When it comes to developing Future Leaders, it’s imperative not to wait!

Why is it important to develop future leaders within your company? Continuity of company culture, labor shortages, and an unexpected death of a senior manager are just a few important reasons.

In his book, Built to Last, Jim Collins describes the very successful succession planning process that GE’s CEO, Reginald Jones, took to find a new CEO. The process involved 96 candidates over seven years before Jones narrowed the candidates down to a single successor: Jack Welsh.

GE’s commitment to the succession process not only identified Jack Welsh, but all of his predecessors as well. These leaders were visionaries and change agents – an important, ongoing part of GE’s culture.

While you may not currently be in need of a successor, have you at least identified some potential candidates? Who within your organization has the potential to succeed you? And how long will it take before they are prepared to take your seat?

Challenges for Mid-Market Companies

Unlike GE, mid-market companies generally don’t have 96 candidates in the succession planning process queue, and a seven year process may be overkill. At the same time, many mid-market companies often wait until it is too late to successfully identify and develop their next CEO.

Potential candidates may leave their current company to grow with another company before they are formally identified for succession opportunities. The very worst scenario involves a candidate leaving for a competitor who promises them increased responsibilities and leadership development opportunities that their current company failed to provide.

Another challenge for mid-market companies is their lack of a structured management training program for current and future leaders as found in many Fortune 500 companies.

Redefining Succession Planning for Mid-Market Companies

The succession planning process should start with you, your organization’s leader, and your talent management or human resources department. Work with this department to create a list of critical success factors and specific job requirements. Identify all must-have experience and skill sets as well as the nice-to-haves. If you don’t have people internally with these skills set, bring in a consultant to assist in the succession planning process.

Once the job profile is complete, compare it to your candidates. Identify the top candidates and determine what leadership development skills they will require. Some of your leadership development process can be addressed through internal resources, while some may require external resources.

When your leadership development plan is finished, you should not wait to execute your plan as waiting can greatly impact your company’s future! The story below tells why it is imperative that you not wait to begin developing your future leader.

Start Now

I have had the unfortunate experience of working with a company whose leader did not act with a sense of urgency when it came to leadership development and he died unexpectedly. The company was left to a family member who wasn’t prepared to take control and lead the company. As a result, this past year has been a very difficult time for the new leader as well as for the employees.

Grooming future leaders is one of the most critical tasks for an organization’s leader. Without well-prepared future leaders, there is no future for the company. A good leadership development process will take time and commitment from you, and must be a high priority. Therefore, don’t let the company that you have spent so many years building, stagnate or fall apart because you didn’t properly prepare new leadership to run it for many years into the future.

Image by Victor1558

With the world changing each year at an increasingly faster pace, there are times when many of us think and feel as if we are treading water and are not learning new behaviors to increase our leadership effectiveness. When we look back over the past year at our accomplishments, we can’t clearly define what behaviors, skills, knowledge, and traits have helped us achieve our goals.

One key trait extraordinary leaders have is the desire and ability to continuously improve and learn, allowing them to adjust to the changing global economy. Learning for them is ongoing and incremental. Sometimes our behavioral learning is so slight that we really have to carefully investigate what we have truly learned.

Why Should You Journal?

A learning journal, when implemented on a consistent daily basis, can help you capture your learning by creating a time to be self-reflective of each day’s experiences. However small and seemingly unimportant these experiences are, these experiences can connect you to a specific learning that took place. These experiences can also make you aware of your learning by knowing that at the end of a day you will take time and energy to add to your learning journal.

By writing down and tracking your progress, you are able to review your progress at any point in time. Journaling is a great tool when you may be questioning your learning progression. Journaling can not only help you focus on your strengths, but can also help you determine what limitations you are currently working on that can have a positive impact on your overall performance. As a result, you will begin to see trends on how you best learn and develop so you can incorporate the right learning opportunities into your day.

As the days, weeks, and months of journaling come together you will be able to identify behaviors in your work performance and personal life that work and don’t work for you. As your capacity builds, you will be able to take on new and bigger challenges which provide the development situations you need to increase your leadership effectiveness.

Getting Started

Journaling is a daily commitment which need not take a lot of time. Like any habit, it will take 21 days before it becomes a natural occurrence.

There are many methods you can use to implement the journaling process. For some of us a dedicated time each day to journal fits our personality and preferences. For others having a small note pad or PDA to jot down our thoughts and feelings about an experience immediately after the experience occurs works best. The key is to keep trying and adjusting your method of journaling until it works for you.

Three Great Journaling Tips

1. Remember your journal is about you and your personal development, not the people you work with or live with. It is about you, the only person who can control your own thoughts and behaviors.
2. Be alert to your feelings during the day. What made you excited, inspired, challenged, frustrated, fearful, angry, etc.? These feelings are a clue to a potential learning moment.
3. Since your journal is written by you for you, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. Keep your journaling short so it is easy to review. All that matters is that you can read it later to see your progress and trends, and plan for the future behavioral changes that you wish to make.

Questions to Ponder

Throughout the day and while you journal, here are some questions to help you become aware of your learning each day:

• What experience was challenging today and what feelings did you have during the experience?
• What specifically did you learn during this experience, such as new knowledge, a new skill, or a new technique?
• Did you notice a behavior linked to your feelings, either positive or negative?
• If your feeling was positive, how can you use this positive behavior more in the future? If your feeling was negative, how can you adjust your behavior so that next time your feeling is more positive?
• What did you learn today that you can expand upon to make you a more effective leader in the future?
• What next steps do you plan to take to implement this new learning in the future?
• Who can you ask for help with these next steps?

