The Twenty-Two Ways to Develop Leaders

Evaluate Staff Professionals for Management Potential and Intent Early

Although many staff professionals prefer to remain individual contributors, it's not true that most don't want to be managers or couldn't make better managers if given proper preparation and opportunity. Roughly 40% of Fortune 500 CEOs had their primary background in finance and law, so success is not so much based on where or how one started as it is based on one's later experiences.

The AT&T studies (Bray, Campbell, & Grant, 1974) found that 29% more of low-assessed managers were promoted than the high-assessed if the former had more challenging jobs. Many staff managers don't get these early opportunities. The CCL studies found staff executives whose first real supervisory experience took place around age 40; for line executives the experience occurred on average at age 23. Moreover, managers (line or staff) that encountered their first leadership challenge at mid-career tended to fail. By then the stakes were too high and the tolerance for mistakes was lower, and people whose background included many technical projects with similar groups of people were less prepared than those who had encountered start-ups and fix-its and had managed varied groups of people previously.

Early identification of those staff contributors who show signs of managerial and leadership potential and interest is the first step toward providing them with opportunities for leadership challenges. Although most staff professionals are evaluated early, these evaluations generally concentrate on technical rather than leadership and management skills. . . .

2. Ration Development Jobs Carefully
Because supervisory roles are key sources for learning leadership skills, and because they are scarcer in staff units (which are flatter than line units), these positions should be reserved for staff who are identified early as showing a potential for management.

3. Enrich (Provide More Variety in) the Leadership Experiences of Staff Managers
When reassigning staffers, think in terms of a stark transition from one type of challenge to another. Managers develop most when leadership demands change—for instance, when they have to work with new people or technologies or develop a new skill—and they must give up old ways to accomplish a task.

So organizations should ask such questions as, "What will this person have to learn quickly? What will the person have to unlearn, give up doing, or change?" In other words, when placing an individual in one of two possible staff assignments, choose the one that offers the most change, thereby providing diversity and variety for the developing individual. That strategy will provide the opportunity to develop resourcefulness and the capacity to learn on the run, two important leadership skills.

4. Think Small
There are a limited number of high-challenge jobs in any staff organization and they should be rationed carefully. In addition, many mini-opportunities exist: organizing an off-site meeting or developing a new training program (mini-start-ups); working with a problem subordinate (a mini-turnaround or fix-it); confronting morale problems, cutting costs, or streamlining operations; giving someone a stretch project assignment. These can all teach how to develop others and involve working with those not worked with before. Eventually such small experiences can add up to a big one.

5. Use the Principle of Progression
Those who are successful start-up managers at age 40 often had mini-versions of such work earlier in their careers. At age 23 they helped create a word-processing pool and selected the first people; at 28 they started up a small unit; at 33 they started up a new product; at 36 they were the number two person in a major start-up; and then at age 40 (an overnight success!), they handled a major start-up themselves. These chains of small but progressively more challenging opportunities are available in most staff organizations.

6. Provide Lots of Career Information and Feedback to All Staff Managers and Professionals
In order to take an active part in their own development, staff professionals need three things: an understanding of how the organization defines effectiveness and success (and ineffectiveness and derailment), a knowledge of what experiences (in terms of jobs and job challenges) can lead to the competencies that constitute effectiveness, and frequent and varied feedback on their progress in attaining these competencies. The first two are sometimes problematic. Too often, the success profiles of organizations are wish lists of desirable values and characteristics, with no indication of where and how one attains these. Orientation courses and sessions in which senior managers talk about their key experiences and learnings can help in this regard, but nothing can substitute for a clear definition by the organization of what constitutes effectiveness and how it can be attained. The third is crucial. Staffers should receive multiple-perspective, 360-degree, actionable feedback (that is, from bosses, subordinates, peers, colleagues, customers, and so on) on their strengths and weaknesses, and this feedback should be received on a regular basis.

7. Aggressively Help Staffers Learn from Each Experience
One of the main conclusions from the CCL studies is that successful people are active learners. For instance, they keep notes on interesting ideas, consolidate their learning through feedback or tutoring, or ask themselves probing questions: What am I learning? What do I need to do differently?

