Book Summary Preview : The Leadership Pipeline

The Big Idea

There is a growing need to develop leaders within many corporations.  The demand for leaders greatly outpaces the supply.  With this reality comes an even greater challenge-- to bring in a “new blood” for fresh ideas or to just maximize the expertise of the “home grown” talents.

This book sheds light into this concern by introducing the leadership pipeline model— the series of levels leaders go through in every organization. Understanding its nature and unclogging these particular pipelines greatly help organizations find and develop people inside the company to become the future leaders of the corporation. 

 

The Leadership Pipeline Model

The Leadership Pipeline model provides a framework upon which organizations can be built and the old ones can be reconfigured. This entails a series of passages that come with very specific values, compulsory skills, and necessary time requirements. There are six important passages in the leadership model that need to be recognized. Failure to recognize the leadership passages in the company will result to a clog in the leadership pipeline.

Managing Self to Managing Others
The first passage is from managing Self to managing Others. This passage occurs when a person gets promoted to First line manager.  The skills required in this position often include planning work, assigning jobs, motivating, coaching, and measuring the jobs of others. Though these skills are all easily learned, first-line managers often encounter difficulties in the change of values required to effectively manage others.

To be a good First line manager, one must be able think about the importance of quality and quantity.  A good first-line manager knows the value of  having a sufficient work output without compromising the quality of work   He should also be able to define and delegate the work to others--this helps him maximize his workforce and tap other talents for a more effective and efficient job.  Lastly, he should be able to build the necessary social contracts to be good at his position.

To develop the person into becoming an effective first-line manager, three important things must be considered:

• First, the manager should be prepared for the position. It is important to train him and to communicate well what is expected of him.
• Second, it is important to monitor the manager. Determine where he is having difficulties in his role by observing where the gaps on his performance are.
• Third, coaching and providing regular feedback to the manager is necessary. Peer learning and partnering is one effective method for feedback. Also, assign new work that will develop the first-line manager’s much needed skills.

Managing Others to Managing Managers
The second passage is from managing Others to managing Managers. This passage in the leadership pipeline is often ignored due to the assumption that managing others and managing other managers are quite similar. It is important to note that the two are entirely different tasks.  Managing managers is a more crucial task and requires the key ability to identify who has the potential to be good leaders.  Failure to do so can lead to holding first-line managers for technical work instead of managerial work. This then creates a clog in the leadership pipeline and eventually affects the performance of the organization.

In order to see if the person is a misplaced Manager of Managers, try to watch out for the following signs: difficulty with delegating, poor performance management, failure to build a strong team, single-minded focus on getting the work done, and choosing clones over contribution.

Want to read the rest of this summary? click here >>