INTRODUCTION TO THE LEADERSHIP GAP

Emerging leaders in many ways define an organization and its ability to reach its potential. Usually at the direct level and at the junior portions of the leadership pyramid, they possess a relatively narrow sphere of influence and span of control. They do, however, provide the critical bridge between those who plan and those who implement and execute. They are, to coin an oft-used metaphor, where the rubber meets the road. In many organizations, however, this is the most neglected and misunderstood level of leadership.

This is not to say that organizations promote individuals devoid of talent to supervisory, management, or leadership roles. On the contrary, most organizations promote their star players with successful track records of job related performance to leadership roles, i.e. the best account executive becomes the sales manager or the most proficient customer service representative in a call center becomes the supervisor. Unfortunately, the question of leadership potential and competency is often left out of this decision to promote.

Organizational development and training programs can amplify this disconnect. Training programs for emerging leaders often center on company or industry specific requirements but raw leadership training is often not on the menu. While this does maintain a certain standard of performance and assist the emerging leader in what is expected of them, such training does not truly empower them to understand the deeper requirements and accountabilities of their new position.

When organizations do address leadership training, it is often poorly timed and targeted. Some, for example, disregard training for the direct leaders and front line supervisors in favor of the organizational and strategic leaders within an organization. Others provide lecture based static training or training designed for the higher leadership levels to their direct leaders. Still others assume a reactive approach that addresses leadership problems. Regardless of the specifics, these organizations end up with a gap, a Leadership Gap, between the requirements and capabilities of their emerging leaders.

RAMIFICATIONS OF THE LEADERSHIP GAP

This gap becomes the source of many problems within the organization. It is the stone tossed into the organizational pond that creates ripples of adversity that affect the individual emerging leader, their team, and the entire organization as a whole.

Novice leaders end up in the big game without a playbook. Forced to learn by doing, this essential component of organizational execution ends up using frontline employees as a testing ground. Mistakes are common and sometimes profound affecting their development, their team’s dynamics, and possibly the relations with customers or strategic partners.

The organization faces an unbalanced leadership distribution within the workforce, whereby, a high percentage of trained mid-high level managers and a low percentage of trained frontline managers. This can cause an echo of uneven organizational performance when successful implementation of senior leadership guidance ends at mid-level management.

The part of the organization where faultless, repeatable execution is essential becomes a point of friction. Crisis management requirements creep in as crisis eclipses execution. More and more issues, such as turnover, bad planning, employee complaints, misinterpretation of organizational guidance, create more and more drag on achieving organizational potential.

From a personnel standpoint, the organization creates a self-imposed dependence on specific individuals as opposed to creating a structure where the job responsibility defines expectations with an interchangeable bullpen of able players. Without a this cadre of trained leaders, the organization limits its pool of candidates from which to fill holes in times of crisis or to promote into positions that become available from natural turnover This reduced leader bench strength within the organization hamstrings efforts to maintain continuity and sustainability of quality in business operations.

CLOSING THE LEADERSHIP GAP

Overall, the solution is simple. The Leadership Gap is, after all, a training gap. It is a chasm between what emerging leaders need to do and the capabilities of these leaders to meet these requirements. Only through timely and effective training can an organization create leaders from employees. While this might seem simple, addressing this organizational development need that is both timely and effective is much more difficult that putting emerging leaders in a classroom and praying.

First and foremost, timing is everything. Leadership is like any skill. The longer you practice bad habits, the harder they are to break and the more trouble they can cause. Organizations must, therefore, make every effort possible to provide training at the correct intervention point to truly transform the emerging leader and build the right habits demanded of a leader. For the emerging leader, this intervention point is early in the leadership development lifecycle.

Secondly, organizations need to ensure that training is properly targeted. The requirements placed on emerging leaders typically mirror their narrow focus and span of control. Their challenges lay in the translation of organizational guidance into their small, but crucial part of the world. Training must, therefore, provide the skills, from coaching to problem solving, to deal with this small group.

Thirdly, organizations must ensure that they are truly providing training and not merely providing education. The learning process becomes training when an active component in which experience couples with knowledge to empower students for the next level of involvement. From the scrimmage to the flight simulator, activities that replicate real world challenges provide a safe environment to try, fail and learn.

Finally, leaders due not operate in a vacuum. They have supporters who follow their lead and add value to the team through their efforts and input. Many leaders, however, never experience this follower role in the context of leadership. Training must, therefore, remind the novice leaders of what it is like to be led and train them in the art of active followership, so they can coach and motivate their teams.

© Copyright Douglas Katz and LEADINGSCHOOL LLC

Douglas Katz is a Co-Founder and Vice-President of LEADINGSCHOOL LLC (http://www.leadingschool.com). He is a 1993 graduate of the United States Military Academy and a 2001 graduate of Loyola University Chicago. He has sucessfully served in a wide variety of leadership positions across a diverse range of organizations, industries and environments to include the United States Army, Tellabs, and Citigroup.

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