The Hindu Business Line : Not everyone can become a leader

Traditional leadership development practices aren’t working, bemoans Ram Charan in a recent book of his. “CEOs are failing sooner and falling harder, leaving their companies in turmoil. At all levels, companies are short on the quantity and quality of leaders they need.”

The solution, he says, is not in tinkering and fine-tuning. “It’s time for a completely new approach to finding and developing the kinds of leaders businesses need,” declares Charan in Leaders at All Levels ( www.crosswordbookstores.com), a book that provides ‘a model for companies to reinvent their leadership development processes and for individual leaders to guide their own careers.’

One of the first conclusions that Charan comes up with, based on his observations, over several decades, of how leaders develop, or fail to, may be a controversial one: that not everyone can become a leader. Leaders are different from everyone else in ways that no amount of classroom instruction can supply, he says.

“Smartest, quickest, best performer – these and other superlatives are not useful in spotting those who have the raw talent for leadership. We have to stop using them. Leaders think and act differently. We can spot them if we know what to look for and sharpen our power of observation.”

The second finding in the book is that leadership ability is developed through practice and self-correction. Charan insists that people who have the talent for leadership must develop it.

“Their growth is accelerated when each new job lets them build their core capabilities and acquire new ones and when feedback is timely and precise. Repetitive practice of core skills hones judgment and paves the way for innovative ways to lead.”

The third tenet of the author is that the CEO job requires giant leaps in learning. It’s a job that demands being immersed in complexity, and where learning happens even as the leader sorts through the problems.

The new ‘leadership development’ approach, which Charan calls the ‘Apprenticeship Model,’ is not ‘a discrete activity run by the human resources staff’ but ‘an everyday activity that is fully integrated into the fabric of the business and in which line leaders play a central role.’

Compulsory read.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com