Succession planning: blowing up conventional wisdom

By Rick Carr, June 2008

A major responsibility of leadership is the selection and development of potential leaders. Succession planning is a means to perpetuate future organizational success. Identifying and preparing promotable candidates through mentoring, training and job rotation remains a high priority in successful organizations. Identifying the most qualified person requires a level of objectivity and insight into critical factors, which are not always found in today’s organizations. The increased importance and complexity of succession planning is due to the current exit of baby boomers from the work force.

The Problem with Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom calls for promoting the person with the best collection of experience, technical intelligence and skills. This same wisdom dictates that individuals who perform well at one level of an organization, are prime candidates for moving up in the organization and typically are the first considered for promotion. It is rare to find a succession plan that uses other human leadership factors to identify candidates capable of moving up the organizational ladder. Using conventional wisdom guarantees organizations will continue to erode leadership performance by promoting candidates not ideally suited for additional responsibility. The time has come to blow up this wisdom.

The Missing Ingredients

Experience, intelligence and determination are certainly crucial factors for success, yet even with all three of these skills in abundance, one is not always assured of success at the next organizational level. Think of someone in your organization who performed brilliantly at one level and then failed at the next. Which of the three factors broke down?  Did the person suddenly lose intelligence?  Or experience?  Or lose their skill?  Certainly not; there must be missing ingredients in this trio causing the breakdown. Leaders are discovering these missing ingredients to be talent at people skills (emotional intelligence) and character. Best defined, talent is an ingrained pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. It’s what comes naturally to some of us. Talent cannot be taught easily; it takes focus from the person’s entry into their career.

Character on the other hand, is best defined as the traits within an individual that determine his/her response to circumstance. It is what defines how we will react in any setting. Character can also be developed. In fact, character is developing every minute of every day by the decisions we make or by those we observe in our supervisors. Character is continuously developing in one direction or another, either stronger or weaker.

Succession Planning Step 1: Talent Analysis

Talent and character are actually the starting point for improved succession planning. Strong leaders begin the selection process by identifying those with the right talent for the job. Being a great accountant doesn’t automatically qualify one to run the finance department any more than being a great teacher qualifies one for the principal’s position, nor being a great policeman qualify one to be a Chief. The examples can go on and on. Talent analysis is step one in succession planning. There are many fine diagnostic tools in today’s market in determining one’s talents.  Strong organizations are learning to rely on these tools not only in succession planning but also during pre-employment screening.

Succession Planning Step 2: Character Diagnosis

Character is more difficult to diagnose, yet is the single most important ingredient employees bring to work. Conventional wisdom is that we hire and promote based on skills, yet in reality we find that we must complete negative performance evaluations or even terminate people most frequently for emotional intelligence missteps and character issues. Character is the best predictor of future behavior. Diagnosing critical character traits for a position and finding candidates to match is a vast departure from conventional wisdom. Character diagnosis thus becomes the second step in improved succession planning. Diagnosing character, individually and organizationally, can be difficult without proper diagnostic tools. (Citygate Associates, LLC has training designed to specifically identify individual and organizational character.) 

Avoiding Costly Mistakes

Match a person to a specific job first by determining if they are already well suited for a more challenging and complex position and secondly, if they have the necessary character traits to be successful. Resist the practice of moving candidates to the next rung on the organizational ladder without using these two steps as part of the process, thus forcing candidates to eventually reach a level of ineffectiveness. After these two new steps, then and only then, should one go to the conventional methods of measuring candidates by performance, experience and education. These five steps will insulate an organization from succession mistakes costing thousands of dollars.

Citygate Associates has leadership training specifically designed to aid you in developing a robust succession planning process. Talent, values and character will continue to be foundational in identifying potential high performers as well as entry-level candidates. Citygate tailors all leadership training to the specific needs of each organization. Citygate’s passion for improving leadership perspectives, teamwork and strengthening organizational trust in both the public and private sectors is a large part of our mission as a consulting entity. Please visit our website for further information on our services.

If you would like to discuss leadership training and how it can be tailored to fit your organization, please contact Citygate Associates at (916) 458‑5100.

Read Full Post »

Character: the first and last frontier of leadership theory

By Rick Carr, May 2007

Emotional intelligence, 360-degree leadership, change management, strategic agility, leadership perspectives, culture of trust, managing chaos, discovering leadership strengths, leadership by breaking the rules, encouraging employees’ hearts, and customer centricity. This is a list of popular leadership theories currently found in bookstores. Leadership theories are like McDonald’s restaurants — they are everywhere. How do managers and administrators make any sense of these theories while gleaning from them those nuggets of information that can help in carrying out their responsibilities? Is there any fundamental truth that forms a common strand running among all of these and other yet “undiscovered” theories? The answer is simply “yes.”

Leadership is Relationship

The basis of all leadership is rooted in relationships. Relationship based on a person to person or a person to a team. Right now, your internal alarm is probably going off. You may suspect the remainder of what you will read in this article contains information you already know. Relationship as a concept appears to be simple when compared to the “scientific” leadership theories mentioned at the start of this article. We see “relationship” as such a common figure of speech that we immediately dismiss it as the basis for any serious leadership discussion. We may view “relationship” as a tool we primarily use in our personal life, but not in our professional life. We know fundamentally that we use relationship in leading people, but to declare relationship as the basis of all leadership seems to be a bit over the top. Or is it?

Character-Based Leadership

Any serious discussion of the relationship between a leader and those being led will eventually center on the character of those involved in the relationship. Why is that? It is because the character of each participant will determine how he or she will react to each situation throughout the day. Qualities are continually being molded in our lives that determine how we will respond to circumstance, good or bad. Therefore, our character traits are great predictors of future actions in both stressful and non-stressful circumstances. If the preceding comments are true, then character recognition and development is one of the great frontiers left in leadership, deserving to be explored and studied by serious leaders.

Developing Character

How is character recognized and developed? Some believe that our parents give character to us during our formative years, or at birth. Actually, character is developed moment by moment as the character qualities built into our lives determine our response to circumstance. Our character can be developed either stronger or weaker, depending on these qualities and responses. A change in response requires a change in thought. We know that with diligent study, thoughts can be developed in a given direction. If we stay the course and repeat these thoughts enough times, a habit is formed. Character development is the result of the study of character qualities and the application of different response thoughts, which repeated enough times, form a habit. This is not a theory; this is reality.

Hire for Character; Train for Skills

Character is a powerful force in the world. This is evident by the stories we read every day in the newspaper. Poor character can destroy a person, team or institution quicker than any other factor. Major character failures are reported monthly in the public and private sectors. This trend will continue until a decision is made to begin to hire, recognize and develop character within those we lead. Character development is not a program that you implement, tire of, and dispose of in favor of the newest leadership theory or technique. Rather, the use of character-based leadership and team development, starting with hiring for character, becomes the basis of all leadership initiatives implemented within an organization, regardless of organization size or complexity.

Citygate Associates has used the Character First! initiative as a basis for improving customer service and teamwork for the past ten years. Results have been nothing less than astounding. If you and your organization are serious about developing leadership in a dynamic, lasting way, contact Citygate. We will train your organization to recognize and develop the 49 character qualities within your team and set the stage for lasting success.

If you would like to discuss Character First! and how it can be integrated into your operation, please contact Citygate Associates by phone at (916) 458 5100.

Read Full Post »