In the face of ever-shrinking budgets and less resources to devote to employee development, many companies face a similar problem: providing current and potential leadership with critical professional development opportunities.

Executive coaching programs often span more than a year, in which a coach helps the participant develop skills and augment behaviors necessary for future success. These engagements are known as skills coaching and are designed to enhance the skillset of the participants.

Yet, skills coaching fails to heighten one’s strategic self-awareness – the understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral tendencies and how these characteristics compare to those of others.

Awareness coaching, on the other hand, uses assessment results and a series of short coaching sessions that put the ownership of development on the participant. In such engagements, the employees receive a series of short coaching sessions supported by personality data, where they receive suggestions for behavior changes geared toward increasing workplace performance.

Finding cost-effective and impactful methods for leadership development is crucial to success. Using the power of assessments to make leaders aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, rather than teaching them new skills, or ways to improve their existing behaviors, employers can ensure they have a bench full of high-potential employees ready to step in to key leadership positions.

To learn more about awareness coaching and to see a case study of how one company experienced positive results through this method, review our white paper, Awareness Coaching.

Evidence shows that at least 50% of individuals in leadership have, will, or are failing. The vast majority of suggested solutions revolve around high potential identification, leadership development programs and the like. The purpose of such initiatives is to identify the individuals who should be leaders, but given the statistic above, one has to wonder about their effectiveness.  

The methods above could use a little tweaking. Instead of focusing primarily on who should lead, organizations should place equal impetus on who should follow. An individual not being cut out for or even having the desire to lead is not in and of itself a bad thing. Lest we forget, leaders have to have individuals to lead, and it is those who are led that drive the success or failure of their leader. The term “followers” typically incites a negative response in our minds, however, workers, soldiers, and players are the backbone of any successful grouping of people: an army of only generals is no army at all. For a more recent analogy, imagine the NBA playoffs consisting only of head coaches Erik Spoelstra and Scott Brooks without their respective Heat and Thunder. It simply doesn’t work.

That said, a look through the annals of promotion would quickly reveal that most individuals end up in managerial or upper level leadership positions based on strong performance. This promoting strategy relies on a mindset we have all adopted, and for good reason as it makes logical sense: promote those who do well. Almost inevitably, one of those promotions will eventually place an individual in a position to manage people, and it is at that point logic often begins to breakdown.

Traditional logic fails because good leadership is comprised of much more than just strong performance. By taking a black and white approach and promoting leaders solely based on performance, organizations can potentially shoot themselves in the foot – actually in both feet as the repercussions can emerge on two fronts. Let’s continue with the NBA analogy above: there can be little argument that LeBron James is a phenomenal basketball player. In an organizational culture his performance ratings would be off the charts, and thus, by traditional thinking, LeBron should be promoted. So let’s hypothetically pull LeBron from the hardwood and move him into a more senior position, say head coach. Makes sense, right? Of course it doesn’t. What’s left is a team with big shoes to fill (pun intended) in a small forward, and an individual who has been pulled from an area of strength into an area in which he may or may not excel. Does LeBron have what it takes to be the coach? Does he even want to be the coach?

The example above commonly plays out in the arena of sales. Success in a sales role depends upon significantly different KSAOs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics) than a sales manager, sales director, etc. So before a high performing sales person is moved into a position of leadership, an organization should ask itself whether they want the individual to sell or to lead. The two are not mutually exclusive and it is entirely possible that the individual can successfully do both. It isn’t necessarily logical, however, to expect leadership success based solely on strong sales numbers.

As past behavior is a solid predictor of future behavior, performance metrics should be a critical component in identifying who should lead and who should follow. They should be combined, however, with a few additional variables: values and potential.

Values - Does the individual even desire to lead? Do they want the promotion, or are they content in their current status as a high-performing employee?  Will it fuel their passion or will it extinguish their pilot light?

Potential - Does the individual possess the intrinsic characteristics to successfully lead? Do they truly have what it takes?

To summarize, sometimes a soldier should remain a soldier; a small forward a small forward. Some individuals want to lead, some don’t. Some have what it takes, some don’t. Neither side of the coin is right or wrong, as organizations require both leaders and followers, but we cannot expect to figure out who is who by judging performance alone.

Last week I attended the Developing Leaders for Global Roles Summit at the Thunderbird Najafi Global Mindset Institute in Glendale, Arizona. The summit brought together academics and practitioners from around the world to discuss the concept and issues surrounding global leadership, and approaches to closing the talent gaps that virtually every organization experiences. The stories and insights from the other attendees were enlightening, so I thought I’d summarize a few of the takeaways here in our blog.

First, this will come as no surprise, but nobody is defining their problem in terms of a surplus of global leadership talent. Talent in this area is particularly scarce and extremely valuable. This is a prime battle in the broader war for talent.

Second, good leadership skills do not necessarily generalize to a global setting. Leadership skills are distinct from having a global perspective, and successful global leadership requires both. The folks at Thunderbird have a robust body of research on the concept of global mindset, complete with a measurement tool (the Global Mindset Inventory, or GMI) and taxonomy of skills and attributes. The good news is that global mindset can be developed. The bad news is that not nearly enough organizations are actively developing global mindsets in their leadership talent pools or organizations. 

Third, success in a global environment requires not just leaders that think globally, but an entire organization that sees itself as global and thinks in those terms. Making this transition is difficult. For example, moving from being a U.S.-based business that works in China to an organization that does business in both the U.S. and China is a big adjustment, and requires commitment from the entire workforce. From this perspective, global mindset is an organizational development issue, not just a leadership development issue.

So what are people doing to move towards a global organization? I heard a few things from a fantastic lineup of speakers, including:

• Building cross-cultural work teams. These might be traditional or virtual work teams, but getting some exposure to different people, different business cultures, and different ways of thinking is key.
• Spending time in-country. Most of the speakers agreed that there is no substitute for spending time in another culture. If you want to do business in Japan, for example, you need to get over there and really get a first-hand feel for the way things work. This is difficult and expensive, but also provides tremendous development.
• Debriefing past experiences. After projects are implemented, the project teams sit down and replay the scenario, debriefing what decisions were made, and how things could have been done differently. This is probably good practice for any significant project, but hearing the story from others with a different cultural perspective can provide valuable insight that might not have been acquired through the process of just getting the work done.
• Targeting global mindset specifically through development programs. This is relatively new, but seems like a great idea. The GMI and other assessments are being integrated into development programs to help people recognize their own tendencies (individual and cultural), and how to think outside of those constraints.

It’s a cliché – but no less true – to say it’s a global business environment. Those who can adapt to this playing field will be more successful. Those who impose their ways of doing things onto other culture will struggle. Developing leaders who can be successful in the global business environment will be critical, and the Global Najafi Global Mindset Institute is doing a lot of great work to help organizations meet this challenge.