purposeful about defining how leaders in your organization behave so that you A) can start teaching it or B) know what you are screening/interviewing for if you must hire people from outside to fill leadership roles. Having a defined set of leadership behaviors (think of it as a leadership avatar) gives you peace of mind in knowing that you are hiring people who will align with the values and the culture of your organization.
Having a defined set of leadership behaviors (think of it as a leadership avatar) gives you peace of mind in knowing that you are hiring people who will align with the values and the culture of your organization.
One last thing to consider: The thing about behaviors is that you really cannot teach them. We develop behaviors based on experiences or belief systems or reflecting on things that have happened to us, that shape us into who we are.
You can see -just looking around you in society- that not everybody demonstrates the same behaviors. So please begin your succession planning by defining what leadership behavior in your organization looks like, so that you can train to or hire it from the outside if you need to.
Does your organization have a clearly defined set of leadership behaviors (most don’t)?
This article was originally published on LinkedIn
Why We Have to Start Leadership Development at Day One
“The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations.”
This statement was uttered by a financial planner who was counseling customers to understand what the fundamentals of their stock purchase were – what attracted them to the company… were they in it for the long term or short term…. at what price point would they believe it was wise to sell the stock….
Here’s how we relate the quote: “The more decisions we make ahead of time – the less decisions we have to make in high-stress situations” to leadership…
In today’s business environment, we are under the gun all the time. Things are in constant flux … and we can never count on tomorrow being the same as today. Therefore a lot of decisions are made on the fly. Which may not be based on your company’s values or principles – and which may actually hurt your business or your reputation.
Look at what happened at Wells Fargo. Somewhere along the line, someone in a leadership position decided it was OK to commit fraud in order to make sales quotas. To hell with ethics. To hell with serving the customer responsibly.
What if – long before that high-stress situation in which they made that decision – they already had a fundamental belief or value, that ethical behavior was of utmost importance?
How or when would they have had to develop that belief system?
Early on in their career – when they were not in a high-stress situation and when they were not in a position of authority. If they had that fundamental belief system early on – it would simply carry with them – through their career.
Here are two analogies to further make our point:
The “first job” analogy. Many of us continue to practice behaviors or hold fundamental beliefs that we learned through our first jobs. Think about that for a minute.
What was your first job and do you find yourself operating today – in a way that you learned decades ago from a manager or a leader who said “this is how we do things.” We might dress a certain way, address customers a certain way, define “quality,” a certain way… all based on learning those principles in our first jobs.
So – why don’t we teach leadership skills and behaviors to your employees at the START of their careers? Why do we wait decades and then have to undo basic principles or value systems that they hold? Teach them what your company values and what is acceptable leadership behavior – from the get-go; even before they become leaders.
And even if they don’t become leaders – you still have a BUNCH of people who are operating under the same principles and with the same understanding of your business values and how they should conduct themselves accordingly.
Which brings us to our 2nd analogy: Baby manners.
Right around the same time that your baby learns to talk – you start teaching manners. Do they know what manners are? No. Are you going to wait until they UNDERSTAND what manners are before you teach them? No. Do you have to EXPLAIN why what you are telling them is appropriate behavior? No.
You say: Say goodbye to Grandma! And you say it over and over until, as the child gets older, they are able to independently say “hello” and “goodbye” to people they encounter.
Which is good manners.
You say: Don’t hit the dog! Don’t hit your sibling! And you say it for 7, 8, 10 years! until eventually, as your child gets older, they recognize that that is not an appropriate behavior; and most of us grow up to be people who don’t smack the crap out of one another.
You teach your children to speak politely, to share with others, to be cognizant of other’s feelings and many, many more fundamental principles of being a responsible human. And you start teaching those principles even before they know what they mean or why they should or should not behave that way.
You start to teach those things even before they are verbal.
So why are we not teaching leadership skills to everyone who walks in our doors? Why are we reserving that knowledge for a ‘select few’ … and why are we waiting so late to start?
This is the foundation of Leadership From Day One.
If you teach EVERYONE to be a better communicator, to work cooperatively with others, to understand that they contribute to the greater good of the organization – and at some level are fundamentally responsible for it – to behave in an ethical manner…. The list goes on and on of things that we consider “leadership skills,” which really aren’t.
They are the basic, fundamental manners of being a worker in a business and YOU – as their leader – business owner, director of operations, GM, department head… are responsible for teaching them that.
Think of how differently your company would be operating – and how confident you would be in your employees and your organizational capabilities – if you knew that everyone operated in the same way and embraced the same principles and values.
