Closing the Leadership Gap

Increasingly, the “in” boss can be found sitting in a cubicle or an open office alongside his employees. Among the cubicles, the organization is flat and everyone is more or less equal. “Just treat me as another office mate,” he appeals — an open, easily accessible team player. But are these new cube mates really equal? An assessment of the skills and qualities of the manager and his employees reveals a disconcerting divide. Moreover, the gap between them is widening. 

In recent columns, we have talked about how all employees are not created equally in terms of talents, skills, and potential. When it comes to leadership development, we need to be equally concerned over the gap between managers and employees. Two trends make the need for leadership potential in employees even more important. One, the skills required of managers are rapidly evolving with global-market changes. At the same time, these management skills are being pushed down to employees at all levels of the organization, especially frontline managers. 

Yet, as we noted, leadership qualities are not being cultivated or developed in employees. So, when you walk through the cubicles seeking your A-team for your new leadership-development program, you may not find the future leaders you are seeking. To ensure your workplace is growing its own leaders, leadership qualities need to be part of employee assessments. Talent audit or inventories using tools such as the nine boxes are becoming ever more critical.

Examining the qualities we seek in employees versus those we desire in our leaders easily identifies the source of the leadership skills and qualities gap. Let’s take a look at a list being circulated as part of a recent survey by OI Partners of top employee qualities. 

Interestingly, the top-three qualities are also those cited as the most desired in leaders in the newly released 2012 IBM CEO survey. 

1. Team player. Leaner work forces require that both employees and management work more cooperatively with others to optimize resources. Leaders are expected to be “teaming” across the C-suite and with external stakeholders.

2. Engages with customers. Customer engagement and responding in a rapid-fire manner to customer needs are considered essential skills. Successful leaders and employees are engaging with customers at a deeper level by applying analytical insights.

3. Motivates and engages others in their jobs. This quality is in fact number one with most managers. If you succeed in engaging your employees, then your more committed employees are more likely to succeed in engaging your customers.

4. Successful in achieving your “critical few objectives.” Put another way, seek employees who are focused on and proficient in meeting goals.

5. Works smart. Analytical tools, many embedded in enterprise systems, are helping us to measure productivity with great precision. Key employees are continually seeking better, faster ways to do things well. They are embracing creativity, new ideas, and processes. 

6. Works hard. Does this employee go the extra mile to show he/she cares about the company?

7. Adds value to the organization. Those hard numbers you are collecting through enterprise systems will help you assess who is adding value. Employees need to be focused on the value they add and be prepared to demonstrate their value.

8. Contributes to improving the bottom line. Once again, like the last five qualities, the focus is on quantifiable results.

When we turn to the qualities we most desire in a leader, however, we find that they are harder to measure, which may partly explain why they are overlooked. But as we have seen in past columns on the cost of a leadership deficit — a whopping 7 percent of revenue annually — you also cannot afford to ignore the following qualities. 

Agile. A future leader needs to constantly reinvent himself to stay in sync with rapid changes. Companies are investing in developing agile leaders that can move in tandem with the rapid change in today’s business environment. 

Collaborative. This new collaborative manager is among the cubicles to share with you. His door is always open. 

Flexible. He quickly responds to change. We used to seek out gazelles to run startups, but today, middle managers need these qualities, too. 

Inspirational. The ability to turn difficulties into inspirational challenges is the intangible quality that can single handedly conquer retention issues. 

Analytical. Both managers and employees need to be analytical and able to figure things out, quickly.

According to our current corporate leaders in the IBM 2012 Global CEO Study, our future leaders need to be customer-obsessive, inspiring, and great team builders with the speed of a gazelle. So in your next employee hire or promotion, ask yourself, does this employee also have creativity, flexibility, communication, and change-management skills? Will she be able to take a closed organizational structure and turn it into an open one that can form deep collaboration with outside partners? Is she an inspirational person who will be able to encourage engagement and “teaming” across all stakeholders? 

I would argue that company leaders have a massive role to play by hiring and developing potential leaders, the only real competitive advantage any organization really has. A good place to start is adding the above leadership qualities to your “employee qualities” list. The alternative could be a Dilbertesque world in which no strong leaders emerge from among the cubicles.       

Thomas Walsh, Ph.D. is president of Grenell Consulting Group, a regional firm specializing in maximizing the performance of organizations and their key contributors. Email Walsh at tcwalshphd@grenell.com