What is expected of leaders-to-be?

A recent report from the Institute of Leadership and Management has highlighted the way large organisations carry out their leadership succession planning. 

The massive pressures on so many organisations to make the best of their talent, to avoid discontinuity from gaps in leadership consistency, expensive (and sometimes less than successful) recruitment and selection processes and the current significant financial strictures particularly on the public sector, mean that succession planning becomes ever more important to organisational sustainability. 

The ILM conducted in-depth interviews with senior HR professionals in predominantly large corporate organisations and consulting firms. This is what they found about the key attributes expected of leaders-to-be:

Leadership traits

Senior HR professionals emphasised a distinct set of personal characteristics that future leaders need to possess. These were principally in the relationship and inter-personal domain - visionary, motivational and inspirational people, emotionally intelligent, trustworthy, natural leaders and communicators, and who are also driven and ambitious.

The ability to motivate, displaying emotional intelligence and being a 'natural' leader were the most important characteristics when recruiting senior leaders.What’s more, future leaders needed to demonstrate a broad mix of all these characteristics if they were to be able to progress to the top. Strengths in one area did not compensate for weaknesses elsewhere.

Skills and knowledge

Future leaders also need a range of skills and knowledge to support their personal characteristics;

1. Appropriate technical and professional skills in relevant areas like law, accounting or engineering.

2. Commercial and financial skills and high levels of business acumen

3. Skills in people management and development, communication, coaching and feedback and team management skills

Depth of experience

The right mix of personal characteristics supported by the appropriate skills and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient – potential leaders need to have a broad range of experience encompassing different roles and, where appropriate, different sectors and industries.

Future leaders also need to be able to cope with pressure and failure with nearly a quarter of respondents stressing the importance of being able to deal with difficulties and challenges.

Education and training

The right personal qualities generally outweighed any gaps in an educational record according to the survey respondents and most businesses develop leadership and management abilities through
in-house, modular programmes that are closely tied to the business’s own operations, culture and goals, using their own developers or external training providers who know them and understand their industry.

What’s more, they want training that will transfer into improved performance, and will employ coaching and secondments to enable this learning transfer. Knowing about leadership and management isn’t enough – future leaders have to be able to put what they know into practice.

Business schools

Respondents were equivocal about business schools. Half of respondents were neutral about the effectiveness of business schools, while a third thought they were effective. While they recognise that business schools had some strengths, their major weakness was that they do not have that deep understanding of the business and its particular characteristics that they looked for in training providers.

With regards to MBAs, respondents acknowledged that they demonstrate that the holder has acquired appropriate knowledge but were critical of the disconnect between what is learnt in business schools and the workplace. The reality of the industry and workplace and an individual's ability to lead in practice for most trumped the theory and intellectual capacity of the MBA.

So, the HR professionals said they were looking for a blend of experience, knowledge and skills, many of which can be learnt and developed both on the job and in a formal training context, but ultimately it is a rich mix of skills and experience which will differentiate future leaders.