From the Publisher

Together, these authors have more first-hand experience in leadership development and succession planning than you're likely to find anywhere else. And here, they show companies how to create a pipeline of talent that will continuously fill their leadership needs-needs they may not even yet realize. The Leadership Pipeline delivers a proven framework for priming future leaders by planning for their development, coaching them, and measuring the results of those efforts. Moreover, the book presents a combination leadership-development/succession-planning program that ensures a steady line-up of leaders for every critical position within the company. It's an approach that bolsters the retention of intellectual capital as it eliminates the need to go outside for expensive "stars," who will probably jump ship before they reach their full potential anyway.

Booknews

Three business consultants explain how companies can develop leaders from their current pool of employees by developing a system that sorts out corporate roles, identifies potential, and plans development. They identify and explain six specific leadership levels that comprise their pipeline. They do not provide a bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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Product Details

• ISBN: 0787951722
  
• ISBN-13: 9780787951726
• Format: Hardcover, 272pp
• Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
• Pub. Date: January 2001
• Edition Number: 1
• Sales Rank: 3,789

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Six Leadership Passages

As you read about each passage, you'll naturally apply it to your own organization and may question how we've defined and divided each turn in the pipeline. The odds are that you'll immediately think of at least one (and probably more) leadership transitions that apply to your own company that we have not addressed in the Leadership Pipeline model. While there certainly are other transitions, they are too small or incomplete to qualify as a major passage. For instance, many global companies have business general managers at the country level and regional executives with responsibility for several countries. These regional executives report to a person with a title such as global consumer products head. Although this global consumer products headmanages group managers (the regional executives in this case), she isn't an enterprise manager because she reports to a CEO or president and has little accountability for corporate profit and loss matters. For our purposes here, we would categorize her as a group manager, even though she may have responsibility for other group managers.

Similarly, you may wonder why the transition from team member to team leader isn't worthy of its own passage. First, this is usually a subset of Passage One (managing self to managing others). Second, team leaders frequently lack the decision-making authority on selection and rewards that first-line managers receive. Third, team leaders usually focus on technical or professional matters (getting a project or program completed) and aren't tested in more general management areas.

Each organization is unique, and each probably has at least one leadership passage with distinctive aspects. It's likely, however, that you can fit that distinctive passage into one of our six passages. As you become more attuned to each of them, we believe you'll see how they apply to your own situation and organization. If there is a passage in your business that doesn't fit our model, create your own definition of the transition and tell us about it.

Passage One: From Managing Self to Managing Others

When this happens, they are at Passage One. Though this might seem like an easy, natural leadership passage, it's often one where people trip. The highest-performing people, especially, are reluctant to change; they want to keep doing the activities that made them successful. As a result, people make the job transition from individual contributor to manager without making a behavioral or value-based transition. In effect, they become managers without accepting the requirements. Many consultants, for instance, have skipped this turn, moving from transitory team leadership to business leader without absorbing much of the leaming in between. The result, when business leaders miss this passage, is frequently disaster.

The skills people should learn at this first leadership passage include planning work, filling jobs, assigning work, motivating, coaching, and measuring the work of others. First-time managers need to learn how to reallocate their time so that they not only complete their assigned work but also help others perform effectively. They cannot allocate all of their time to putting out fires, seizing opportunities, and handling tasks themselves. They must shift from "doing" work to getting work done through others.

Reallocating time is an especially difficult transitional requirement for first-time managers. Part of the problem is that many neophyte managers still prefer to spend time on their "old" work, even as they take charge of a group. Yet the pressure to spend less time on individual work and more time on managing will increase at each passage, and if people don't start making changes in how they...