Subscribe to BlogDevelop Your Next Generation of Leaders: Share Lessons Learned
We’ve been working with several clients lately on developing
their next generation of leaders. Without fail, every client
grouping of senior managers talks of the weak or under-
developed personnel management, delegation, strategic
thinking, and personal accountability skills in their
direct-report managers. The really interesting thing is:
Almost all of these senior managers are individuals
who themselves had these same weak skills just a few
short years ago. Huh. I wonder how they gained them…
They gained them by being coached and mentored, by reading,
by gaining exposure and experience, by leading difficult projects,
by attending training programs, and by focusing differently
when at work. They gained many of these skills by being
held accountable by me or others like me and “forced” to learn,
to try, and to ultimately “naturally” do the things
effective managers and leaders do. The key is: They
were taught. Someone with the experience shared insights and
lessons learned with them. Now it’s their turn to share
what they’ve learned with their next generation of leaders.
One of the fundamental responsibilities in management is to
develop the people for whom we are responsible. We’re supposed
to help them continuously develop enhanced or new skills
to ensure they’re capable of performing at a level our
company will need them to perform one, two, three or more
years from now. We wouldn’t expect a computer to be able to
support software programs one, two, or three years from
now without enhancing its capabilities, but we hold that expectation
of our employees. We naively assume they’ll just figure
things out.
More often than not, the most often studied trainer in your
company is you. You’re the one most staff pay attention to every day.
You’re the one they model, take their cues from, and develop
their skills because of. You’re it. So it’s time to
conscientiously analyze how you to what you do and segment
it so others can learn in bite-sized pieces, just as you did.
Your managers won’t need to learn everything in the same order
or even many of the things you did – because your organization
is different now than it was when you learned select skills.
However, your managers will need to learn many of the same
people skills you’ve struggled to master. Let’s face
it – people are people and that’s the most difficult challenge
any of us face in our lives: Dealing with people.
Most importantly, remember: It wasn’t all that long ago
that you too had weak management and leadership skills.
So the next time you are frustrated with one of your staff,
take a mental step back and ask yourself, “Did I ever do
something like this? If so, what lesson did I learn that
helped me through it? How can I share that lesson now?”
So don’t get frustrated. Teach. It’s the way you will
develop your next generation of leaders. Share your
lessons learned.
Copyright 2009 – Liz Weber, CMC – Weber Business Services, LLC.
