Melvin Feller MA Looks at How To Improve Your Current Business Leadership Team
Melvin Feller MA Looks at How To Improve Your Current Business Leadership Team
When
you look at your company, you see leaders that can get things done and
really motivate the people around them. Supervisors, forepersons,
managers, and executives all have a major impact on your company.
However, what if those leaders suddenly left? What happens when those
stars go out? Do you have qualified employees that could fill the gap?
Is your bench deep enough to play on and win the game? Have you prepared
your top performers to be the leaders of tomorrow? One of the measures
of healthy organizations is how comfortable they feel replacing key
leadership positions with their own employees. Unfortunately, most of us
only look at the people standing right in front of us, and when
something happens we make a mad scramble to survive.
Leadership
development should not be restricted to existing leaders. Having a
healthy population of future leaders in the organization can be the
biggest insurance for success.
You need to ask, “What about tomorrow?”
You
could fill the spot with a new hire, but the difference in cost between
promoting leaders from within and trying to find an external candidate
can be amazingly high and comes with many hidden problems, especially in
these tough economic times. At the same time, hiring someone from
outside of the organization does have benefits. It can offer new ideas
and new perspectives on old issues, and it creates a healthy influx of
productive energy, but should that be your first option? Here are some
drawbacks to making outside hiring your number one option:
Recruiting Cost
Finding
a qualified, knowledgeable leader takes time and money. Recruiting,
interviewing, and testing, even if done in house, comes at a high price.
The cost of recruiting a new hire and training them can reach multiples
of the employee’s annual salary.
Recruiting
internally cuts down on the cost and shows your employees that you
value their skills at least as well as those of outsiders.
A
new candidate takes a number of weeks to learn the culture and work
flow of a new organization. During that time, the individual is in a
period of negative production.
If
the person does not work out in the position, the cost of training and
replacement can be as much as 3 times the annual salary of the position.
By the time, employers learn that the employee might not work out, it’s
past the probation period and damage is already done.
Cultural Adjustment
All
companies have a unique set of values, character, and culture. A new
candidate comes from a completely different culture and may or may not
fit into yours. Interviews and resumes will not show the adaptability of
leaders, even if they come from the same line of business. A conflict
of values can quickly become a drain on company resources and takes a
long time to remedy. The result is most often a demoralized work group.
So if hiring leaders externally is cost prohibitive, how do you get out
of that cycle? What can you do to develop your most promising
performers? You need to ask yourself, “Are there individuals internally
that could do the same thing by being moved or promoted?”
If
the answer is no, then you need to start developing. Now! The most
effective way to create your leaders of the future is a professionally
developed training plan; but
if you aren’t ready for that step and you need to make some moves quickly. Here are a few tips to start the process:
Start a Mentoring Program
Identify
your top performers, identify your top leaders, and get them together. A
once-a-week meeting to discuss what the leader does and how he or she
is dealing with issues that arise can expose your employees to what
being a leader means — and give them an incentive to apply it to their
own positions. It will also encourage them to take the initiative for
self-development.
Project Share
Let
your top leaders identify some projects or portions of projects that
they can delegate to your potential leaders. The idea is not only to
develop the skills needed to complete the tasks, but it also gives them
exposure to greater levels of responsibility and lets you evaluate their
talents and skills.
Keep People Moving
If
it’s possible for you to shuffle people between departments, offer it.
Give people the option to try a new area of the company. Not only will
they be learning a new skill set, but also their understanding of the
entire business will expand, which is a critical aspect of leadership.
In the end, this will reduce your training cost for new leaders.
Get to Know Your Employees
Do
you know what your employees’ professional aspirations are? Do you know
what they really want to do for the company? Do you even know their
capabilities? A simple questionnaire can offer you incredibly valuable
information on their past experience, skills, and performance desires.
Aside from helping you to identify who might be a future leader, it can
also help remedy the problem of the right person in the wrong position.
Build Your Own Library
Invest
in some personal development audio or video tapes, DVDs, books, or
computer-based training tools. There are lots of titles and topics
available. Offer these to your employees for check out. The real
performers will take advantage of it. This is a cost effective way to
train employees with minimal startup cost and no labor, as the training
will take place on their own time.
You can also offer “Lunch Box Learning” and show one of the short programs during the lunch hour.
These are just a few of the ways to motivate your top performers into becoming tomorrow’s leaders.
The
benefit of having well developed leadership skills in your employees
will far outweigh the cost of putting these programs in place.
If
you do not develop your top performers, they will not be your top
performers for long. Soon you will be stuck with a bench full of
liabilities. The question you need to ask yourself isn’t, “What happens
if I develop them and they leave?”
The question you need to ask is, “What happens if I don’t develop them and they stay?”
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