Buckingham and Coffman wrote in their benchmark business best seller, “First, Break All the Rules” that five factors were responsible for how long the average employee stayed at an organization, and how productive that employee was while there. These five factors were:
• Work environment/procedures
• Immediate supervisor
• Team/co-workers
• Overall company/senior management
• Individual commitment/service intention
Buckingham and Coffman found that, “The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.”
How do YOUR leaders measure up to this challenge?
Given all this, we can add to the scenario the fact that most leaders are chosen for their jobs on the basis of their TECHNICAL skills, not for demonstrated or even potential leadership skills. The presumption is that because they were good technically that they’ll be good leaders. They’re often put into leadership positions without benefit of any training or education in how to be a leader. The implication is “Don’t worry; you’ll pick it up. You were a good X. Therefore you’ll be a good leader of X’s.” A kind of expensive on-the-job training.
How many of YOUR leaders were selected and trained this way?
Are you comfortable with YOUR answers to the questions above?
If not, let Saratoga Resource Group LLC help you develop your leaders. We offer individual employee assessment services such as 20/20® Insight Gold, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®). Saratoga Resource Group LLC also offers assessment services at an organizational level, identifying the underlying structures of the organizational culture and then highlighting steps for modification of that culture. We also offer a broad range of training and development solutions, including EXCEL and the other resources of HRD Press and other publishers. We also offer a broad range of original course topics, all customized to meet the needs of our clients.
Saratoga Resource Group: A Human Capital Point of View
This in a nutshell is what Saratoga Resource Group LLC is all about: helping our client companies and organizations, and the people who lead them, be the best that they can be.
Contact us today for a no-obligation conversation about how we can help you with your leadership development needs. And let us help you begin to change your answers to some of these tough questions.
We also invite you to download and view our webinars on the following topics:
“How and Why to Develop Your Leaders in Uncertain Times”
“The Dirty Little Secret of Leadership Training and How to Avoid It”
“Five Ways to Lead Organizational Change”
“Leadership Succession Planning in Five Easy Steps”