 GROWING
LEADERS.
By Steve Yearout, Getty Miles with Richard Koonce, 2001,
Published by: American Society For Training and Development.
269 Pages
Rating 7.
There is no doubt that this book should be required reading for
executives who fail to grasp the essential connection between employee
development and the success of an organisation. The main benefit
of this book is to give a systematic approach to identifying and
grooming future leaders.
Leadership is among the most elusive of human qualities - hard
to describe, but instantly recognisable. In his final letter to
G.E. shareholders after 20 years at the helm, Jack Welch identified
the cardinal sin of leadership as losing one of your top 20% performers.
The fact is, high performers are your future leaders, he wrote,
"the ones who make magic happen." Leadership is no longer
a solo routine. Today's businesses need a team leadership approach.
The authors point out that building communities of leadership at
every level within your organisation has become a critical task
for organisational success.
The very best organisations, systematically build leaders at all
levels, not just in the executives suite. These organisations are
committed to leadership development and to recruiting, training
and grooming leaders. They have deep pools of potential leaders
and pipelines to continuously attract new talent.
The authors identified seven great leadership challenges. Diagnosing
the health of your company's leadership community is a critical
step in ensuring long-term success in today's fast-changing markets.
Is your company struggling with the Seven Great Leadership challenges?
They are:
- Weak organisational vision.
- Inconsistent leadership behaviour.
- Insufficient talent or an unreliable pipeline.
- Obsolete management competencies.
- Poor alignment of business units to company goals.
- Lack of executive unity and teamwork.
- An inability to manage change effectively.
The fact is that management is different from leadership. A successful
leadership development programme must address the shortcomings that
prevent many managers from becoming leaders. These are:
- They lack the ability to articulate an energetic vision.
- They neglect the empowerment of subordinates.
- They fail to understand their team. They don't get to know
them as individuals, or understand their strengths and weaknesses
as an interdependent group.
- They lack social adroitness.
- They suffer from a lack of integrity and character.
- They mismanage people and cannot sustain a team enterprise.
- They are control freaks who try to direct individual behaviours.
- They fail to apply the people skills that they already
possess.
The authors point out that in order to attract and groom leaders,
you must follow these eight steps to build an effective leadership
programme:
- Define leadership: determine what competencies are needed and
how to acquire them.
- Select the educational approach (personal growth, conceptual,
skill building) that fit your company's Leadership Coaching Development
needs.
- Choosing training programmes that support your company's Leadership
Coaching Development programmes.
- Encourage your leaders to develop other leaders.
- Encourage and promote a mentoring programme.
- Assign leaders to the jobs that need to be done.
- Grow the leaders of tomorrow. Give people the latitude to take
risks and try again if it doesn't work out. Prospective leaders
need diverse management experience.
- Establish the guidelines that will be used for evaluating leadership.
These are all very sound suggestions. It is hard to come across
companies with a dearth of leaders. So, any attempt to help corporations
build leadership in a systematic way is to be commended. This book
is well worth a read for any executives, owner managers or entrepreneurs.
I would give this book a rating of 7.
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