Overcoming the 6 Barriers to Developing Emerging Leaders
And Revealing the Unstoppable Impact of Identity
It happens all the time: The best performers get promoted to manager because their performance is stronger than their peers’. But the skills they used to outperform their peers aren’t the skills they need to manage their peers. Uh oh …
In This Article:
The skills to succeed in leading others aren’t based on technical or professional competency; they’re based on social competency.
Developing social competency almost always requires the ability to lead oneself through personal change.
Don’t promote based on technical/professional skill if the emerging leader is unwilling to embrace managerial values.
Key Application:
Start grooming and coaching leadership and management skills from day 1.
Performance Skills ≠ Management Skills
Please don’t view that heading as a binary statement. I’m not saying that performance skills are irrelevant to being an effective manager … that would be a foolish statement.
I am, however, saying that performance skills are unique from management skills. The skills and behaviors that contribute to strong individual performance aren’t enough to make someone a good manager. And in many cases, they actually compete with the skills required to manage others.
Borrowing the title of Marshall Goldsmith’s classic book: What got you here won’t get you there.
The Big Picture
Before we get into the specifics of the 6 barriers, let me make three overarching points about developing emerging leaders into future managers.
Point 01 :: A Change Will Do Them Good
First things first: This is about change. This is NOT about learning new skills. They are vastly different.
To develop means to change. Adapt. To be stretched and challenged to show up differently … to think, act, talk, relate, prioritize and engage in visibly, tangibly different ways. You cannot develop without change.
The emerging leader needs to comprehend this and embrace it. It’s easy for emerging leaders to feel that they deserve additional opportunity based on their performance.
Point 02 :: This Is About Deep Change
Second, we’re shooting for deep change. Though the emerging leader needs new skills and behaviors, that’s not what’s actually being changed. New skills and behaviors are outcomes, the product of things like changed values, attitudes and identity.
Said differently, if we aim only for changing skills and behaviors, the emerging leader won’t really embrace change at the level of values, attitudes and identity. The new skills and behaviors will be someone else’s priority, not their own.
The result: They’ll comply, but won’t transform. They will embrace the changes intellectually, but will actually reject them psychologically. When push comes to shove (and when their own manager’s not around) the new skills and behaviors will become secondary.
The barriers to change exist at this deeper, intuitive level, and that’s where they must be addressed. Otherwise, any developmental initiative will end up being just a mental exercise.
Point 03 :: We’re Targeting Social Competency
Finally, it will help the emerging leader to understand that the kind of deep change in view involves a change from technical/functional competency to social competency. Their technical/functional specialization opened a door of opportunity, but successfully walking through it requires being competent at dealing with people and integrating with the work of others.
Social competency includes the ability to persuade, cast vision, compell, challenge, motivate, build relational capital, be politically savvy, establish and deepen trust and—perhaps most significantly—to understand, relate to and focus on their teams’ interests apart from their own.
This is the basis of servant leadership, and it is the foundation of effective management. The emerging leader needs to grasp that it’s not about them any more, it’s about the team.
The 6 Change Barriers to Development
You’ll see some overlap between them, but each change barrier is distinct.
01 :: Execution Behavior: From Self to Others
The sea change in leadership behavior comes when emerging leaders shift their execution behaviors from doing the work themselves to getting the work done through other people.
This is often the first big “aha moment” that emerging leaders encounter in their attempts to manage others. Their ability to produce an outcome is significantly reduced as they realize they are one step removed from influencing the outcome.
Expect frustration and confusion from emerging leaders who are beginning their first efforts at leading their peers in a project or initiative. They must learn that managing others is much more than just telling people what to do and how to do it, and then doing it themselves when others don’t perform up to their expectations.
02 :: Values: From Working to Managing
Going through Barrier # 01 exposes the next barrier: the opportunity to embrace managerial work instead of merely tolerating it. Emerging leaders must come to see value in making time for others and investing in others’ productivity and effectiveness.
The deeper value being pushed on here is their individual identity. A high-performing individual contributor often esteems their own work so highly that it competes with the value of helping others. They will never become effective managers if they don’t value pouring into and equipping others.
03 :: Metrics: From Personal Productivity to Catalyzing Others
The emerging leader must use a different yardstick to measure their activity.
High performers use metrics based on personal productivity: planning, scheduling, time management, efficiency, focus, technical proficiency and knowledge, task completion, quality, etc.
Managers use metrics based on catalyzing the team: knowing team members’ strengths and interests, knowing their skills and limitations, planning the team’s effort, assigning tasks, keeping the team’s efforts aligned, integrating individual efforts into a composite team effort, problem-solving, communication motivating and accountability.
For more insight, here’s a previous article on catalyzing a team:
04 :: Time Allocation: From Organic to Intentional
A direct follow-on from Barrier #03 is allotting time for catalyzing responsibilities. These efforts don’t happen organically, they must be performed intentionally. Which means planning and measurement.
One of the easiest ways to coach an emerging leader is to discuss their plan for meeting with the individuals they are leading/managing. They should be able to give specific details about how they plan to execute the metrics listed in Barrier #03.
Once they work through Barriers #01 - 03, this effort will become more straightforward. And while allocating time to managerial work may feel “mechanical” at the outset, it will eventually become more “relational.”
05 :: Perspectives: From Task Completion to Collaboration/Integration
One outcome of the changes experienced in overcoming Barriers #01 - #04 is a change in perspective. In addition to seeing what the team is working on, they’ll begin to see how the team is working.
They will hear things they couldn’t hear before. They’ll become aware of conversations, of attitudes, of willingness to collaborate (or not). They’ll notice who works well together, and who doesn’t. They’ll begin to see each individual in terms of their gifts, talents, passions, interests, etc., and start to see each person’s best contribution to the overall team.
This perspective is invaluable, and positions the emerging leader for the final and most important barrier …
06 :: Identity: From Producer to Servant
The final barrier is the deepest and perhaps most elusive of the 6 Barriers. There is a healthy humility that comes from recognizing that the team will outperform you, even if you’re a stronger individual performer than anyone else on the team. There is a healthy pride and satisfaction that comes from knowing that you created the environment that catalyzed the team’s success.
This is the essence of servant leadership: Elevating the team’s interests to be equal to—if not more important than—your own. This comes in the shift to a servant identity, whose purpose is to make everyone else better.
This is a powerful, deep and empowering change. Once this barrier is crossed, an emerging leader’s influence is unstoppable.
How and Where To Begin
If you’re managing a team with one or more emerging leaders, you should start the development process now. If you wait on developing an emerging leader until there’s an opportunity to promote them, it’s way too late—when you most need them to perform, they simply won’t have the necessary skills. Additionally, promoting an emerging leader before they’ve developed rewards the wrong behaviors and sends the wrong message to the team.
Delegate a task, initiative or project to an emerging leader, letting them manage the effort while you coach them in involving others on the team in the effort. Use the Barriers as points of development, helping them to see the barriers in advance. Begin with Barrier #01 and proceed through the rest as the project. Help them navigate the changes they’ll experience and debrief on how they did. Expect them to succeed in overcoming some barriers and to struggle with others.
If they do well, then delegate a more complex project for them to complete. If they struggle, circle back and try again, giving them the opportunity to navigate the changes a second time until they get it.
And remember: How you work with them will be the model they use to work with their peers. So model this well!
Peace be with you…
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