Look for passion
You’ve got to find out what the person you’re training is made of. That doesn’t mean turning into a drill sergeant and torturing him or her until he or she can’t take it anymore. Rather, it’s providing opportunities to see what kind of energy the person has for getting things done in the demanding world of leadership.
“You have to make sure that they have passion for what they are doing, no matter how good you think they are,” Moorehead says. “If they don’t care and don’t believe in it, they are not going to be a leader in your company. It’s not worth your time and it’s not worth theirs.”
It’s a different ballgame when you’re actually in charge of something and you need to know whether this person you’re considering has what it takes to be a leader.
“If you feel like they’ve got the passion and they don’t have the confidence yet, you have to find out what drives them,” Moorehead says. “If you find out what drives them, then you can play to that. If you find out what drives them, it’s easy to find out how to motivate them.”
Moorehead remembers his own soul-searching exercise quite clearly.
“I started work with two guys,” Moorehead says. “They gave me a shovel, drew some lines and they told me to start digging a trench. And they left. We were supposed to be a crew and they left me with a shovel and I dug that trench. I worked for six straight hours, no breaks, no water, no lunch. I didn’t know what to do. I just worked because that’s what I had always done. They got back and I was finished with that trench.”
Maybe you don’t have a trench for your leader-in-training to dig. You may not even have a specific situation in mind to serve as a good test. But you have to give the person challenging situations to deal with and see how they react in order to test their mettle for being a leader.
Those types of challenges also provide an opportunity for people to show what they’ve got to their peers and earn the respect that they need to lead.
“Earning their respect versus demanding it,” Moorehead says. “That was the key. I never demanded their respect. I always chose to earn it. … Just working with these people day in and day out and continuing to prove every day that I was their leader.”
That’s the type of attitude you need in a leader and you need to give them opportunities to show it.
“It was absolutely every single day showing up and learning something new and talking to somebody different and taking on a new challenge,” Moorehead says.
The key is to be gradual about presenting challenges to your up-and-comers.
“As I kept getting more and more responsibility and learning new aspects of the business and seeing it from different angles, I continued to succeed,” Moorehead says. “They never let me move on to a different angle or aspect or position until I had a lot of success where I was at. It was never too much too soon. If they would have taken me from digging holes to being the CFO, it would have been a much different story.”
By taking a more gradual approach, with a few tougher character tests mixed in, you help the person gain confidence.
“You can feel yourself every passing day and every passing meeting, every time you pass somebody in the hallway and have a discussion, gaining confidence and learning more about what needs to be done,” Moorehead says, referring to the mindset of a trainee. “Then it’s getting out and reaffirming in the field the things that you have done.”
