Grooming Great Leaders

Building leadership and leaders has never been more important than it is now.
A lot of leaders in the IT sector are first level line managers, quite far from
the CEO or the next level management.

Until a few years ago, there would be a handful of leaders, who would be
running a large company. Globalization has spread companies far and wide and
this has required leadership to move out of the headquarters. Technology has
resulted in collapsing organization structures.

So how does one go about building leadership and leaders? Just calling
managers as leaders does not solve the problem. Managers need to know and
understand that leadership behavior is expected from them and assisted in
developing leadership behavior, and made accountable it behavior. Of course, the
decision making has to be pushed down to appropriate levels and the managers
must feel empowered.

If managers are held responsible for customer satisfaction and they know that
their performance will be measured by this, they will do what it takes to keep
the customer happy. They must also feel that they can make the right decisions
that will help keep a customer happy, and the mistakes they make will be treated
only as learning lessons and not held against them. This not only gives them
legitimate authority to do the right things, but also makes them more
accountable.

One of the many ways to build leadership is through role modeling. In today’s
world of fast growing companies and GenX employees, there are not enough role
models. Young first-time employees do not think good values can make one
successful, and so blitz, movie stars and rich entrepreneurs impress them the
most. It is a well-established fact that we all ape the behavior of successful
people. How can this be exploited for leadership development? Take a stock of
what is rewarded in your company and what is seen as success. Redefining these
in line with the behavior you expect from your employees would immediately lead
to behavior change.

Almost all companies have a written vision, mission and values. But how do
you get ever increasing new employees to understand and adopt it? In fast
growing and young companies, there are not enough old timers to tell them
"war stories". It is a big challenge to convert the words into spirit.
One experiment that has succeeded really well at HSS is to put a face to this.

We have taken 12 leadership behaviors and converted them into awards. Every
quarter, three of these are chosen and the entire company has a choice of
selecting a person who in their opinion displays these the best. And they can
make one choice each for the awards. The winner is declared on the basis of
number of votes. The top 20 are also profiled. Three major things are
accomplished through this process. First, the leadership behavior gets a high
pedestal that is visible to all. Second, it automatically gives leadership
behavior a high value because you are appreciating someone for it. Third, the
people who are seen doing right things (Top 20) are clearly visible through the
entire company. And since they are people, it sets an example for all others, on
what is it to be a good leader like a great mentor or a great communicator.

The winners are then appointed to lead areas where they have displayed
strength. The other finding is that the winners as well as the top 20 are from
all levels and functions in the company.

Similarly, a well thought out 360-degree process can help managers to get
feedback on their leadership behavior from their peers, supervisor, subordinates
and customers. The key for success would be that the company is able to create
an environment where people are not afraid to give and receive feedback,
specially the areas of improvement. One of the best ways is to make it
confidential and purely developmental and not evaluative (not a part of
performance review) and encourage all managers on improving for the future.

Of course, there are innumerable other ways to develop leadership. Once you
know you want to do something, you would think of something that would work best
for you.

Aadesh Goyal is vice-president, human resources, IT and corporate
communications, Hughes Software Systems. He can be reached at aadesh@hss.hns.com