I had a conversation with one of my client. He is one of director of well-known public sector company. This was his comment: “our company is growing and the profits were way up. But the sudden resignation is unbelievable.
Something was significantly amiss and I wasn’t going to wait for disaster to wait before acting.”
Yes, this is only one situation company should be faced on for all of us. What will happen if we don’t have our future leaders? How about growth? Profitability? Sustainability? What keeps you at night if you are a CEO or director? The fact is only smart companies who are being proactive in identifying the leaders for tomorrow.
Access to the future leaders comes from one of two places – existing employees or the external labor pool at large. Here is the question: which one of the areas is the right one to focus on? Before answering the question, we may well depend on the position, consider that the demand for the leaders worldwide is growing exponentially. When the needs of the leaders increases about 45% in the next five years, there are 50% of senior management who are eligible to retire within five to seven years.
Here is the issue currently in many organizations. Our HR leaders feel their organization is not doing a good job in tracking, measuring and developing leadership qualities in their existing employees. Hired from external looks still the best solution right now. This condition isn’t always because the talent they have is inadequate. It is usually a result of insufficient succession planning or anxiety of existing leaders that they will be replaced someday with their own successor. How about in your company?
Assessing Our Leaders Talent
In assessing our leaders talent, there are a broad array of traits, experiences, competency required and other characteristics to create the capacity of leaders talent. According to the research and measurement that we have conducted, there are some consistent predispositions needed from leaders: self-confidence, emotional control, responsible, able to solve problems, managing team and individual traits.
This is what we can do before translating our talent leaders into future performance by focusing in certain areas:
· What are we doing to increase our overall corporate capabilities, competencies and capacity to beat our competitors?
· Do we have a sufficient talent pool of future leaders to support our growth strategies or should we recruit staff from different areas?
· How do we determine the competencies and skills they have to gain or retain a competitive advantage?
· Do you deploy your best leaders to the areas of high return for the company?
· Do you retain your best leaders at a higher rate than your competitor?
One of the approaches in assessing your future leader talent by looking past performance and future potential of your people in organization:
A. Past performance – how well did they perform?
B. Future potential – What is your future potential?
Here is the sample of the grid used for the talent map in one of our client:
| Leadership Potential | | Performance Expectation | ||
| | Not Meet | Meet | Exceed | |
| Exceed | | B Capable of Growth | A Future Leader (Outstanding) | |
| Meet | | C Solid Performer | B Transferable Skills? | |
| Not Meet | D Highr Risk (Perfomance managed or out) | | C Expert Talents (Trusted Professional) | |
Stages of Leadership Talent Framework
There are some stages we need to process before getting the talent map. You can use one of the talent management approaches in human resource and management strategy function.
We have an approach we use in some of our clients when we develop their leadership talent future. Indeed, you need to follow step by step this approach to get maximum result in your organization.
What’s Next ?
After you finalized the leadership talent framework and got a big picture of your leaders, the next phase you need to do is execution. What do you want to do next? Will you develop your people? Will you retire them? Will you manage them out? And so on.
And again, to do this progressively, you need to collaborate your HR team and all team leaders and executive management in your companies.
