June 2010
Part 2: Attracting and Developing Courageous Leaders
Our exploration of how organizations attract and develop courageous leaders continues. The organization’s challenge to define its unique leadership competency mix requires diligence, forethought, and clarity. When successful, it’s because the organization assessed and articulated the organizational realities while creating a precise alignment between key markers and executives strengths. Three of the most critical alignment markers are:
Defined Vision. Most organizations spend many hours defining its vision and estab-lishing its level of importance. The vision’s importance, however, is elevated into the stratosphere when looking to attract the next generation of leaders. Today’s leadership candidates listen for and seek the compelling vision that is handed to the next gener-ation of leaders to maintain, expand or radically change.
Leadership Zones. As organizations mature over time, they progress through lifecycles most often seen in budget and employee count growth that call for a varying leadership zone. This requires a corresponding jump in complexity, competencies and leadership.
- Zone 1 – Launch Captain. Launching an organization requires a hands-on leader that is focused, energized and involved in all aspects of daily operations. Leaders motivate and vision cast, holding tightly to the monarch title while rallying the people and the cause.
- Zone 2 – Rapid Advancement Artiste. At some point, organizations will find them-selves in the zone of rapid advancement calling for a substantially different leader style. Talent engagement becomes a hub since more information must flow through additional people. Leadership must release the reigns and drive results through the team.
- Zone 3 – Sustained Success Architect. As organizations mature, the new call on leadership is for operational process to become highly developed and sustainable. Strong leadership allows the organization to attract high-level and even higher–potential employees.
- Zone 4 – Strategic Industry Leader. As the organization becomes a sustainable entity, it’s also charged with creating and sustaining a culture of engagement. Leadership’s focus moves from processes to a culture of interdependency between functions.
Ethos. Present in all organizations, many issues can arise through the ethos review. Is the organization run with tribal knowledge versus more formal processes and struc-ture? Does the organization encourage and support change easily? Will it accept new leadership or simply tolerate it? The ethos speaks to potential “elephants in the room” or “sacred cow” issues that will need to be addressed so leadership can deliver results.
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Organizational lifecycles are not necessarily logical, predictable or sequential making the selection of the right leader arduous, but the resulting roadmap gives distinctiveness to the leadership mandate.
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