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Growing Other Leaders

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: The best leaders understand and accept their mandate to grow other leaders. The reason there are not more excellent leaders in this world is that there are not enough good mentors. This article discusses growing leaders and the concept of mentorship.

Growing Other Leaders

When leading an organization, large or small, you can't do it all. Running the details of a business must be done through others. In large organizations, there might be thousands of others. You need an organization of trusted lieutenants to accomplish the work. To do this, you need to shift your focus from manager to teacher.

The best leaders are those who believe it is their highest calling to personally help develop the leaders who work for them. A large portion of their mindset is spent evaluating, training, and reinforcing leaders under them. The training is not centered on classes or consultant seminars. There will be some of that, but the bulk is personal coaching and mentoring by the leader.

The best leaders spend 30-50% of their time trying to enhance the caliber of leaders on their team. Why is this? When you improve the capability of leaders working for you, the whole organization is improved. You are leveraging your leadership.

In my line management role, my job title was Division Manager. I saw my function as "growing leaders." Spending time and energy on that gave a better return than spending time inventing new HR practices or supply chain procedures. John Maxwell, in "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership," called it the Law of Multiplication. He makes the distinction between developing followers or leaders as:

"Leaders who develop followers grow their organization only one person at a time. But leaders who develop leaders multiply their growth because for every leader they develop, they also receive all of that leader's followers. Add ten followers to your organization and you have the power of ten people. Add ten leaders to your organization, and you have the power of the ten leaders times all the followers they influence. That's the difference between addition and multiplication."

Develop leaders in as many layers as you have under you. If there are three layers between you and the masses, then develop three layers of leaders. It is not enough to work on the group closest to you. They will get the most attention, simply by proximity and need for interface time. To be effective, you need to work at all leadership levels and make it a personal priority.

Jack Welch is probably the best example of this in industry. At his famous School of Leadership at Crotonville, he was personally involved in mentoring and coaching the thousands of leaders in General Electric. Jack believed that teaching was what he did for a living.

"It was easy for me to get hooked on Crotonville. I spent an extraordinary amount of my time there. I was in the Pit once or twice a month, for up to four hours at a time. Over the course of 21 years, I had a chance to connect directly with nearly 18,000 GE leaders. Going there always rejuvenated me. It was one of the favorite parts of my job."

Do the mentoring and development yourself. Do not hire a consultant to do it. It is fine to have help for certain specific skills, but is a big mistake to let the professional trainers take over.

Leadership development must be your passion, one that you take seriously enough to consume a significant part of your time. You don't send people to a one-day seminar and expect them to come out good leaders. The combined snake oil of 100 consultants cannot transform your team into effective leaders as well as you can. Bennis summed it up as follows:

"True leaders... are not made in a single weekend seminar, as many of the leadership-theory spokespeople claim. I've come to think of that as the microwave theory. Pop in Mr. or Mrs. Average and out pops McLeader in sixty seconds."

Teaching must cover all aspects of leadership. Modeling the way, as well as doing formal training, is the balanced approach that pays off. I always considered leadership training a great way to engage in serious dialog with my team about things that really mattered. I would always come away with new insights. Frequently, it felt like I was receiving more than giving. It is a way to "sharpen your own saw" while you mentor others, a real win-win.

As you use this technique, keep notes on what works best and what you are learning about leadership. Keep a file and develop your own trajectory of leadership. Share this with your team and gain further insight through the dialog. Try different situations and reactions, keeping track of your success. In other words, manage your own leadership progress. You will become fascinated with this and gain much from it.

If you are a young leader, you may not feel qualified to mentor others. My advice is to start as soon as possible anyway. Since this is part of your lifelong pursuit of leadership, the sooner you begin teaching, the more you will know. Teaching is the best way to learn something. I suggest you teach what you already know and seek to learn what you need to know. Don't come across as a know-it-all in your mentoring, especially if you are inexperienced. Rather, ask people to go on an exciting journey with you toward more effective leadership.

In parallel, seek out some good mentors and coaches to help you gain in other ways. Finding a good mentor is important for many reasons:

• A mentor in your organization helps you understand the politics at levels above you.

• A mentor will spread your name in a positive way in higher forums and enhance your reputation.

• A mentor will do damage control if you make errors and show you how to mitigate further damage.

• A mentor will often "pull" you along as she advances in the organization.

• A mentor introduces you to people and assignments that can enhance your background.

Obtaining a good mentor is not as difficult as it seems. Most mature leaders are happy to help out younger talent if they are approached correctly. You let them know how you have admired their style and ask if they can give you some personal coaching. There are two tricks to a successful mentor relationship. First, find a good one, and second, make it a mutually beneficial relationship.

Finding the right mentor is a matter of personal taste, but there are some specific things to look for:

• You need to feel comfortable with this person and vice versa.

• The person must have a reputation as an outstanding leader.

• It is an advantage if your mentor has a broad background. The mentor should know the entire organization and know people in many areas.

• You want your mentor to have "coat tails." Pick a rising star or someone who will be around long enough to help you for the long run. It would be okay to select a mentor close to retirement, but you would be wise to select an additional one who will be around for a while.

• You can have mentors and coaches both inside and outside your organization.

• Often, your boss makes a good mentor, but don't consider this a must. The chemistry needs to be right for a boss to be a mentor.

Interface with your mentor often, but don't be a pest. Be alert to the best ways to communicate with your mentor. This person may find voice mail the best approach, or maybe having lunch every couple months is better. Find out what works for that person and match your approach to that. Make sure you are providing help and coaching for the mentor as well. Your insight can be quite valuable for a senior manager. All leaders need good feedback, and if you have good communication with your mentor, you can easily reverse the role and be a coach yourself.

When your mentor feels he is getting high value from a relationship with you, it enriches the dialog and ensures a lasting positive bond.

Finally, set your own course to learn about leadership. Read at least one book per month and attend at least two major seminars on the subject each year. Listen to tapes and CDs as you commute to work and join (or form) study teams among your cohorts. If you choose these wisely, you will have the benefit of the best minds in history. Your theoretical perspective about leadership will be growing, along with your practical application of it, every day. That combination will quickly shape you into a mature, well respected leader in your organization.

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Article Tags: development, growing, Leadership, mentor, training, trust



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