Developing Leaders

November 2009

Less than 2 years ago, in-demand leadership and talent development executives commanded mid-six figure salaries. Fast forward to 2009, and more companies are shedding these experts than adding them. But numbers don't lie; demographic trends will force a talent shortage on our industry later if not sooner.

by Corbette Doyle and Neta Moye, Ph.D.

What's a company, a manager, or an aspiring leader to do if cost constraints have eliminated hard dollar investments for developing the next generation of leaders? Some of the most valuable strategies, such as apprenticing, stretch assignments, and mentoring, may involve minimal out-of-pocket costs.

Succession Planning—Mind the Gap

The first and most important step toward maximizing your return on investments in development activities is to start with the end in mind. What gaps are you trying to fill? These could be specific gaps in your leadership pipeline—like do you have an adequate bench to backfill should a key leader step down or exit? Or a gap could reveal itself as lackluster organizational performance, indicating that your leaders may not have the skills it takes to keep you competitive in today's market, or better yet, tomorrow's.

To help identify your gaps, you can conduct a relatively straightforward gap analysis. Starting this process requires identifying those leader competencies key to your organization's success, assessing your leader talent along these competencies, and then determining specific developmental needs. By starting with a clear definition of the specific gaps—leader by leader—you are able to identify the optimal development activities for each position and individual.

Stretch Assignments—Opportunities To Develop Are Closer (and Cheaper) Than You Might Think

You may be surprised to know that the lowest cost developmental solution is also the most effective. What researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership found, and what has been substantiated time and again in subsequent studies, is that 70 percent of development happens from the work we do: on-the-job experiences, stretch assignments, new roles, and new tasks. Another 20 percent of development comes from the actions of others—a mentor, a coach, observing a role model. It is only 10 percent that comes from formal classroom education or reading. It is important to learn fundamentals and frameworks from a classroom setting, but it is only when we put that learning to the test that we truly stretch, grow, and begin to adopt new behaviors.

While this may seem like good news ("Hey, I work every day; I must be developing every day!"), not all work is created equal when it comes to helping us develop and grow. Some interesting research by M.W. McCall and his colleagues¹ uncovered five characteristics or work that generate the most developmental heat:

Unfamiliar responsibilities
Creating change
High levels of responsibility
Working across boundaries
Managing a diverse group

Heat is a great word to capture the underlying theme behind these characteristics. Just as heat makes us sweat, generates some stress, and really makes us search for a solution to help us cool off or seek safety, assignments with developmental heat get us out of our comfort zone, make us uncomfortable, and have consequences that are real and meaningful (safety or survival).

There is one caveat to this good news about the developmental power of work itself—it is not just the developmental experience itself, but what you learn from it that will help you grow and develop. Experience, without support for carefully gleaning lessons learned, can be a bad teacher. This means you need to consider how to provide support to developing leaders to help them translate their experiences into core lessons to take to the next situation. Both apprenticeships and mentoring are good tools to help convert experiences into leader development.

Apprenticing—Did Lloyd's Have It Right All Along?

Knowledge is experience. Everything else is just information. ~Albert Einstein

What happens when you have an individual ready to stretch their wings, but no stretch assignment for them to step into? Give them a chance to learn by doing, an approach, research² shows is the most effective way for adults to learn (it's also the preferred Gen Y approach). Most often, this involves the opportunity to support an expert in a function where the gap analysis has identified a need. At Lloyd's, it often involved a 17-year-old future underwriter carrying "the books," doing research, and attending meetings as the note taker. This is not, as it turns out, a bad way to learn. Management guru Ram Charon thinks it's the only way to learn.³

Think through identified knowledge or skill gaps and then assign leaders-in-training to spend time shadowing or supporting an expert. Combine a little developmental heat by having them shadow in a product line or function they know virtually nothing about. The best leaders understand the whole organization. Apprenticing and shadowing, in addition to building critical skills, can also minimize the frustrations of talented individuals anxious for the next stretch opportunity. Or you can combine both, as one Australian insurance company does, by using apprenticing to fill maternity leave-induced gaps. The next person in the succession-planning pipeline temporarily filled the gap, and that person's designated successor filled his or hers, thus providing apprenticing opportunities to two individuals at once.

Mentoring—The Gift That Keeps on Giving

While stretch assignments and learning by doing can be invaluable, not everyone gleans the knowledge nuggets on their own. Some need an Obi-Wan—or a mentor—to point out the value of a particularly frustrating assignment, including those deemed a "failure." Some need a knowledgeable mentor to help determine what the next step up the ladder is or how to seek out apprenticing opportunities to skill build. Only firms with the most evolved human capital strategy are sophisticated enough to identify all the talent pushing and pulling needed to keep high potential talent focused, energized, and committed. Most need a cadre of mentors to maximize talent development.

While informal mentor matches, where individuals find one another through common interest and chemistry, are more successful than corporate efforts to assign matches, technology now enables a mentor-match.com hybrid. Some organizations develop their own software, while others use cost-effective, Web-enabled solutions, like Triple Creek's Open Mentoring that allows individuals to find willing mentors who are strong in the competencies they need to develop and where there appears to be common ground for building effective interpersonal chemistry. A future column will explore how to find a mentor if you don't have access to a formal program and strategies to maximize your role as a mentor or protégé.

Conclusion

By assessing performance gaps, fast-tracking development through apprenticing and/or stretch assignments, and garnering support via feedback and mentoring, you can enhance your own leadership development or that of the individuals in your employ. The highest performing organizations make this a continuous cycle of learning for individuals and business units. In the next column, we will discuss learning agility.

Neta Moye is Faculty Director of Leadership Development Programs, Clinical Professor of Management, at the Owen Graduate School of Management.

¹M.W. McCall, M.M. Lombardo, and A.M. Morrison, The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988).
²Judy O'Neil and Victoria Marsick, Understanding Action Learning: Theory Into Practice, (New York: AMACOM, 2007).
³Ram Charan, Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

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