Purposeful Talent Development: Why you should develop leader success profiles

In 2012, Jack Zenger found that on average leaders do not receive training until they’ve been leading people for 10 years. 10 years! In the last decade, progress has been made to shrink this gap, but we still see evidence of promotions occurring because of technical skills, not human or leadership skills. To help people succeed in leadership roles, we need to do a better job preparing them.

Moving from an individual contributor to a manager, supervisor or leader requires transitioning from simply managing yourself and getting things done to managing a team to produce results. A promotion from a middle manager to a strategic leader shifts the focus from results to vision and managing future talent.

An organization’s goal is to build a pipeline of future leaders, a broad pool of people with potential for future roles. To build this bench, it is important to understand the capabilities needed by leaders at each level of the organization. A leader success profile can help you get there.

A leader success profile looks at the whole person, providing a picture of individual success and the opportunity to clearly communicate expectations. It outlines the capabilities and behaviors needed in a leadership role, anchoring them to the organizational strategy or values. Creating such a profile connects business strategy with people strategy. Once the profile is established, you can use it to:

 

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