Leader Competence

others. Competencies such as passion,

self-awareness, integrity, mental fitness,
courage, and confidence form the
foundation of great leadership and the
ability to gain other peoples trust.
Communications: Inspiring performance.
Next is the leaders interpersonal competence
and ability to commun-icate. Great leadership
requires competencies such as articulating
the why, developing compelling content,
engag-ing audiences, and listening
attentively. People can be competent
in their knowledge, but if they cant
communicate it well and inspire others to
follow, their knowledge is of little value.
Others: Developing people. Great
leaders attract and develop top talent.
They hire well and develop their people
continuously. They attract, select, coach,
enable, encourage, manage, and impart
ownership. They dont simply hire people
and set objectives. They dont merely
expect people to perform and then fire
them when they dont. Great leaders
coach their peoplehelping people
leverage their capabilities and overcome
their shortcomings.
Partnerships: Leveraging teamwork.
Having a team of top-performers is
insufficient to reach peak performance.
Great leaders assimilate people into teams
that offset each others weaknesses and
leverage each others capabilities. They
have the competencies of alignment,
building community, managing conflict,
and collaboration. They work crossfunctionally and with outside organizations
to build teams of diverse people who work
together toward common goals.
Execution: Delivering excellence.
Leadership is a meansthe end goal is
to deliver results. Great leaders execute
and sustain top-performance quarter
after quarter, year after year. They have
the competencies of focusing on value,
enabling speed, fostering innovation, and
making great decisions. They dont rely on
restructuring or other actions that merely
cover-up inherent operational issues. They
build an organic capability that produces
great results consistently.
Great leaders and athletic coaches share
much in common. They manifest the five
categories of competence. In particular,
they focus on developing their talent
instead of doing all the work themselves.
They work through people to accomplish
the work of the enterprise. They empower,
coach, encourage, enable, manage, and
lead their people.
Enabling these five qualities through the
five categories of leadership competence
is the challenge for leader coaches. LE

Written by
Mike Hawkins

12

Mike Hawkins is an executive coach,

consultant, speaker, and president of
Alpine Link Corporation, and author
of Activating Your Ambition.
www.alpinelink.com,
www.scopeofleadership.com.

Growing Talent
Here Are Three Need-to-Knows
Anne Herrmann
A news scan tells a compelling story about
the state of the leadership pipeline today:
A lack of po-tential leaders is the top HR
challenge. We need to rethink development
programs to avoid the leadership time
bomb (10,000 Baby Boomers will reach age
65 every day over the next two decades).
Many organizations are unprepared for
the brain drain and skills void that talented
older workers will leave.
Yes, alarm bells are sounding over the
state of the leadership pipeline today, and
talent management, training
and HR professionals are
scrambling to respond. But in
the speed to identify, develop
and prepare high potentials
and emerging leaders, you
cant brush past three needto-knows for developing
a strong pipeline of future
leaders.
1. Know what you mean:
The hi-po designation can
mean different things to
different people. It has also
picked up some negative connotations
that can end up dividing the workforce.
Everyone needs to be clear what the term
means today.
2. Know which competencies matter
most: Business realities have changed
dramatically, yet many organizations
havent
adapted
their
leadership
competencies.
With
complexity,
unpredictability and rapid change the
norm, skills like learning and thinking agility
are becoming baseline necessities for any
leader, especially employees who hope
to move up to leadership in the future.
Leaders need to shift their thinking based
on the mental demands they deal with.
If you have competencies in place or are
reevaluating them, use the Whole Brain
Model to assess whether you have the
key requirements covered. The breadth
of thinking represented by the four
quadrants is essential for the leader and the
organization.
3. Know your learners: Different occupations have different mental demands,
and different levels of the leadership pipeline
require a shifting mental focus. If you dont
know your learnershow they prefer to
think, where their mental comfort zones lie,
and what represents a stretchthen you
cant provide the personal development
they need and meet the leadership needs
of the organization. As a TLNT blog points
out, High-potentials and knowledge

workers want to contribute based on their

strengths, be given autonomy over how
they do their work, and be convinced rather
than controlled. You cant meet these
wants without understanding how your
employees think and how thinking styles
impact their behavior, learning styles, and
communication needs.

Developing Hi-Pos

Companies are optimistic about growth,

reports Right Management, but only 6
percent say, We have an ample leadership
pipeline that will cover most of our needs.
Such a talent gapa lack of readynow leaderswill impede
success.

What can you do to
grow your talent to step
up to leadership? First,
recognize
that
thinking,
as Ned Herrmann said,
has everything to do with
management: The human
brain functions at its most
innovative, productive best
when all four quadrants (of
thinking styles as depicted
in the Whole Brain Model)
engage situationally and iteratively in the
process. We best function situationally
when we have equal access to all four
quadrants so that when the situation calls
for a certain mental function, we can give
our best response.
This call for Whole Brain Thinking as a way
to be more agile in leadership is ever more
urgent and relevant. Consider:
Up-and-coming leaders need to get
comfortable with unpredictability and shift
their thinking in a moments notice.
As they move through the leadership
pipeline, theyll deal with different mental
demands that require them to stretch
outside mental comfort zones.
HR, talent management, and training
professionals will need to find more
brain-friendly ways to engage learners,
understanding what they need and how to
best deliver it.
Make Whole Brain Thinking part of your
hi-po development. Companies with the
best leaders are 13 times more likely to
outperform the competition in financial
performance, quality of products and
services, employee engagement, and
customer satisfaction (DDI research). LE
Anne Herrmann is CEO of Herrmann
International. Visit www.hbdi.com.
Written by
Anne Herrmann

leadership excellence essentials presented by HR.com | 08.2013

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