Final Thoughts about a Learning Journal

The leaders who advance today are the ones who stay ahead of their competition. They take control of their own development and embrace continuous learning. Remember the only cost involved with journaling your learning is your time and energy. Therefore, why wait? Start journaling and learning today to increase your leadership effectiveness!

Image by Richard Mallinson via sxc.hu.

As we highlighted in last week’s blog post, 5 Trends to Watch in IT Staffing, one of the recent recruiting developments is the emergence of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). In fact, the Everest Group reports that the 2012 global RPO market continues to see accelerated growth of over 25%, and will reach US $1.4 billion in annualized spending.

As recruiting technologies evolve and contract staffing expands, organizations are increasingly turning to outsourced staffing solutions. Organizations are looking for alternative hiring solutions as layoffs in the HR department (along with budget cuts) have depleted their already limited internal recruiting resources.

According to a recent white paper from the Aberdeen Group, the top 5 drivers that persuaded organizations to use RPO were:

1. The need to focus on core business competencies
2. The need to innovate how organizations go about recruiting
3. Consolidated internal recruiting function
4. Need to hire quicker
5. Spike/anticipated spike in talent needs

The Benefits (and Hesitations) of RPO

The benefits of securing an RPO solutions provider are numerous.

First, companies benefit from the expertise of a specialist who has access to a large, qualified network of candidates and referral contacts.

Next, because RPO firms handle all aspects from recruiting through hiring and almost everything in between, it creates a seamless process for the candidates.

Finally, RPO can simplify the tedious, drawn out process that internal recruiting often causes. With RPO many of those challenges and roadblocks are inherently eliminated.

Despite the benefits, many organizations are still wary of handing over the recruiting reins completely. The top concerns listed in the Aberdeen Group report included cost and “the ability of the RPO provider to represent the brand well.”

In a recent Twitter chat, #TChat, the question was asked, “Does RPO damage or enhance a company’s recruiting practice? Why or why not?” A few of the responses included:

• “If you’re Microsoft, your brand is established, and going through a recruiter doesn’t tarnish it nearly as much.”
• “Some execs view ID’ing talent as 1 of their top priorities. Challenge is training managers & others to develop this competency.”
• “As with everything, it depends. Work with a good, reputable RPO, be upfront with candidates, you’ll all do well.”
• “Outsourcing is the way things get done in all aspects of HR today.”
• “RPO can definitely damage your employer brand pretty quickly”
• “Recruiters need to know both the org/ees to find the best talent who will fit & stay. Can that be outsourced?”

To view more about #TChat and the RPO discussion, check out the recap here.

It’s important to remember that even after a candidate has been hired, whether through RPO or internally, the successful recruitment was for naught if the candidate leaves after the first three months. Careful attention needs to be paid by the organization after onboarding to reduce turnover, increase team retention rates, and improve the overall quality of employee fit within the workplace culture.

What do you think: is RPO a good idea for your organization?

Note: To learn more about Agile’s take on RPO services, give us a call at 678.722.8200.

Image by Victor1588 via Flickr.

I just returned from the annual Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum held in Las Vegas this year. Two of my key staff managers attended with me, and we divided and conquered the many sessions to maximize our experience at the conference.

The conference hosts the top industry leaders and innovators and focuses on strategic issues, trends, opportunities and current challenges.

We all fear failing. I know I do. Yet, I also know that without failure I remain stagnant and soon become irrelevant to myself and others. In this fast-paced world, business demands that you make adjustments and changes. And making change requires you to take risks and fail from time to time.

So how do I embrace failure and make it my friend?

When I make a mistake or fail at something I have done, I evaluate what I could have done differently. Sometimes I didn’t have the right resources such as knowledge, skills, finances or time. Or it could have been a derailing behavior that leads to the negative outcome.

If others are aware of my failure, I ask for their feedback with the following type questions so I can move forward: “What behaviors did I display that may have impacted the negative outcome and what recommendations do you have for improving my behavior?”

If it is a resources issue that requires knowledge or skills, I then ask myself “who do I know who can work with me to fill these gaps?” If the resource issue is time, I ask myself “do I need to start delegating some tasks to free up more time?”

This questioning process is an active learning technique I use during my coaching sessions with other coaches. I also teach coaches this questioning process and ask them to practice it on themselves and others.

The more you practice these techniques, the easier it will be to take on projects that will allow you to stretch and grow as a professional as well as a person. With practice, fear will then evolve into a sense of tension and anxiety which are more positive and motivating states to be in. They can lead to movement, while fear tends to keep people in one place like a very strong magnet!

As a leader, how do you encourage others to take risks?

To be a leader you need to take risks and get others to follow you as you take these risks. Often just the mere act of following is viewed as a risk by those who choose to follow you.

For employees to willingly follow a leader into unchartered waters, they must have a high level of trust and respect for their leader. Trust is earned by leaders protecting their team when a failure is experienced. If the team is successful, a true leader recognizes her team members for their efforts leading to success. Trust in your team can easily be demonstrated by showing you care about your team members.

For a leader to gain the respect of her followers, she must consistently demonstrate the ability to make sound decisions and treat employees fairly.

Both trust and respect are not earned overnight. Leaders earn trust and respect through their actions and decisions, which model values that are aligned with the people around them.

Once trust and respect are earned, then it is time to coach your employees to not fear failure by taking the steps you personally have taken to embrace failure as a pathway to growth and a higher level of performance.

Image by phil.chillsofa.de.