The ability to spot leadership behaviors and nascent leaders is a critical skill for several reasons. First, selecting candidates representing the best fit for leadership positions is a duty requiring due diligence to avoid the ugly possibility of positioning someone for failure. The second reason for skillfully spotting leadership talent is the future of your organization will depend on selecting leaders capable of successfully guiding the organization into the future.

How do you identify and grow leaders? Several options exist that will improve your odds of consistently making the right decisions. Interact frequently with your people in management positions, and consider developing a structured succession-planning program for your management staff. Provide nascent leaders with opportunities to demonstrate their skills, establish a mentoring program, and encourage work on advanced degrees and personal business coaching. The strongest programs for leadership growth and development will employ each of these options.

First, interact frequently with your entire supervisory and management staff; purposefully looking for leader characteristics among these people through your interactions with them. In larger organizations, teach your executive staff to assist you in this endeavor. Emphasize the importance of this activity to the future of the business, and show them how to do it for themselves. Target additional interactions with nascent leaders to better understand the depth of their leadership abilities. Recognize and reward this activity in your executive staff encouraging them to prepare for their own advancement by developing ready talent to replace them.

Develop a succession planning structure and approach for your organization. Just as you prepare for business continuity in preparation for a catastrophic event, preparing for businesses continuity through the decades is just as important. This often-overlooked responsibility can weaken managerial and leadership structures disabling competitive ability, limiting intellectual capital, and innovation if not routinely addressed.

Another leadership development opportunity is carefully providing nascent leaders with a low risk opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. These opportunities manifest themselves through leadership assignments on special projects or assignment to positions of slightly increased responsibility. By keeping the organization's risk level low, and tolerating some failure, you can observe and coach nascent leaders. Managers can often appear to have leadership attributes, assume positions of increased responsibility with some level of adversity, and are subsequently unsuccessful. The lesson learned here is to make sure you know whether the nascent leader can successfully react under adverse conditions. It is easy to appear to be a good manager in the good times. One of the truest tests of leadership character is how a leader reacts when times are tough. While I would not wish adversity on any leader, it is one of the truest tests of leadership character and ability.

Mentoring programs offer another way to identify and grow leaders from managers. The best mentoring programs have the following characteristics divided into the program's strategies and tactics. Strategically speaking, a comprehensive mentoring program will consist of the following strategic components:

Organizational Commitment and Cultural acceptance.
Clear program goals and objectives for mentors and protégées.
Qualified Mentors.
Clearly defined expectations.
Mentor and Protégée Commitment.
Phased Structure.
Penetration several layers into the management ranks.

Complementing the strategic components of a comprehensive mentoring program are the tactical components, which consist of the following items:

Documentation for the program processes.
Candid and dignified communication between program administrators, protégées, and mentors.
Safe entry and exit strategies for protégées and mentors.
Participation criteria that includes as many protégées as possible versus exclusion criteria
limiting potential protégées.
Substantive progress.

The structure of a mentoring program must support the organization's goals and objectives for a mentoring program. Furthermore, the program's long-term success depends on assuring the entire organization embraces the program and fuses the mentor program into the corporate culture. This is a simple investment with long-term high-yield benefits.

Schooling and coaching comprise the final recommended approach to growing leaders from managers. Supporting the acquisition of advanced degrees with incentives and tuition reimbursement are common throughout businesses today and should be continued. The American Management Association also offers a wide array of coursework directed exclusively toward executive learning skills. Personal executive coaching is another approach to grooming leaders from managers. Whether company or self-funded, a carefully vetted personal business coach can expedite executive training and development through one-on-one tutoring.

Among the many mission-critical responsibilities, senior executives must tend to is the acquisition, nurturing, and development of leadership talent within their business. This activity is no less important than preparing for board meetings, establishing strategic plans, sponsoring innovation, and keeping an eye on shareholder value. Looking at this obligation in financial terms, the investment in time and effort will pay future-value dividends for your employees, your company and your shareholders. Looking at this obligation in cultural terms, a fully engaged leadership development program will generate loyalty and establish your company with a reputation for leadership development. This type of culture will also make your recruiting and retention job easier. Looking at this obligation from practical common sense terms, ask yourself who among your existing staff will be running your company in ten years. If the answer concerns you, do not waste another minute getting started growing your company's future leaders.

Michael McCarty C.C.C.E, MBA

Mr. McCarty has a proven record of accomplishment in strategic leadership roles for fortune 500 companies. He is an award winning performer in the areas of large-scale operations leadership, strategic planning, senior project management, and significant contributions to the bottom line. Michael has successfully leveraged his leadership skills to provide keen insight, vision, direction, and executive support to financial services firms, information technology firms, and the automotive, credit, and insurance industries. He has been particularly effective in start-up and turnaround situations.

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