David Tighe

Leadership excellence doesn't grow in seminar rooms, it blossoms on the shop floor, in executive suites, in the cubes of middle managers. Superiors foster it in subordinates, who pass the new constructive habits down in turn. To truly affect a company's bottom line, it must become an embedded part of the culture, not simply an exercise to annoint targeted indivduals leaders. 

The best internal leaders are home-grown, found by dint of effort like diamonds in the rough. Here are some quick thoughts on what needs to happen to find the 'hidden' leaders within your organization.

Step One: It all starts with you, of course. Set the pace. Demonstrate a true commitment to responsible leadership every day in everything you do, modeling the behavior you seek others to adopt. Then start working to imbue your entire organization with the same zealous mindset.

Step Two: Train more consistently, and focus on day-to-day interactive leadership skills. Time management, communications skills, presentation skills are all training modules that should be subsets of more strategic initiative to change the whole corporate mindset to focus on action, collaboration and forward thinking. Individual training elements should build on each other rather than exist in isolation.

Step Three: Broaden your participation. Too many leadership development programs involve too few people who are anointed ahead of time (based on old criteria in many cases.) This is backwards. Assume leadership lies under every rock, and make your development program responsible for looking under every one. You have to refine a lot of iron ore to produce great iron. Then you must process it further to create durable steel. Don’t miss some great foundational ore by selecting candidates too narrowly: People who may initially require a bit more polishing, will shine just as brightly if given the chance. These “found” leaders may also prove to be your best, most committed leaders because you led the creation process.

Step Four: Sustain the Gains! This is the key point. You must embed leadership habits into everyday interactions, the tactics of day-to-day people-to-people interpersonal skills. This is the core learning that must go back to the office with each participant:
-- Set up monthly check-ins with participants to report on their commitment to the change in mindset started at training sessions.
-- Pair up participants as co-mentors to keep each other committed and engaged.
-- Model the new mindset in your own actions (forward-thinking, action-oriented communications/conversations/meetings).

Steps 1A-4A: Inclusive leadership development cannot last without your top executives walking the talk, clearly communicating their belief, pursuing the truth in all actions and situations. But don’t stop there. Leverage their commitment and excitement to push the development program down aggressively through the layers of management to the leaders you have on the shop floor, on the street knocking on doors or serving customers across the counter.

The greatest ROI we ever see is leadership development at middle managerial levels and below. Here you reap the benefits of ramping up individual contribution and commitment and innovation. Hands-on managers find new solutions to costly issues because they work with them every day. Senior executives don’t. Engage those front level managers in crafting those solutions by creating the environment that encourages such energetic behavior.

None of this advice is new, or rocket science. But research consistently confirms that it works, and all it takes is a true, energetic commitment to making it happen. And that is the magic that most training programs lack, as your own experience with these initiatives already tells you. You absolutely cannot let people get back to their desks and “get back to work.” Transformational change requires more than that, and as a leader of people, you must provide the spark each day that keeps the energy flowing. Otherwise it is business as usual, and you are back to square one every year , once again trying to build an engaged workforce.