On leadership training
Why do some companies find it so difficult to train employees to be leaders? Even companies with outstanding senior management teams have ranks of managers that have little to no leadership ability. These are often rockstar individual contributors that are plucked from the rank and file of employees and placed with little to no training or direction into a management position. Some of these people have no desire to lead others. They are more comfortable and effective as individual contributors. Yet they are told by someone somewhere that they have to manage people to “move up the ladder” in corporate organizations.
Why is it so difficult to teach leadership to some people? It’s because they haven’t chosen to be a leader. Perhaps in their minds they have convinced themselves that they don’t have leadership potential and that their position and current responsibilities were an accident or an oversight. And now that they’re in the position, rather than finding creative ways to contribute, they instead choose to focus on how to preserve their position and title. This causes a so-called ‘leader’ or ‘manager’ to enter a competitive mindset where others have to lose in order for them to win.
When teams are managed through this competitive lens, employees often adopt the mindset and perspective of the manager. Employees begin competing with each other and collaboration and creativity diminishes or dies altogether, as seeds of resentment are sewn. Some thrive under this system of management, while others languish. It is the ultimately the company that loses the contributions and creativity of those employees who feel discouraged by this environment.
The natural question that follows is, what is the solution to this dilemma? I’ve found that there is opportunity in the leadership selection process. Find those people in your organization that not only possess leadership potential, but that choose to be leaders. They may not be the best individual contributors on the team, but they are those individuals that choose to allow the perception of their own performance to suffer a bit, to enable those around them to perform at their best. Identify these individuals, and you’ll find that it is much easier to deliver leadership training to people that are hungry for it.
