Are leaders born or made? This question has fascinated experts for years. The consensus seems to be that leadership is a confluence of nature and nurture; personality and training.
One thing many agree on is you know a leader when you see one. And, a prospective leader demonstrates a keen aptitude for learning. For instance, even though some people may not possess an innate skill, they learn quickly. And, once they do so, they don’t repeat the same mistakes twice. Those are the future leaders in your organization.
That ability to learn is so crucial because a natural gifting for performance and excellence is rare. To find talented people, you may have to go through several failed cycles of recruitment. Finally, the best people have options and know their worth. So, you may be unable to afford or retain them. Therefore, in a small organization, what you can afford is greenhorns who can learn.
But Who is a Leader, Really?
Within a corporate context, I would define a leader as someone who:
1. Gets stuff done without excuses.
2. Teaches and trains others.
3. Has a sense of ownership and responsibility.
Ownership and responsibility are personal values. There are people who bring a missional zeal to whatever you entrust to them, no matter how small. It’s a function of who they are as human beings, and not the task per se. It could also be a case of an auspicious alignment of their personal values with those of the company.
The ability to teach is subjective. It assumes a person has communication, documentation and processing skills.
So, in many organizations, the lowest hanging fruit of leadership is often performance. Leaders do what they are paid to do, and then some. And they do it excellently well. This approach means they will mobilize whatever resources, people, knowledge and networks that are required to deliver a task, without being micromanaged. They just consistently do the work and give their supervisors much peace of mind.
Corporate Leadership Pipelines
Where can you actively find leaders? People who come up in multinationals tend to have a predilection for leadership.
In a small enterprise, leadership is rarely taught formally. You’ll probably learn it by observing a mentor, or by practice because you’re multitasking all the time. However, in established global organizations, there are formal training programs for leadership. Therefore, those organizations are great at identifying and grooming leaders early.
Small companies can learn from this. You cannot hold people responsible for what is not documented or taught. Formalize your training programs and processes so everything is replicable.
Another great place to find leaders is in volunteer organizations, where people do excellent work not for pay but because they believe in the mission.
Grooming from Within
As an entrepreneur, it’s easier to develop staff from within when you’re still young. You have sufficient emotional energy and mental bandwidth at that point.
But as I alluded to earlier, this must be a documented process for training, policies, monitoring and enforcement. Employees ought to feel a sense of development and forward movement.
However, as you grow older, you can scarcely relate to young associates anymore. And so, at that point, you must already have managers in place who are responsible for training the young’uns.
Typically, you have about 10 years to establish a pipeline of managers while you still have energy. If you miss this window, you may no longer have the time to groom managers from within and may need to recruit externally. Else, the business will stagnate if you remain the only critical thinking factor or consistent performer.
How to Groom Affordable Talent
Let me provide some suggestions for identifying and grooming talent within a small or growing organization.
- Hire Cheaply: If you’re a small enterprise, I’d say bring in a lot of interns. Hire multiple people for each role, train everyone, and then rapidly disengage those who don’t make the cut.
Building in extra redundancy means as some people leave, there will be a steady pipeline of internal replacements.
- Systematize Onboarding/Offboarding: Your onboarding and offboarding processes must become systemic and easy to deploy. This is because people will keep moving in and out until you gain stability and establish your core team.
Don’t compromise work quality or keep people because you’re trying to avoid high turnover. Turnover is a vital part of building a core team. You keep pruning until you find the right fit.
Remember, it’s hard to judge actual performance until people start doing the work. Which is why you must be open to the concept of a revolving door of talent at the earlier stage of your business. There will be attrition.
If you have a lot of intellectual property, use a password manager and document controls, so it’s easy to grant and then revoke access should people leave.
Depending on your culture, remuneration and long term growth prospects, a few strong candidates will eventually stay and become your future managers. So, it’s a game of numbers. Go for affordability at the beginning, hire more people than you need, and then trim down for quality.
- Document Everything: Write down everything that’s required to run your business and then store your processes behind adequate access controls. Build systems that any new intern or associate can follow.
- Digitize Learning: If possible, record processes on video. This saves your Managers the trouble of repeating the same training over and over as people come and go. Use a Learning Management System that measures completion rates, and integrates quizzes to test for understanding.
- Cut Slow Learners: Let go of any one that needs to be reprimanded multiple times on a written policy or process. It’s not necessarily because they are incompetent. For some people, their primary mode of learning is not by video or document. Meanwhile, in a growing organization (especially, a remote or hybrid one), documents and video are your main learning material. You won’t always have time for in-person instructions.
- Reward People Well: Finally, pay well, acknowledge efforts and run a strict meritocracy. Celebrate performance and enforce consequences for bad work. This will send a strong signal within the system that hard work matters.
In Conclusion
As you groom leaders, I hope some of my thoughts prove useful. Don’t be hesitant to try new things and to keep tweaking until you find what works for you.
My very best wishes.