Help them to make the right decisions, early in their career.
We can help you do that.
Helping Small and Medium-sized Businesses to Prepare for the Next-Era of Leadership
Free 4-day Event
Every business - small to supersized - has changed significantly since the start of 2020.
Leadership teams are turned upside down.
Companies are being forced to downsize, right-size, and sometimes capsize.
Your company’s future depends on having strong a leadership plan in place as you adapt to the workforce that lies ahead.
We are here to help, with a series of leadership conversations. All FREE.
Meet with fellow business people, hear from experts with long tenures in developing organizational leaders, ask the questions you need answered.
Check out our roster of speakers
Patricia Carl
June 3 3:00 pm EST
Re-imagining / Redesigning Your Leadership Team
Patricia Carl has 20+ years’ experience in Human Resource leadership for both private and public companies, across multiple industries. As President of Highland Performance Solutions, she coaches and consults with executives in order to help them build high-performing teams.
Lee Eisenstaedt
June 10 3:00 pm EST
What Skills Are Needed in the Next 3 - 5 Years?
Lee has been the Chief Operating Officer of a number of top companies included 22 years with the SC Johnson family of companies in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Lee has authored four books, co-authored one, and is a frequent contributor to Forbes.com
Jeff Harmon
June 17 3:00 pm EST
The 5C Method to Create Sustainable and Scalable Leadership Development
Jeff Harmon has over 20 years of experience building relationships to equip and mobilize leaders to achieve their most important goals.
He helps company leaders to identify their strengths as well as the strengths of their team.
He is the author of “Become a Better Leader, 10 Minutes at a Time.”
Nanette Miner, Ed.D.
June 24 3:00 pm EST
Creating a Master Plan for Leadership Development
Dr. Nanette Miner founded The Training Doctor in 1991 to help organizations to grow and thrive by a developing worker capabilities. She is on a mission to help organizations to sustain their success through developing their future leaders from the moment they walk in the door.
It's Time for All Hands on Deck
Many companies are going to find themselves with a different leadership landscape when business is able to resume and employees are able to return to work.
In addition to the usual pressures of competition and the relentless pace of technology, I predict that many companies are going to experience a shift in their leadership roster either because the Boomers (and some GenX), who were close to retirement decided “enough is enough,” and choose not to come back to work after the Covid-19 crisis, or because organizations will have to greatly reduce their workforces as they come back online, and the easiest way to downsize and remain solvent is to not bring back the more experienced, higher-salaried personnel.
So what can an organization do to identify its future leaders and successfully return to profitability?
Identify Successors
If your organization faces the situation where senior leaders choose to retire, ask those individuals to identify their replacements. They will have the most knowledge regarding who on their team is capable of taking the reins. It’s a good idea to also ask the self-selected retiree if they would come back for three or four months to ease the transition.
If you are choosing to let the senior leader go, again, ask them who on their team would be most capable of stepping up. Also ask them for the top three to five priorities for their department, at this time. This will enable you to pass this knowledge on to the next leader and also allow you to keep track of the priorities yourself.
Begin Mentoring
The best-case-scenario would have been for your company to utilize mentoring already, but if that is not the case, begin a mentoring program immediately. You need a way to transmit institutional knowledge as well as business acumen from more seasoned workers to the younger ones, and the best way to do that is through personal relationships that can adapt immediately to changing pressures.
Circulate a Skills Assessment
Now is the time for all-hands-on-deck; trouble is, most organizations have become so silo’d that they don’t know what individuals are capable of doing (vs. what they are being paid to do, today). Start with a simple survey using Google forms or a subscription survey tool, if your company has one. You’ll want to be able to collect individual responses – not aggregate responses. Ask for name, email, phone number, department, current role (e.g. marketing / graphic designer), and the top 5 skills (fill in the blank) they use in their current role. THEN ask them for 5 additional skills they are capable of deploying. You may find your graphic designer is also great at copy editing or has experience in SEO. To really get the most from this assessment, also ask each individual what soft skills they excel at – because leadership capability is heavily dependent on soft-skills.
If your company comes back online with a reduced workforce, this assessment will enable you to move people around, if necessary, rather than simply eliminating a role based on its title.
This article is admittedly practical and how-to. It does not venture into the best ways to have these conversations or the need for empathy and compassion at this time. It is purely focused on the organization as an entity.
Leadership Pipeline Assessment
If you’d like to assess what your organization’s current leadership pipeline looks like (and indicates for your future) click on the Leadership Pipeline Assessment, at the top of the screen, in the blue bar. It contains 13 questions and will only take about a minute to complete.