How to Develop Leaders Who Act, Not React
In my younger days, I was an aspiring baseball player, relegated initially to the bench for a couple of seemingly endless seasons. One coach I remember distinctly used to tell us benchwarmers that we should never just sit there if we really wanted to play.
We had to think, “What if I’m up next?”
What he was telling us remains true today, in sports as well as leadership. One example from back in the day is Craig Morton, then a 36-year-old quarterback for the Denver Broncos. Morton had been benched several times before, and he seemed mired in another backup season as Game 4 against the division rival Seattle Seahawks rolled around on September 23, 1979.
Late in the third quarter, with the Broncos trailing 34-10, Morton went in and led them to a 37-34 victory. Some have called it the greatest bench performance in NFL history.
How many times have you seen someone step in from the bench and lead the team to victory?
Where Leaders Prepare People for the Next Level of Responsibility
The fifth of our Big 6 Leadership Principles® is When in Charge, Take Charge. Earlier in this module, I wrote about the bias for action that lets your people act within your intent instead of waiting for permission. This article is about the people themselves, and whether they are ready when their moment comes.
Leaders in Coalition of the Willing cultures insist on preparing people for the next level of responsibility. Leaders seek out responsibility. They want to be at the head of projects and opportunities, because they know the senior leadership has high regard for those who step up and lead from the decisive point, whether it is the front or somewhere else. In the Level Five Culture of Commitment, All-In Adaptive Leaders grow leaders, and they celebrate the successes of those who step up.
Effective delegation increases immediate productivity, and it also develops your people so they can be ready to advance into higher roles within the company. As most of us know, it is almost always easier to promote somebody who already understands your culture than to bring somebody new into the fold.
What the Culture of Compliance Does to Leader Development
The Follower culture, the Level 2 Culture of Compliance, works the other way. The operative word there is compliance, and many of the people in charge hold their positions because they have been in the company forever.
As I wrote in We’re All In, “Followers have no intention of developing other leaders. Instead, they’re quite content growing followers.” Team leaders are not given a charter with authority. In many cases, they are not even leading; they are doing little more than gathering data and reporting it to a boss. This transactional environment is defined by a lack of opportunity rather than the development of it.
Even the Points of Light culture, where visionary leadership first begins to emerge, tends to hire talent in lieu of developing it. When promotions do happen, they are usually based on performance rather than potential. A high-performing salesperson becomes the sales manager even when he might lack the capability or desire to lead, and failure usually results. Leader development and mentoring are typically episodic. A day program here, a conference there, leadership development at this cultural level is akin to throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.
Below, I share three practices that get leaders ready to be next up: daily next-up thinking, the question “Who’s the Next You?”, and exercises that put a junior leader in charge. To read the rest of this article, visit this link.
Enjoy the journey!
