Emerging Leaders
Companies work hard to recruit the best subject matter and technical experts.
What about their people leaders?
You are a leader in your company and there is a vacant position: the lead of one of your teams has departed, and the work this team has on their plate is critical.
You sigh. Recruiting requires precious time no one has and the team will be working hard to cover the gap. It will take at least 2 months to get a the required talent in the door – if someone doesn’t exist in house - and another 6 weeks - to 6 months - to bring them up to speed!
Oh to slow the revolving door! How do we keep the talent we have worked so hard to attract? What can we do to we keep top talent from accepting those “I just couldn’t refuse that offer” situations?
Rewards? Career Growth?
To reduce the risk of the critical project tanking, the decision is made: that star talent who spent all those years becoming that valued, technically informative expert, that person you witnessed be super-star over and over, is promoted to a position of leading others. Your expectation? That they will continue to be exemplary contributors, and as a leader that means communicating the inspiring vision, recognizing and maximizing the strengths of the team and motivating them to reach the goals – together. Right?
Additionally they will do the recruiting, vacation approvals, performance reviews, feedback, motivating under-performers, sorting out the egos in the room that didn’t get promoted, providing the secret sauce for team cohesion and inter-dependent team partnerships – while keeping the team moving forward on the project.… using all those critical leadership “soft” skills that were picked up… when?
They wanted career growth – you reason - They’ll be fine!
Will they? Can your organization afford to have them not thrive?
Let’s pause there. Can your organization afford… a leadership failure? This project to fail?
You know the risks of not proceeding with the in-house solution: Not rewarding excellent work leading to lack of career growth leading to top talent leaving to grow their careers elsewhere.
What are the risks of proceeding with promotion as reward? How will the team respond? And will this person be able to maximize the potential of their team let alone manage the disappointment in some? Will this person be able to inspire and empower the team to exceed their goals and expectations?
How do you mitigate the risks of them failing and with that the possible departure of other valuable members of this team?
Mitigation: support the transition of a technical expert into an understanding, inspiring, goal setting, visionary leader!
Articles abound about what we need now in leadership, and why leadership fails. They all point to empathetic, servant leadership, and getting leaders to that state through coaching (with training as the secondary mode of transitioning).
Set-up your new leaders for success! Coach-up the emerging leaders!