Emerald Insight
Handbook of
Business Strategy
2005
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Emerald Insight Handbook of Business Strategy |
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2005 |
Manage for Today, Mentor for Tomorrow:
Strategies for Developing Your Next Round of Leaders
By Michael H. Shenkman
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Name:
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The board meeting had gone well. Hal’s plans for the quarter were on track; the strategic plan for the next 18 months still made sense. Hal was feeling good.
Then, from the other end of the table, Hal’s closest friend on the Board raises his hand. “Dave,” Hal nonchalantly points to him and acknowledges his request to speak.
“Hal, great job today. I think we’re all ready for a drink…” Laughter from the group, but Hal suddenly feels less at ease, for no reason, he thinks. “… I was just wondering, who is in the wings to succeed you? Even you don’t live forever, you probably want to hit the golf course while you can still walk.” More laughs. “So, who is in the wings to lead this company?”
Hal (a fictitious name) told me this was the motivating incident that led to him seeking the kind of professional mentoring services my firm offers. I recall the rest of the story this way:
Hal’s mind went blank, but keeping his composure and command style, he responded to his friend, “Dave, great question. You know, I’ve been thinking about that...”
“You planning to leave, Hal?” asks another member. Again laughter.
“No, but, you know, succession is my job. I guess it just became a higher priority.”
Yes, succession planning is the CEO’s job, but one that is often put off until another day. “After all, there are other, more immediate things to do,” the executive muses. And, of course, any executive who thinks this way is absolutely right. Managing businesses in complex, competitive environments is pressingly demanding. The demands for efficiency, for productivity, for innovation – each one an absorbing challenge – are unrelenting.
Yet, as Hal looked around the room, at the senior executives that had joined him in this pivotal board meeting, he realized how little convinced he was that there really was a successor among them. It isn’t that he hasn’t thought about it. And he had actually taken some steps toward that end: he has gone to dinner with several of his execs, made sure he had one on one’s. Still, he didn’t know whether or not any of the people in the room could take over if he was hit by the proverbial bus.
Hal’s situation is far from unusual. Succession planning, especially in the top ranks of the organization, is taken seriously, but not urgently. That is, no executive pooh-poohs the idea of succession planning; it’s just that they don’t quite get to it, amid the tumult of a normal business day. Even when time is allowed, in going to dinner or one-on-one’s for more relaxed conversation with leader high-potentials, the conversation gets restricted to the most unrevealing subjects: problems with meeting the numbers, problems with this or that employee, sports or some (safe) current event or TV program. In the typical one-on-one performance review, there is so much angling going on for decisions around bonuses, raises, promotions or disciplinary issues, a conversation on leading and growing as a leader hardly happens at all. Thus, despite all the good intentions, there do not seem to be many occasions that yield the kinds of insights that detect nascent leadership or that can signal optimal choices for succession.
This is no fault of the searching CEO. The difficulty faced by executives is that leadership doesn’t present itself in the same way managerial prowess does. The mentoring relationship requires a different kind of attention and interaction than does what is required of effective managing. Here are a few of the key insights and interactions that happen in mentoring and not in managing. As you will see, they are qualitatively different from those the manager takes up with a direct report.
Decoding The Vague Feeling. Often, as I have found in the course of my professional mentoring, the call to leading comes in subtle ways and so good prospects are missed. Sometimes the prospects themselves do not necessarily recognize that the drive to lead is taking shape in their lives.
This prospect’s name is Susan. Hal confided to me that he felt Susan took good care of her people and she was great performer – a real “charmer,” in meetings, but he wondered if she wasn’t “soft,” whether she had that extra edge, to drive people over the top to success. In the course of our conversations, Susan exclaimed: “I’d never say this to Hal, but sometimes I just wonder, well, whether I shouldn’t be doing more. And what bothers me is that I don’t know what that is. It’s nothing about the job, or the people or my boss. I have nothing to complain about. So what could it be? It’s driving me crazy.”
“It’s as though there are times in my work when I feel I should say things to people, or jump in to their problems in ways that I never felt before. But then I’ll ignore the feeling, and go back to my job,” she said.
I felt, with all of these factors in play that she could be on the brink, teetering on the edge of moving to a new level of engagement with her world. But sometimes this question does come from being “soft,” as Hal would say; or it might come from lack of imagination, or even burnout. Hal is a hard-driving executive. If she had asked that question of him, his suspicions about her “softness” would no doubt have been confirmed. But, as her mentor, I could hear a different concern in her question: it reflected her own impulse to bring something more to the situation than she had in the past. She felt highly anxious, filled with a sense of obligation and desire.
When the executive asks, “Who are my potential leaders?” they look at all the people running around pleasing them, managing well and getting things done. Most top executives are determined to drive results now, for this quarter’s reports, to keep costs down, to keep people focused on their tasks. They don’t look at the people who, quietly, with some struggle and loss of their bearings, are asking “Shouldn’t I be doing more?”
