Model Assist Watch Leave: Leadership development process
The leadership development process illustrates the way in which a leader raises more leaders. The heart in this process is to “reproduce” Joppie’s (the leader’s) methods, systems, decision making capability and understanding while wisdom will remind us that a leader always needs to respect the unique characteristics and personality of the team members’ design. The focus should be on results, and we should guide our staff to reach the outcomes in “their own unique way” but within the boundaries of clearly defined core values and consistent with the leader’s standards (quality control). This is best done in the following 4 stages of development:
1. Model
The first step is for the leader (Joppie) to model, for example, the sales journey to Margaret, the Sales Representative. Margaret then watches Joppie in a real life scenario and once the deal is successfully completed and the client has left the room, Margaret is required to give feedback to the leader, verbally, and after discussing the learning, Margaret is expected to go write down the details. This gives a valuable platform for the leader to have written content on the sales process for future training, but also grows the writing skills of Margaret. Over a period of a few months this process is repeated and refined. For the sake of this illustration – lets imagine the sales process involved 5 steps. Steps 1, 4 and 5 is the easy part, the technical and complex part is steps 2 and 3 in the process.
2. Assist
The next step is for Joppie and Margaret to discuss – before the client engagement – who will lead each step. Initially, as Margaret grows her technical skills, Joppie would conduct steps 2 and 3, being the most difficult. However, during this phase Margaret is given steps 1, 4 and 5 to complete while Joppie is close by and ready to guide and assist Margaret. Allowing the customer to experience more than one sales person also builds the culture of team and a vital skills-transfer process is ensured as a bonus! Role playing and pre-defining the steps each one is responsible for is critical to deliver a high quality experience for the customer. Over time Joppie will allow Margaret to grow in executing all the steps (1 to 5) and in the process closely observes her application of the skills and the character she exhibits toward the customer, the company’s team and herself.
3. Watch
It is the leader’s role to watch and discern the success seed in the person. All people have a seed inside them to succeed. When a leader comes along and sees that seed, and develops it, both Joppie and Margaret can reach their FULL potential and fulfill what they are here on earth to do. How do I find success seeds in others? Watch them closely and look out for:
- Natural (and spiritual) gifts – tell them they have the gift and extract it.
- Send them for a temperament assessment (psychometric profile like StrenghtsFinder).
- Passion: look at what gives people joy and channel them to do more of it.
- Ask them what irritates them the most (they’re usually good at identifying that).
- What are they naturally effective in?
- Give them opportunities and permission to try out new things.
As the leader, focus on the team and diligently search for success seeds to fertilize with encouragement, and water it with opportunity. As you constantly provide positive re-enforcement and channel Margaret into her ideal flow, she will master her role. Finally, this process is not complete, and Margaret cannot transition to another department until she has successfully trained someone else. She needs to start the same process with John, a new staff trainee, and only when Joppie sees that Margaret can train someone else will he be fully assured that Margaret is ready to work independently. Margaret will develop herself into a new person within the company as she helps those around her grow.
4. Leave
For the development cycle to be completed, Joppie needs to “leave” the process completely in the responsible hands of Margaret. Consequently, Margaret needs to
- Agree verbally and formally (in a 1-2-1 performance appraisal context) with Joppie that she “gets it, wants it, and has the capacity (successfully completed the training); and
- Margaret needs to have a proven track record of fruit (showing she has mastered the technical requirements to be certified and the character); and
- Publicly share with the team that she is taking responsibility for the sales targets, and how she is going to contribute to the sales of the company’s revenue targets; and then
- Margaret needs to be publicly recognized as a company “sales manager” or a “senior sales technician”; and then
- She needs to be rewarded (also financially) as she successfully proves herself to be a trustworthy leader in this sales area.
