How Leaders are Made

It seems incredible, but when it comes to business leadership, we don’t consider the most important pieces of it: Does this person have the know-hows to succeed? Is he or she capable of developing them and driven to continue to hone them? The seeds of personality traits might be born, but know-how is learned, developed through practice, and honed through experience. Leaders who are disciplined, determined, consistent, and persistent in developing these kinds of know-how tend to be successful on a sustained basis. In that sense, leaders are made.

-Ram Charan

Building a Team Takes Blood Sweat and Tears

It takes blood, sweat and tears to build a team, but the return on effort is huge. Many leaders think molding a team isn’t worth the effort, but they’re missing a tremendous opportunity to differentiate themselves and build the business. The more people can see the total anatomy of the business, the intersections of its moving parts, and the broader context in which it operates, the better job they do.

-Ram Charan

Establishing a Leadership Standard

The most successful leaders leave a legacy by establishing a pipeline of leaders that is better than what they inherited and, in addition, becomes the standard against which the rest are compared.

-Ram Charan

Team Building: Getting Highly Competent Individuals to Work Together

(21805) Ram Charan says:

An important part of know-how is being able to get high-energy and competent people to commit to the total business rather than just their own careers. Building a high-performing team is a tremendous opportunity to enhance the business and propel it forward.

Cooperation Is Essential to Team Building

Once you’ve taken the time and effort to recruit smart and competent people, the next challenge is to mold these people into a team who synchronize their work in such a way that will propel the business forward. The natural tendency is for each person to focus on their own specialty, but if you plan on achieving something of note, you need to get everyone pulling in the same direction. Quite simply, this is the only way to generate the synergy that comes when high-performing individuals build something together.

To mold a great team of leaders who work together well:

Shape a common view of your business–by sharing all of the data you have available. Get everyone on the same page by letting them master the basics of the business factually and accurately. It’s not until the entire team knows everything you do that they can truly add some value. Get everyone up to speed by ensuring they know your company’s marketplace realities, challenges and resources in fine detail.

Confront directly any behaviors that dilute the team’s effectiveness–something that will take courage. Many people try to avoid or gloss over conflict or hope the problem will resolve itself eventually. That’s a waste of time. Whenever someone does something that dilutes the team’s effectiveness, you need to have the inner courage to confront them directly, tell them that is unacceptable and ask them to change.

Bring to the surface and resolve any conflicts–before they have a chance to cause delays or problems. By anticipating and then resolving conflicts early on, you avoid the possibility of them becoming personalized. You should expect conflicts to come in three general flavors or themes:

Task conflicts–who will do what?

Process conflicts–how will we get this done?

Resource conflicts–where will we apply our resources?Pick the right people to be on the team–which generally will be a mix of those who have technical competence, decisiveness, the ability to deliver what is promised, the respect of subordinates and the esteem of peers. Even when you have highly skilled people available, bear in mind that everyone has to be willing to place the organization’s success ahead of their personal agendas for the team to perform to maximum effect. Having anyone who puts their personal agenda ahead of what’s best for the team is a real problem. Some people also find it difficult to make the transition from being productive personally to coaching and managing the productiveness of others. Getting the right people on the team is also further complicated by the fact that there will be departures from time to time and therefore new people will need to be integrated into the team at different times. A newcomer may be intimidated by the established team relationships at first and find it hard to become a contributing member of the team. These challenges are all part and parcel of picking the right people to be on the team.Providing worthwhile feedback and coaching–so team members can know what they need to be doing to become high performers. Feedback is most effective when it is provided promptly and in written form. When people have confidence that the feedback they’re receiving will be helpful in their careers, they usually are more responsive to receiving coaching and training. These are all essential components in team building.

Recognize and avoid those activities that can destabilize the team–which may include these types of pitfalls:

Having a “last in, first out” mentality towards personnel management

Being afraid to express a controversial point of view

Forming small groups who are “in the know”

Being afraid to give honest feedback

Making final decisions over and over

Know-How

Judging: Matching the Right People to the Right Tasks

(21804) Ram Charan says:

Someone with know-how selects and develops other leaders who can take their place when the time is right. They build a team of people who can get things done rather than trying to do it all themselves.

Fostering Future Leaders

One sure indicator of someone with know-how is that they always leave their organization stronger than how they found it. They have a real talent for spotting and then developing new leadership talent. They actively search for people with latent leadership potential, create growth opportunities where these people can leverage and deepen their abilities and allow them to grow progressively stronger. This makes their organizations stronger and more flexible because there is a deep pool of leadership talent available.

Your job as a leader is to get the job done, not to try and do everything yourself. The only way you can achieve this consistently is by growing other leaders, or more specifically by building a pipeline of future leaders. In this way, you won’t have to deal with every issue yourself.

Managing Talent Appropriately

Many organizations start with a job description and then find the right person to fill that opening. Someone with know-how reverses that dynamic. They spot leadership talent early and then create a career path that will give that individual room to grow and develop. As these individuals take on progressively more complex challenges, they then become more competent to take on a greater role in the business in the future. This is more than conducting an annual performance review. Instead, it requires that you create a view about the person’s current competencies and then match that person’s weak areas with challenging stretch assignments that will promote personal growth.

So how can you achieve this in practice?

Become better at spotting leadership talent in others–by observing their actions, decisions and behaviors up close. Keep in mind that you will have personal biases of your own, so you constantly need to cross-check your thinking with others.

Try pooling your observations about others–so you get a fuller and more accurate picture of each individual’s positive and negative attributes. Muster evidence and probe beyond generalities when you consider what a person brings to the table in this way.

Be prepared to “drill down”–and get to the truth about a person. This may be a matter of keeping notes about multiple meetings, or you may need to talk with the people they work with in depth. Go beyond superficial observations and get down to the real nitty-gritty details before making a judgement.

Develop your future leaders effectively–by both clarifying what path they need to follow to grow and what they need to be working on in their current job. Don’t be so focused on the opportunities of the future that you fail to notice their current shortcomings. Help people see what aspects of their current performance need to be enhanced if they are to reach their full potential. Have regular face-to-face dialogues where you spell out what’s going well and what isn’t. Over a period of time, these discussions will be very helpful and worthwhile.

Establish clear non-negotiable criteria–so they genuinely understand what each job requires them to do to succeed. If you make these lists of criteria too long, you cause confusion. Focus like a laser on what really matters, spell that out and then let the person use their own initiative.

Find constructive ways to deal with any mismatches that occur–because you can never really be sure what will happen when dealing with people. Some will rise to the challenges placed before them but others will fail miserably. There are all kinds of reasons for this but at the end of the day, you’d better be prepared and willing to deal with any problems that are generated. This may be a case of finding them another position that is a better match to their talents or making it clear to the person that their future lies elsewhere.As previously mentioned, the genuine acid test of your judging know-how is whether or not you succeed in building a pipeline of future leaders. This is more than merely specifying your criteria for future leaders. It also goes well beyond spending money on training and development programs. You have to work with others to identify the leaders of the future and make sure they receive assignments that will stretch their abilities and expand their knowledge. They need to be exposed to a wide variety of markets, cultures, consumers and business models. And their ongoing progress needs to be tracked and monitored regularly.

Know-How

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