The Most Important Thing a Leader Must Do

What is the most important thing that a leader can do for an organization? Make money? Drive results? Build a strong presence in the community? Certainly all of these things are essential ingredients to success, but how can a leader ensure that they are enduring? What is the common thread that, if done well, can ensure that wealth, results, and community outreach flow from the organization for many years to come?

The answer lies in a leader's ability to grow other leaders.

Once a leader has mastered the technical aspects of running the organization and demonstrated the ability to drive strategic growth, creating a leadership system that will endure beyond his or her tenure is the next priority. Perhaps no one understood this better than Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of General Electric who was named Manager of the Century by Fortune Magazine. He is often remembered for having the courage to exit markets where GE was not winning so the organization could focus resources on more profitable business, but he firmly believed that leadership development was the heart and soul of any successful organization. He devoted the last years of his career to ensuring that GE had a leadership team that would drive continued success long after his tenure ended.

If growing leaders is the formula for enduring success, what are the ingredients? How does a leader go about this on a day-to-day basis? Unfortunately this is one of those cases where the answer is simple, but it is not easy. If you do the following three things well, you will be well on your way to growing future leaders.

Hire and promote the right talent
In many organizations, the ability to hire and promote the right talent is not so much a matter of skill as discipline. Today's firms have an endless supply of recruitment resources available, including candidate sourcing, interview questions, and behavioral assessments. Applied correctly, these can help firms identify candidates that have the right skills and mirror the organization's values. What is often missing is the discipline to apply these resources consistently, and to wait for the right candidate. Leaders become impatient with the recruitment process and "settle" rather than waiting to find the ideal candidate. This lack of discipline drives turnover and over time will result in a shortage of potential future leaders. As Jim Collins stated in "Good to Great," having the right people "on the bus" is the first key ingredient.

Identify Leaders and Coach Them to Their Potential
Sending managers to leadership classes is a good way to impart foundational concepts, but it is not a comprehensive approach to leadership development, no matter how robust the training may be. Once you identify leaders that can drive your organization's future growth, you must personally invest in their development. Use coaching skills to help those leaders become acutely aware of how they can better develop and leverage their strengths, while at the same time work around their weaknesses. Give them more responsibility and challenge them to do the same for those who report to them. Push responsibility down to the lowest level of the organization that it can realistically be maintained. Then, give high-potential future leaders room to be innovative and encourage them to reach beyond the boundaries of their current role. This will require you, as their leader, to do the following:

1. Lead with questions. You cannot dictate to others as if you have all of the answers (even if you think you do). Instead you have to lead with non-judgmental discovery questions. Ask questions that will help them uncover strengths they can use in new ways, or that will open them up to new challenges.

2. Give up control. The need to get all of the credit for your organization's success is a barrier to developing future leaders. Be willing to give up control of how things are done and instead empower those with leadership potential to take the reins. Likewise, give them full credit for their successes. Be available to support them, but do not constantly look over their shoulders. Accept that while they may do things differently, their approaches may be just as effective, and sometimes even more so!

3. Tolerate acceptable levels of failure. One of the greatest barriers to developing future leaders is the fear of failure. Leaders are afraid of allowing their employees to fail and jump in to "save the day" when things get tough. The downside is that this robs employees of responsibility and confidence. Likewise, employees who are afraid of failure surrender responsibility and end up dumping work on their manager. This creates a cycle of dependency that may avoid a few mistakes in the short-term, but it the long run it builds dependency and hinders employee development. Be tolerant of mistakes and discuss them openly in a constructive manner. This will accelerate learning for your high-potential future leaders and for the organization as a whole.

Retain High-Potential Leaders
If you have recruited talented future leaders and coached them to their highest potential, it would be tragic to lose large numbers of them to other organizations, especially to competitors. While their are contradictory opinions about how widespread an organization's investment in future leaders should be, my view is that commitment and execution of effective leadership coaching will inherently produce more leaders than the number of leadership positions the organization has available. To mitigate this, an organization must ensure that high-potential future leaders are given challenging "stretch" assignments and the freedom to create new opportunities on their own. Studies consistently show that compensation alone will not drive retention of top talent, but it can become a factor if it is significantly misaligned with that of competitors.

Growing future leaders is not easy, but it is the most important thing you can do as a leader to drive long-term success. Too often leaders get mired in day-to-day management and lose sight of the value of leadership development. Implementing effective systems to recruit, coach, and retain top talent are the secret ingredients to achieving enduring success.