It's hard for most people to picture a corporate executive as an apprentice, someone whom the dictionary defines as engaged in learning a skill or a craft. But the concept of apprenticeship is at the heart of a new approach to leadership development that is our best hope for solving the current crisis in succession. To understand why, you'll have to come to grips with a potentially controversial belief: Leadership can only be developed through practice.
People can pick up tools and techniques and ideas about leadership from a book or a classroom. But those who have a talent for leadership must develop their abilities by practicing in the real world and converting that experience into improved skill and judgment. That conversion does not take place in a classroom, and not everyone can make that conversion. I have reached this conclusion after several decades of working with leaders at all levels in all kinds of companies, and I have developed a new approach to leadership development, which I call the Apprenticeship Model.
Let's take it down to the ground level. An apprentice system doesn't waste time trying to teach, say, a man with no mechanical abilities how to operate a complex machine tool. It starts with one who has that inherent aptitude and develops his skills over time.
He may have some book and classroom training, but the art and skill that he learns working with seasoned technical people is what will someday make him a master toolmaker. Business leadership is no different. Leadersmeaning those people with the inherent aptitude of leadershipdevelop predominantly through experience, combine with substantive evaluation and self-correction along the way.
While the Apprenticeship Model is radical, it is not untested. It is based on decades of observation of hundreds of leaders in dozens of companies, ranging from small technology startups to global giants like General Electric and Colgate-Palmolive from the American heartland to the middle of Mumbai. It can help any company willing to embrace it and its tenets build a powerful talent engine that gives them an edge.
Basics of the New Approach
The Apprenticeship Model is a rigorous system for providing experiences and feedback that are tailored to accelerate each leader's development. It starts by identifying the people who show signs of leadership aptitude. These are the people called high-potential leaders.
The model pinpoints each of these leader's specific talents and identifies some who are likely to have the highest potentialthe qualities that could make them good CEOs down the road.
Companies using the model put leaders in jobs carefully chosen to build on their existing talents and test their ability to discover or acquire new capabilities. They also provide feedback in real time so the leaders continually improve their skills and judgment. At least once a year, their companies review the learning that has taken place and identify the learning that must come next for each leader to build his own brand of leadership. They take risks on leaders deemed to have the highest potential by putting them in jobs that are immensely more complex than the one before, giving them the practice they will need to someday make the leap to CEO. Moving up incrementally through an organization does not prepare a leader for the scope and complexity a CEO must contend with.
Key elements of the Apprenticeship Model, then, are to define leadership potential correctly, spot it as soon as possible, then focus time and attention to help talented young leaders develop through a series of jobs customized to allow each one of them to expand as quickly as possible. Leaders at every level participate actively in growing other leaders, and leadership development becomes a key component of every leader's job. That's how the Apprenticeship Model transforms an organization into a self-perpetuating leadership development machine.
Identify Leadership Talent Early and Correctly
Finding leadership talent early is essential. The sooner potential talent is identified, the better it can be developed and tested. Finding the right talent is equally important because growing high-potential leaders is highly resource intensive. The essence of early identification is to find people with a natural talent to lead and, importantly, to understand business. A keen observer can usually spot that talent by the time a person is twenty-five years old and is entering the workforce.
A high-potential candidate will exhibit the drive to master new skills, the ability to rapidly absorb knowledge and then communicate it, and a natural bent to build lasting relationships and mobilize others to get things done. He will be learning not only what his own job entails but what his boss's job and his boss's boss's job requires. By definition, a high-potential person will outshine his boss until this person reaches his full potential, and the leadership of a company needs to be aware of that dynamic. No forty-five-year-old will become the CEO of a major company unless he outshines every boss from the time he enters the company until he is nominated for the job.
Leaders with the highest potential will have what I call "the CEO nucleus, the intuitive ability to comprehend the total picture of a business and how it makes money in the language of a street vendor. Another essential is the ability to work with and motivate people, and a third is the intellectual capacity to see ambiguous, complex, nonquantifiable situations from a broader view and through several different lenses.
Plan the Apprenticeship for Fast Growth
Once a high-potential candidate has been identified, his or her fundamental development is done through a series of what can be described as planned apprenticeships. The content of each job is crucial. The company needs to maximize the developmental value of each job to test and expand developing leaders on multiple levels, including their business judgment, their psychology, their ability to get others to do what must be done, and their ability to learn and grow. One-size-fits-all career paths and prescribed rotations through business functions or geographical locations do not create the kinds of leaders needed in the twenty-first-century corporation.
Jobs often are repetitive or simply not enough of a stretch. Incremental steps in scope and complexity are too slow and will not prepare the person for what she'll face at higher levels. Besides, lacking a challenge, such a person may well become bored and seek bigger opportunities elsewhere. Rather, careers must be managed in a way that allows leaders to grow with a pervading sense of urgency.
Make the Boss the Mentor
Experience becomes learning only when the leader makes adjustments based on insightful feedback, intelligent self-reflection, or both. Some leadersthe Horatio Alger typesdevelop largely on their own, instinctively making corrections to their behavior and judgment, but most will improve faster with the help of a mentor who provides timely, insightful feedback.
As in any organization with a good leadership development process, bosses carefully observe the leaders and give feedback and coaching. That's why the mentor and the boss should be one and the same. Bosses see people in action, observe their behaviors, and know the leader as a whole person. They can evaluate the quality of their
decisions in the context of the particulars of a situation and provide coaching and feedback in real time.
Leaders at every level must raise their observational acuity and change their mind-set about what they're looking for in leadersnot just an ability to exceed stated objectives, for instance, but also a leader's natural talents and true potential.
Even the best mentor-boss can't do the job without the help of senior leaders and human resources. The most complete and nuanced picture of a leader comes from inputs of many people. Those collective insights help detect the trajectory of a leader's growth and inform decisions about where the leader should go next.
A New Role for HR
Although line managers and senior managers are the cornerstone of the Apprentice Model of leadership development, the HR function is in no way diminished. To the contrary, HR is the trustee of the Apprenticeship Model. Just as the company looks ahead to do capacity planning for its hard assets, HR looks ahead to ensure that the company is creating and developing a leadership pool for the future. The HR role at every level is to be sure the leadership development process is working effectively to produce robust outcomes and to contribute to discussions of leaders and their particular paths.
HR should help design the processes, and work side by side with business leaders to help make judgments on the talents of up-and-coming leaders and find creative ideas for where a leader should go next. People in HR should also ensure that the evaluations are rigorous and reflect the realities of a leader's performance and personality. It is a challenge that requires HR to expand its own capabilities, but rising to the challenge will reaffirm the significant role HR has to play in ensuring the prosperity and longevity of the corporation.
A New Mind-Set
For the Apprenticeship Model to work, you have to accept that truly high-potential leaders are different from other people and warrant the disproportionate share of time and attention. At the same time, you have to be clear that although leaders are different from other people, they are not superior human beings. Businesses need to change their
thinking about leadership as the pinnacle of success for everyone and stop doling out leadership jobs as rewards for people who perform very well but simply are not leaders.
Companies should instead see leadership for what it is: a distinct job that requires distinct talents that not everyone has to the same degree.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , from Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis, by Ram Charan. Copyright (c) 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