What habits have gotten too comfortable for me? What do I need to do from a leadership perspective? Such an orientation is not at all automatic. It's easy to go along, absorbed in one's job, without reflecting on how one is acting, what the impact of one's actions is, and whether one is developing into a versatile manager able to cope with any leadership challenge. Organizations can support and help managers structure their learning. CCL is just completing a study of active learners which should give us a better idea of how to help individuals increase their learning from experience. At a minimum, managers ought to debrief past experiences and review upcoming ones with developing subordinates.

8. Find Ways for Staffers to Work on Line Issues
There are numerous ways that staffers can be put to work on line issues.  Assign staff to task forces working on line problems. Arrange periodic line-oriented issue and problem reviews. Assign staff to work on line projects. Require staff professionals to work regularly with line managers on urgent problems. The key point is not to allow staff to work isolated from the core business activity.

9. Urge Individual Staffers to Build Their Own Leadership Skills
Individual staff managers can take an active part in finding ways to promote their own development and can help carry out most of the recommendations we make here. They can be empowered to look for and volunteer for start-up or fix-it projects, define what constitutes effective leadership in their current positions and acquire feedback on how they are doing, seek out contacts with line colleagues, take field trips, or take part in task forces and committees on significant line issues and problems. In order to do this, of course, they need to know what leadership competencies to develop and what experiences promote those competencies.

10. Expose Staffers to Customers
Staffers do not have as much contact with outside customers (nor as much exposure to the basic business) as those working in the field and line.

This isolation can be lessened by such measures as taking field trips, working in customer service for short periods of time, conducting market surveys, taking part in customer focus groups, and visiting customers. A number of hotels and fast-food organizations require managers and staff professionals from headquarters to spend a week or two every year doing jobs in the field in order to better understand customers and the business.

11. Look for Line-like Jobs in Staff Units
There are small line-like jobs in most staff areas. These have more direct measures of their effectiveness, tight repetitive time frames, and direct stand-alone decision making on a daily basis than the usual staff job, and they often involve managing larger groups of people.

Examples are jobs in payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable in a finance unit; jobs in compensation and benefits processing in a human resource unit; or jobs managing the hardware and report generation in an MIS unit. It might be tough to get high-potential staffers to take such jobs, since they often would rather plan, think, strategize, and influence than manage, direct, and oversee production. Some gentle persuasion might be required. These mini-line jobs can help build leadership skills.

12. Look for Opportunities for Temporary Staff-to-line Switches
Staff-to-line switches are rare, but they should be used more frequently.
They can be very beneficial because they provide staffers with a specific understanding of the leadership requirements of line work. In general, such a switch should take place early in a career rather than late. If a full switch cannot be provided, a halfway step could be considered. For instance, a staff person could be sent into a staff unit within a line unit—perhaps market research in marketing or sales planning in sales.

13. Look to Make Early Permanent Staff-to-line Transitions
Some staffers who show an early inclination toward management, leadership, and the line should be moved into the line permanently as soon as possible. This is especially important for women and minorities, who are bunched up in staff groups. Look for likely transition points. Some organizations, in order to persuade more to take the chance, offer a "round-trip ticket" in case the transition does not work out.

14. Look to Experiences in Addition to Jobs
Because staff jobs and careers offer impoverished leadership opportunities but the realities of business don't allow people to move around as much as is desirable, staffers can enhance their development by means of off-the-job projects and assignments—for instance, trips, projects, task forces, and special assignments.

15. Look to Outside-of-work Experiences
There are leadership challenges in church groups, community projects, charitable activities, and professional associations, and the staffer should be encouraged to make use of these developmental opportunities.

