GROWING PEOPLE

How Organisations Can Groom the Leaders of Tomorrow

Are you and your organization growing leaders who are capable of filling key positions and leading your company forward in sustainable growth?

Whether it is in the public or private sector, there seems to be a leadership shortage, if not crisis. Many organizations are often over-managed and under-led. They have more managers than leaders, and are often preoccupied with improving business processes and growing profits than with grooming people.

Their employees are often seen as means to an end, for example, to grow the company’s profits – and not as ends in themselves. Such organizations tend to forget that building people is the key to building flourishing companies.

Many organizations and their leaders will pay lip service to the importance of building people. Ask their human resource personnel and they will proudly say that their organizations do send their people to attend leadership development programmes.

These programmes typically last from two to five days, are facilitated by external training consultants who charge high fees, and cost the organization several thousand dollars per headcount.

But before, during and after such programmes, the participants’ managers and their human resource departments are hardly involved in their training. The participants are also seldom required to demonstrate what they have learned in their work, let alone account for the return of investment to their organization as a result of their training.

The million-dollar question is: Can leaders be effectively produced in a matter of days by such programmes?

Ask these organizations’ leaders if they invest time in personally developing others, and one is likely to hear, “I believe in developing people personally but I simply do not have the time.”

These leaders may be simply too busy to invest time in developing others. But could there be other reasons, like the fear of losing control and that emerging leaders may threaten their position, power, prestige, profits, the status quo, or established traditions?

Whatever the reasons may be, it is worth noting the following three points.

PROGRAMMES DO NOT PRODUCE LEADERS

During a leadership development programme, participants learn about communication, empowerment and delegation, trust and credibility, decision-making and problem-solving, and more.

What they gain from the programme is a broad-based knowledge of the leadership skills-set they will need to lead themselves, their team and the organization. But learning about leadership does not mean that they have become leaders!

In addition to training programmes, what these participants will need is a robust and intentional leadership development process to track their growth. They will also need their own leaders to believe in them enough to mentor and coach them, give them practical experience and exposure, allow them to learn from failures, and share leadership lessons with them!

IT TAKES LEADERS TO GROW LEADERS

There is nothing like one leader’s life touching, impacting and transforming the life of an emerging leader!

Learning about leadership from a classroom or books is helpful. But what is invaluable is learning from an experienced leader who has been there and done that, and can show the leadership ropes, provide guidance, insights and practical wisdom, and knows how to develop a person’s strengths and capabilities to help him or her succeed as a leader.

In today’s world where the leadership crisis is a global crisis, it should be a leader’s critical responsibility to produce the next generation of leaders who can succeed him or her to bring the company forward.

Good leaders serve their organizations not only by providing good leadership, but also by providing good leaders with impeccable character, proven competence, and unquestionable commitment to the organization and to developing people!

SUCCESS WITHOUT SUCCESSION IS NOT SUCCESS

Years ago, leadership and management consultant Robert A. Orr made the thought-provoking remark: “Perceived success without successful successive successors is a failure.” How should a leader’s legacy be remembered and celebrated?

By the millions or billions he or she made? By the number of employees he or she made into millionaires? By how the company’s return on equity increased or how happy shareholders are? Important as these are, what is more important is the succession of leaders a leader leaves behind him or her for the organization, because in grooming leaders, he or she continues to build the company.

A leader committed to growing people and leaders deserves to be followed and will attract employees of the best caliber!

(This article was originally published in The Straits Times, March 19, 2016.)