By Guest Author Jessica Garcia
Dudek , COO Oxygen Learning
Time and time again, companies promote the highest performing individual contributors within their companies to leadership positions. These people have grown in their careers based on their technical expertise in their role and leaders feel that makes them qualified to lead a team of people, but does it?
“She’s a star …<software developer, lawyer, project manager, etc.>, and we think that makes her qualified to lead a team of people.”
We see this trend span across all roles and industries. While the ability to understand the role and drive business results is important, it’s also critical for the leader to have a desire to lead people and let go of the “doing.” For leaders, sometimes the tendency to do the work is easier than coaching their people to do it differently or better.
Making this mental shift from doing versus leading is challenging, as being a leader requires us to develop or hone different skills. While sports analogies can be over-used, it’s truly helpful to think of a coach of a sports team.
The best coaches watch their players and can coach them on performance, as opposed to playing in the game. The best coaches also understand how to adjust their approach, if warranted, to fit the talent they may have on the field as it oftentimes changes from year to year. Not unlike keeping and maintaining (star) employees.
We once had a client whose senior leader defined leadership as redoing his employees’ work and giving them credit. This was quite daunting and as a result slept only about four hours a night. His employees feel like he had no trust in their abilities and many quit over time.
This also wasn’t a scalable model because he was trying to be involved in every project. If he had invested his time in observing and coaching his people around their performance, he would have empowered them to do the work and become more effective in his role as a leader by having a high performing, capable team.
How can we change the way we think about promoting and transitioning people into leadership positions?
Here are five tips consider as you get started:
1. Look at the whole person, not only what they have accomplished in their individual work. Look for people who have a desire to lead people and who are willing to make the shift.
2. Include coaching as a leadership competency.
3. Teach your leaders what coaching looks like.
4. Reward your leaders on their employee growth and retention in addition to their team’s business results.
5. Implement a leadership mentoring program, which can be a key toward honing and keeping star employees who you think have that “leadership something special”. When the right match happens, it can be the catalyst for transformation—then watch that star rise and lead!