16. Make Staff Services More Customer-focused by Using a Charge-back System
Some organizations have a system of internally charging for the products and services supplied by staff units. The practice is increasing as the implementation of total-quality programs, with their concern with internal and external customer requirements, increases. In advanced charge-back systems the line can make choices between inside and outside sources of staff services. They can also choose not to use the service at all. Although staff charge-back is not appropriate everywhere and not always desirable, it can make staff managers more sensitive to the nature of line work because the products and services they are responsible for must meet line (customer) needs; also, it provides a more direct measure of their effectiveness. And because the line can go elsewhere if staff costs are too high or products and services unsatisfactory, staff managers have to concentrate on competition, cost-effectiveness, and quality. Charge-back systems, then, can not only improve staff products and services but also increase the opportunities for development of staff managers.

17. Implement Total Quality Management in Staff Units
The total-quality management process has many leadership challenges embedded in it. Thus, managing a staff unit according to the idea that its products and services be cost-effective, have zero defects, and totally satisfy internal users can be beneficial to the manager's development: It has elements of both start-up and fix-it assignments; it involves fairly complex strategies of implementation; it has a heavy measurement and feedback component and necessitates full delegation practices; and it aligns staff and line more closely as both try to be more competitive in a global marketplace.

18. Mix Line and Staff in Training and Development Programs
Where possible, training and development programs, whether internal or external, should include the participation of both line and staff managers. Everyone would gain from this mixing strategy.

19. Use Line Executives on Temporary Staff Assignments as Special Mentors/Coaches for Staffers
Line executives who are temporarily assigned to staff positions can be used as a developmental resource. They can be asked to coach one or more staff colleagues in line experiences and perspectives. They can act as presenters or discussants in staff management development programs. They can attend meetings of staff units and provide a line outlook on the initiatives and program ideas under discussion.

20. Arrange for Staff Professionals to Attend Line Meetings and Off-sites
Often, line units hold off-site meetings that exclude staff units, and vice versa. It would be a very useful developmental experience for staff professionals to attend line off-sites and business meetings. Not only would the content of such programs be beneficial for staffers, but the chance to interact informally with line and field individuals would help decrease the isolation that many staffers experience.

21. Move Key Staffers at Headquarters to Field Staff Jobs
If temporary line assignments or special assignments with line content and exposure can't be arranged, move key future staff leaders to field locations before their salaries are too high or they are too senior in the chain of command for such a move. Doing a staff job at a plant, regional office, sales location, warehouse, or other field location is at least half of the way closer to the line, the business, and the customer.

22. Manage the Careers of Key Staff Talent More Aggressively
This is our most important general recommendation. It is harder to develop a staff professional into an outstanding leader who can serve as either a staff or line executive than it is to develop a line professional for this purpose. Because developmental opportunities are fewer, there is less time and less room for error, as well as a higher cost if a key job or special assignment is missed. Consequently, special education is necessary for staff executives responsible for the development of staff professionals. In addition, human resource departments may need to provide special resources for developing staffers. Finally, top management needs to be aware of the special nature of developmental life for staff professionals, and should support the extra efforts that are required to improve it.

Conclusion

In thinking about the difference in leadership competencies between the staff and line managers, we naturally considered whether there might be explanations other than the differences in their experiences. Maybe the difference in managers could be traced to differences in people when they enter the organization. Perhaps people self-select into staff or line careers based upon the precursors to leadership skills, with the more technically oriented going into staff and the leaders into line. We could find no meaningful evidence of that. We believe they start with the same foundation, or threshold of characteristics for leadership competencies, although they may differ in their beginning interests.

Maybe staff and line jobs are different at the top. Perhaps staff jobs require less personal leadership and more technical expertise. If that were the case, developmental life for staff professionals would be all right because staff careers do build technical competence. Is it possible that staff executives don't need as much leadership competence? We find only differences in degree between line and staff roles, responsibilities, and jobs. The top jobs in both staff and line have the same requirement for personal leadership; they are more similar than different.

We are convinced, therefore, that staff development must be improved.

And there are real impediments, many of them structural, standing in the way of staff professionals who might develop into senior executives. The good news, however, is that this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. If we move in an aggressive yet disciplined way to add diverse leadership challenges to the work of staff professionals, and if we introduce these early in their careers, we can change this situation. The benefits of doing this are great: an increased pool of leaders for both line and staff functions, better leadership in staff units, and an increase in the number of women and other minorities making it into senior management positions.

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