Getting Promoted Essentials: Reverse Engineer Your Leadership Development Plan
Your executives are probably getting briefed on the measurable traits of high-performing leaders before they going into the talent meetings where they're choosing which individuals in which to invest their development dollars. This is where they discuss, calibrate and agree on the assessed performance and potential of key players in the business. Wouldn't it be interesting to understand their criteria and use it as a way to guide your own leadership development planning?
The premise is that building your development plan to focus on the leadership attributes that have been shown by research to predict who will perform well at higher levels is probably a good bet. It also makes sense to find out what your company uses as its specific criteria to assess talent to guide you as you prioritize your development activities.
Companies use different frameworks to organize their thinking around spotting high potential future leaders. A popular one is the Seven Signposts, by KornFerry, based on 30 years of research.
Seven predictive dimensions are a lot to consider, so different leadership teams use some or even just one of them. Some use all of them. Just to get the lay of the land, let’s walk through all seven.
The first one is a track record of formative experiences. These are experiences where, for instance, you have a lot of strategic demands, you have a high level of people demands, you might have had to negotiate, you might have had to have external relations. These are experiences that shape how you lead and change you by going through them.
The more formative experiences you have earlier on, the better, because the more you process the learnings in these experiences and have them ‘in your bones,’ the less energy you will need to expend later to figure out the key lessons they impart. That’s helpful in a role at a higher level when you need all of your bandwidth to deal with the complexity of that more senior role.
Second one is learning agility, or the ability to learn from a current experience and take those lessons and apply them in the next experience, so you can hit the ground running, so that you're adaptable, and so you can figure out how to proceed even if it's ambiguous or if there's a lot of complexity.
Third one is self-awareness. You know what your strengths are, you know what your weaknesses are, and you know how you impact others, how you are perceived by others.
Fourth one: leadership traits. For this one you have to look at which traits are considered most relevant for your role, because these are going to vary depending on the industry you're in and the function that you're doing. Your department or company may have a list of key traits that you can refer to.
For instance, I was just looking at a profile today called "ADAPT" which is for self- disrupting leaders in organizations working in a space that is constantly evolving and changing. These leaders need to be adaptive. And so they need to trust, they need to form partnerships, they need to have an ongoing scan of what's going on.
That might be different than traditional leadership attributes which might be more relevant in different industries. Those might be something like influence, energy level, optimism, visioning. The thing there is to see what's important for your organization and for your function and to work towards developing those leadership attributes if that's something that is a priority area for you.
The next one, number five: drive to be a leader. Do you like to lead other people? Does it does it feel juicy for you to get results through others? Because some people want to be individual contributors and some people love to lead others. It takes a lot of energy to lead people when it's not something that lights you up innately.
Most of the other dimensions can be developed, but this one is more innate. Still, you can develop aspects of this one. I would argue that when you learn to be a better leader, it becomes more fun. I'm going to assert that developing leadership, whether you think you want to take on senior level roles in the future or not, is going to be valuable for you no matter what you do.
Sixth one is aptitude for logic and reasoning. This one is your cognitive ability or your smarts. Again, that's innate, but part of this is the ability to solve complex problems, which you can develop, and as you rise in an organization it's less important for you to be able to solve complex problems and it becomes more important for you to foster an environment where other people can solve complex problems. So if you can lead other people to solve problems, that's one of the key parts of cognitive ability that stands out in this research around what predicts good leaders. And that's something that can be developed.
The last one is managed derailment risks. Derailment risks are things like doesn't relate well to others, lacks composure, political missteps, doesn't foster the development of talent...these are more like something that you have to unlearn rather than learn.
It's understanding what the top derailers are that many executives face that's key. And 30 to 50% of high potential leaders face derailment - so just having them on your radar screen and seeing if there's someplace you want to intervene around your habits or ways of being at work. Maybe you want to unlearn something that's going to get in your way.
Which one of these predictors of future leaders will be most relevant for you to further grow?
Identifying the most profitable capabilities to develop is part of my 8 step system to optimize your career. Learn more at fullpotentialrealized.com/advance.
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