Assess your talent
As you begin to identify your company’s future leaders, you need
to keep track of what they’ve done and the attributes that stand
out in demonstrating their leadership potential.
“We have a high-potential list that we’re developing within the
company to start looking at what is the next level of managers and
executives in the company,” Richardson says. “At least every six
months, we’re sitting down with that high-potential list and talking
about where people are in their careers and what they are doing. As
we need people, we’ve got opportunities to identify candidates within the organization that would fit some of those spots.”
Identifying traits in employees who are not your direct reports is
difficult to do. So as the CEO, you need to ensure that your leaders have their eyes open.
“It’s tough for me to go out and make an assessment of somebody because it’s going to be for a short period of time and it’s not
going to encompass their overall work effort,” Richardson says.
“I’m going to leave that more to our managers to make those determinations of people they think are ready. We certainly will talk
about people that are high-potential people within the company
and talk about their strengths and weaknesses.”
In order to get the best assessment of an individual, you need to
get reviews from people who worked with them, above them and
even below them as well as from the individual you are assessing.
“It’s interesting to see what they think they are doing well and
what they think they are not doing well, and then compare that to
what your assessment is and people around them,” Richardson
says. “You begin to understand why people are acting a certain
way or doing a certain thing based on that evaluation.”
It’s at this stage where you have to rely on your judgment and
have confidence that you made smart moves installing your various departmental leaders.
“I try to tell them what I think the strengths and weaknesses of
that particular area within the company are and the changes that
are going to need to be made to make it better,” Richardson says.
“How they make those changes and how they put that team
together is entirely up to them. … I’m not going to tell them how to
get it done. I’m going to set the vision of the company and the strategy of the company along with the board. What I want to do is let
them manage the process and come through it with a way of dealing with it.”
You need to let your leaders develop their own teams of individuals that they feel comfortable working with.
“If you do it in reverse, what happens is your executives inherit people that may not be their people and may not be people they
identify with, feel comfortable working with and know well,”
Richardson says. “You’re putting that executive in an uncomfortable position. Make the decision you need to make for the management team and let them begin to identify their decisions.”