Mentors let their protégés fail. Mentors aren’t coaches who help leaders “perform” better, applying better managerial skills, or even give better speeches. Coaches, who are often the leader’s direct supervisor, cannot afford failure and so coach their reports to succeed at any cost. Mentors, however, have the luxury of allowing failure. What they don’t want as a result of such failures is for their charges to lose heart, or to forget the big picture, or to be too timid about what the leader is willing to risk. On the other side of the equation, mentors aren’t cheerleaders. Mentors observe how often they are unable to explain to a new leader what it will be like to see peoples’ eyes light up as the challenge before them unfolds. A mentor can’t express the awesome sense of responsibility one feels in that situation. A mentor can’t explain the terrible pain at seeing a venture sputter or fail, or how unsatisfying merely winning is, in comparison to the thrill of continuing to lead ever greater challenges. The mentor simply puts people in the right situations, with the right frame of mind. Then it’s up to the protégé.
The mentor just lets the protégé experience the full force of leading, guiding the protégé’s perceptions and responses. The mentor might smile, giving the protégé a moment of recognition for being on the right course. Or the mentor might just provide the occasion for his protégé to keep talking about what is going on so the leader can think things through. The mentor might just say, “Well, give it a try.” But the smile, or the look of concern, tells his protégé that an experience is about to unfold. That smile conveys “attentive responsibility.” It says, “I am paying attention, you are not alone; and in doing this, we are a part of something together.”
Mentors bring the bad news. Mentors bring the bad news that no one else will ever convey. Ernest comes to mind: a young executive who Hal thought to be among the highest potential candidate for succeeding the founding president. I found him to indeed be an effective manager, hard driving and executive-like. He had a great sense of humor. During one of our sessions, I observed him in a different role, as his family, wife and two young daughters came into the office. He was affectionate, animated, and full of joy at their entrance. They left, and we returned to the subject of his role in the company. His passion drained. The color in his face even paled. He looked down and started to talk about the objectives and the numbers. What a contrast.
“Are you always this way, when it comes to your role in the company?” I asked?
“What way?” Ernest responded, with some defensiveness creeping in.
“Dispassionate. By the numbers. Calculating. That’s the way I experience you; and that’s what I feel from you whenever we discuss your role here. Seeing you with your family really drove it home for me, made it clear why I find our conversations, well, even a bit boring.”
“You think I am that way? I am not that way.”
“Well, I certainly see that you aren’t such a cool, calculating character with your family; but as soon as they left and we got back to your role here, all that excitement went away, didn’t it?” I asked.
“I guess it did.”
“How do you expect to get people to rise up and perform with excitement and passion if you are a dry, execution-mongering executive?” I asked. “Is Hal that way?”
“No, he’s pretty emotional, which is a pain sometimes; but at other times it’s great when he’s excited.”
Who else but a mentor would give Ernest the benefit of such an observation? His boss wouldn’t. Ernest got things done without fail, with little or no supervision; Ernest was the very embodiment of my maxim, “Managers are needed by their bosses; leaders are needed by their followers.” Why spoil a good thing? The people that report to Ernest obviously wouldn’t say anything. His wife and family see a completely different person. Only a mentor could bring this kind of news. If Ernest wasn’t a prospect for leading, his cool demeanor wouldn’t be an issue. But if he is going to inspire success and take the company to growth and prosperity, if he is going to lead, it is an issue.
The mentor has to be willing to risk the hurt, the insult, even the parting of ways in order to bring to prominence the kinds of attitudes and orientations that go into creative leading. If a person is going to have a chance at leading successfully, who else but a mentor can provide this kind of guide?
So, the problem isn’t that there isn’t time for mentoring candidates for succession, the problem is that executives need to shift their attention and mindset into the conversations that offer opportunities for insight into a candidate’s potential and opening into discussions that offer mentoring to the candidate. To this we add the fact that while executives are well schooled in delivering bad news, or look forward to those occasions when a deserving prospect can be promoted, they do not know very well how to segue into a conversation in which mentoring transpires.
No one’s at fault here. A mentoring conversation is quite counter to ones that have to do with performance and managerial proficiency. While managing focuses on processes that encompass people, machines, resources, organization, mentoring focuses on a single person. Of course, managing concentrates attention on an end result. Mentoring focuses attention on a person’s here and now. Managing can rely on information that is generated, processed and organized in a way that is decision-ready, awaiting the executive’s assent. Mentoring has to unearth personal information that may not be readily given: the engagement often hinges on noticing and responding to completely unspoken signals, and it requires a mutual willingness to give and take. None of these are the managerial skills that executives keep at the top of their repertoires.
To sum up, mentoring is that distinctive human endeavor in which some take it upon themselves to closely attend to the growth and development of others, and take responsibility for seeing them succeed at a higher level of human accomplishment and maturity.
Michael Shenkman, Ph.D., is founder and president of the Arch of Leadership (www.archofleadership.com), a leader mentoring company. This article was adapted from his new book, The Arch and The Path, the Life of Leading Greatly (Sandia Heights Media, 2005).