LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
New Leaders: Developing the Next Generation
Dozens of best practices to help your leaders, managers, and supervisors get much better at developing new leaders among the next generation of employees. After this program, participants will be better able to:
(-) Build relationships of trust and confidence the very best among today's young talent.
(-) Retain the very best among today’s young talent.
(-) Cultivate the leadership potential of the very best young talent.
(-) Help new young leaders take on and carry out supervisory, management and leadership responsibilities.
(-) Help new young leaders learn the basics of supervision, management and leadership.
(-) Help new young leaders steadily improve their supervisory, management, and leadership skills.
This program topic is available in all formats:
• KEYNOTES
• WORKSHOPS
• TRAIN THE TRAINER
• CUSTOM TRAINING INITIATIVES
• EXECUTIVE PROBLEM SOLVING SESSIONS
• BOOKS AND TRAINING SUPPORT MATERIALS
On August 13, 2009, Bruce was honored to accept Toastmasters International's most prestigious honor, the Golden Gavel. This honor is annually presented to a single person who represents excellence in the fields of communication and leadership. Past winners have included Marcus Buckingham, Stephen Covey, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, Ken Blanchard, Tom Peters, Art Linkletter, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and Walter Cronkite. Click here for a complete list of past winners.
Program Description
Many organizations today are suffering from a gap in bench-strength for senior leadership. At the same time, there is a serious gap in mid-level leadership talent. At the same time, today’s best young talent are increasingly less likely to follow the old-fashioned career path that used to lead to mid-level leadership roles and served as a guaranteed succession plan for those mid-level positions.Now more than ever, the Holy Grail of retaining young talent is identifying, developing and building the next generation of leaders. How many people have both the technical ability and the desire and ability to lead?
When you are looking for new leaders, you have to focus first and foremost on those with real technical talent, those who are really good at their jobs. These are the individuals who have demonstrated their commitment to their work and careers. That commitment is the first essential piece when it comes to identifying new prospects for leadership roles.
The problem is, especially among the best Gen Y technical talent, that there are a lot of people who are committed to their work and career but are reluctant to take on supervisory roles. Why? The main reason, according to our research, is that they can see with their own eyes the experience of their own managers and their slightly more advanced peers. What they see is that managers, especially new young managers, are often given loads of additional responsibility with very little additional support.
Often when Gen Yers are given their first chance to lead a team or a project, they find themselves managing people—temporarily or longer term—who were their peers the day before. Sometimes those “peers” are the same age, sometimes older, sometimes their friends. Without support and guidance from above, Gen Yers often have a hard time establishing their credibility and getting others to respect their new authority. Under these circumstances, new managers are likely to soft-pedal their authority with some people and lean on others disproportionately; to gravitate to friendly faces and avoid unfriendly ones; and to fall back on cliques and ringleaders in order to exercise any power at all. It’s true that sometimes Gen Yers thrust into leadership roles without support land on their feet. But usually this is a setup for frustration and failure.
Very few people are endowed with that special brand of charisma, passion, infectious enthusiasm, and contagious energy that inspires and motivates people. No organization can afford to wait for those rare natural leaders to come along and fill each supervisory role, especially if they also need to have good technical skills and a proven commitment to their work and career.
Anyway, "natural leadership" traits are not what most new managers need in order to succeed. They need support, guidance, and direction every step of the way.
Don't be lured by charisma, passion, enthusiasm, and energy. Don't look for those Gen Yers who are comfortable slapping people down. Don’t look for those who love the power. Don’t look for the biggest egos or the loudest, most confident voices. Look for Gen Yers who love the responsibility and the service. Look for those who consistently practice the basics of management with discipline. Look for those who spend the most time patiently teaching. Look for those who want to lift people up and make them better. They will likely be your future leaders.
In this program, Bruce draws on fifteen years of research, teaching participants dozens of immediately actionable best practices in a step-by-step guide to developing new young leaders:
(1) Retain the best Gen Y superstars long enough to grow and develop them.
(2) Surround them with teaching-style managers, advisers, organizational supporters, and maybe even mentors.
(3) When you ask young stars to step up and make the transition to leadership roles—at any level—teach them back-to-basics best practices for managing and then support and guide them in this new role every step of the way.
(4) Formally deputize any new leader, no matter how small the project or how short the duration of the leadership role. Announce the new leadership to the whole team, articulate the nature of this person’s new authority, and explain the standard operating procedures for management that you have asked the new leader to follow.
(5) Check in daily (or every other day) with new leaders. Regularly walk through the standard operating procedures for managing people. Ask about the management challenges she is probably facing. Take every opportunity you can to help the new leader refine and improve her management techniques.
(6) Pay close attention every step of the way, and evaluate the new leader in her new role. With this kind of sustained low-tech hands-on leadership development effort and constant evaluation, you can develop your future leaders.
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