Article Contributed by: Karen S. Sieczka
Your most knowledgeable employees may be retiring soon. How do you replace those years of know-how? By grooming and developing other employees…
Many baby boomers are heading toward retirement and a wealth of experience and knowledge is heading out the door with them. According to The Conference Board’s report #1369, Managing the Mature Workforce, over 40 percent of the US labor force, some 64 million baby boomers, will be nearing retirement age by the end of this decade.
For organizations to stay profitable, they need to starting recruiting, retaining, and developing new talent while exploring flexible or phased retirement plans for those retiring. These valuable workers, who are wrapping up their careers, have skills that are difficult to replace. Since most of their transitions are planned in advance, there is time to institute plans for succession.
So, what can organizations do to anticipate these transitions and start grooming tomorrow’s leaders? Where will these leaders come from? How does a organization start succession planning?
Who? Where?
Where should organizations look for talent? Ideally, the place to look first for future leaders is within the organization. Current employees have a track record. They have already had a training investment made in them. They are familiar faces from participation in high visibility or high profit projects. But don’t just limit the search to these high profile staff. Other strong and steady performers may be hiding in the ranks. Start an internal search for rising stars with recommendations from several levels and departments. Include those retiring as a part of the review of potential succession candidates.
When choosing potential candidates here are some questions to ponder:
* Is this person “invested” in the organization?
* Is he or she worth the investment of time, training, and money?
* Is he or she willing to put forth the effort required?
* Is he or she suited for the position and responsibility?
* What type of personality does this person have? Does he or she have the aptitude but just lack experience?
* Does this person fit into the corporate culture?
* If tapped, would he or she be a willing and eager participant?
* What types of projects has he or she been involved with at work or perhaps as a volunteer?
Most importantly, the program should be voluntary for the folks being groomed as well as those who are retiring. A forced program generally will not have good results.
What?
After potential candidates have been identified, interviewed, screened and have been accepted to the succession program, they need to be trained. The best way is to have them experience interactions in several different departments to have a complete picture of how the organization operates but most importantly spend most of the time with the person they are replacing.
How?
Job shadowing: Shadowing provides a real insight into what a job is like day-to-day as the candidate literally shadows and observes interactions and projects on a typical day. The candidate should feel free to ask questions such as why things are done a certain way or the specifics of how a certain task is done. At the end of the shadowing, both should compare notes about what has been learned and what needs clarification.
Job rotation: This is a version of job shadowing where the employee rotates through a series of different departments, functions, and levels spending the day with each observing the daily routine of the person being shadowed.
Mentoring: Mentoring is a different sort of working relationship and should be going on at the same time as other activities are being used for training. This pairs an “up and coming” employee with someone who has “been there done that” having specific learning goals in mind. Mentor and mentee meet at certain intervals to discuss progress, problems and make plans for action. Often this is carried out through email or telephone interactions with an occasional face to face meeting.
About the Author:
Karen S. Sieczka is a training consultant and founder of Growing Great Ideas.com. Her latest training program is Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work. The program generates ideas, enthusiasm, and teamwork and can be customized to address particular organizational issues or challenges. Her new book is Growing Great Ideas: Unleashing Creativity at Work now available at LULU.com for download or print version.
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4 replies on “Where Have All The Leaders Gone?”
This is a critical time for baby boomers to seriously begin training the next generation. I think one of the hardest things is letting go. For a baby boomer who has nurtured his/her idea from the beginning and has found success, allowing others to move into places of authority means change – and sometimes unwanted change. Probably one of the most important characteristics a trainee should have is ownership of the vision. Change is often good if the vision remains solidly intact.
I think one of the most crucial things a corporation can do to develop leaders is to invest in training that develops their thinking abilities and their ability to absorb information effeiciently. Companies invest a great deal of training dollars on using the newest computer software they bought–training that will be out of date by the next fiscal year. An employer who developes the future leaders with life time learning skills (i.e. the ability to read faster through a corporate speed reading program) and encourages the reading of high power leadership books will find a huge ROI with shared vision and loyalty.
It is my experience that training leadership is a lot more challanging than training a job skill. I think that an often overlook source of potential leaders within an organization is the military. While the tightening job market is causing more of my soldiers to stay in the service, the current operational tempo is encouraging many young leaders to enter the civilian sector. These are individuals who have trained on leadership and, in many cases, exhibited it under extremely stressful and challanging conditions. While I hate to see good leaders leave the service, I feel that the abilities of our senior enlisted soldiers are undervalued by the civilian market.
Many senior employees do not have the skills needed to facilitate learning in others. One option for the senior employee is to move from industry to academia, where he/she can get teacher training. A university or college provides the right environment for passing on technical skills to a large number of students.