The Leadership Pipeline Model in Action – Part 2
Let’s continue on our path to growing our leader. When our leader moves to this next level, he or she has become removed from communicating with the individual contributor.
| From Managing Others to Functional Manager | |
| Skill Requirements |
|
| Time Applications | Participate in business team meetings and work with other functional managers. Team play with other functional managers and management of competing resources is vital. Limit the focus on functional matters. Delegate functional responsibilities to direct reports. |
| Work Values | Shift here is from talking to listening to not only direct reports but customers, vendors and industry analysts so that more facts and perspectives may be gathered. Adopt a broad, long-term perspective (three years). Focus is on pushing the technical, professional and operational envelope, looking for sustainable competitive advantage rather than immediate but temporary edge. Understand the relationship between the function and other functions as well as the overall corporate strategy. Appreciate the work that is outside one’s own experiences. |
| Signs this Level Has Not Been Mastered |
|
| Management’s Role in this Transition | Place these managers on task forces, teams and committees of managers from different functions or with different backgrounds, skills and experiences. This will allow them to learn about new areas of work, develop new relationships with people who use different skills and methods.
Create meeting opportunities with other functional managers to discuss how they can work better together and what other opportunities exist for synergies. Watch for development of and reinforce traits of maturity such as humility (aware that others may know more about something), delegation, communication and strong information flows within their organization. |
By now you have probably noted that the common theme is that the skills in each of these passages are not the ones that you will use to become effective at the next level.
Let’s see if this trend continues.
| From Functional Manager to Business Manager | |
| Skill Requirements |
|
| Time Applications | Shift from doing time to thinking time. |
| Work Values | Learn to trust, accept advice and receive feedback from all functional managers even though they may never have experienced these functions personally. |
| Signs this Level Has Not Been Mastered |
|
| Management’s Role in this Transition | Help business managers to learn to value all functions and assemble and rely on a strong team of direct reports. Encourage the business manager to spend time with each of his functional mangers to learn. Have them set goals which can serve as early warning systems of problems. Suggest that the business manager take an appropriate functional manager on trips to become more attuned to the marketplace. |
Our next post will address two critical questions:
- Who is most responsible for the success of your leadership?
- What influences the likelihood that your people will execute successfully?
This entry was posted on December 9, 2008 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Hiring, Leadership, Strategy. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: alignment triangle, business manager position, CEO, Charan, consumer bank, crossroads model, direct reports, enterprise leaders, full performer, functional leaders, functional managers, group executives, group functional manager, Hiring, James Noel, Leadership, leadership development system, leadership levels, leadership passage, leadership pipeline, leadership turn, managing managers, mastery potential, new business managers, next leadership level, pipeline model, pipeline problems, President Elect Obama, Ram Charan, role, skill requirements, Stephen Drotter, The Leadership Pipeline, time applications, Transition Team, work values
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
Strategy Insight 
Leave a Reply