Developing effective leaders may seem like simple idea at times. Select a number of smart, high-performing employees and put them on a fast-tracking conveyor belt aimed at making them leaders anywhere between six months to five years. Throw in a couple of management courses or even send them to an expensive MBA school. Line managers can also help rotate the chosen few around in various functions to see how they can perform in a diverse range of projects and functions. Then cross your fingers, and hope that your initial judgment was right and that a leader will be made.
Unfortunately, leadership development is far from child’s play. Much has been said about the lack of leadership talent available in Asia. With the booming China economy, the supply for leaders is drying up, and HR practitioners are now scrambling to look for people who would be able to sustain the company’s leadership pipeline.
In a recent Gallup Organization and Nebraska’s Global Leadership Institute study conducted across six Asian cities, it found that while many companies believe that leaders are “made” and not “born”, a majority of organisations in the region do not have comprehensive leadership development strategies in place for grooming top talent. “Most of the leaders who are in their current position were given the role without any formal grooming and training,” the report adds.
About the findings, Ong Ye Kung, chief executive, Singapore Workforce Development Agency, says: “Leaders may spend 90% of their time running their organisations, and 10% of their time identifying and grooming the next leader. But often it is the latter 10% of the effort that will help solve 90% of our future problems.”
When K.A. Chang, executive vice president and chief human resource officer of Singapore Exchange (SGX) wanted to make it easier for recruiters to spot the traits of a potential leader, he first had to understand some of the characteristics leaders often embodied.
After careful examination of leaders and their characteristics, Chang found that highly-admired leaders held qualities which could be divided into five characteristics – which he formulated into an acronym – PIECE.
P - Processing
Quick to zero in on anything. Knows what they want and connects quickly.
I - Independence
Has a mind of their own, possesses individuality, open to influence — but strong core beliefs.
E - Engaging
Can engage on many fronts using reflective abilities. Follows a set pattern and exhibits depth of perspectives, adaptable, energising, introspective and alert.
C - Capacity
Mental agility and passion, multi tasking, speed, voluminous, versatile, flexible, tough, can deal with ambiguity.
E – Endurance
Doesn’t rattle or crack up in a tough or complex situation. Hard to shake their confidence or composure, cool under pressure.
Using these five traits, Chang created a talent scorecard to assess interviewees and to gauge their leadership potential. With each aspect of PIECE scoring from 1 to 5 on the frequency of desired behaviours (5 being the highest), he found highly-admired leaders usually obtained a score of 18 and above. He calls this their “talent quotient” or “tq”.
According to Chang, this rating is used to assess potential recruits, scholars and potential management associates. A question such as “Do you get the most satisfaction in your job by doing multiple things, or doing one thing at a time?” would help assess the candidate for the ‘capacity’ quotient and gauge if an employee is able to multi-task and can comprehend and debate different or conflicting ideas at the same time.
However, even if a person showed strong leadership qualities, would that automatically translate into high performance at work?
Partnering with Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Chang designed a study in order to see if there was a direct correlation between talent and academic performance. Selecting 40 students at random, the students were evaluated for their PIECE scores and their academic results were tracked over a few school semesters.
Contrary to common belief, the results did not pan out in Chang’s favour. The Ngee Ann Polytechnic students’ scores displayed no correlation between students with high PIECE scores and good academic results. He concluded that while PIECE correlates highly with effective leadership, it does not necessarily lead to high performance. Describing the results as a “slap in the face”, Chang was undeterred.
Learning from this setback, Chang realised that even if a person demonstrated great capacity for leadership potential, it would not necessarily mean the employee would be able to perform excellently on the job as well. “Every time you hire a talented person, you hope that they would be a greater leader one day, but it doesn’t mean that they would be a high performer.” But with no such guarantee of performance, why should companies spend money on leadership development?
Searching for answers, Chang came upon a study by Florida State University professor, K. Anders Ericsson, titled The Making of an Expert.
Ericsson found that developing expertise is a lengthy process and one which would require extensive practice. For a violinist to reach the level in order to play professionally, it would require 10,000 hours of practice — or four hours each day over seven years.
However, going through the motions during practice does not necessarily help one become better. For practice to be effective, it needs to be sustained, specific, and requires a considerable amount of effort. It needs to be "deliberate" It also needs to help extend the overall reach and range of a person’s skill sets.
But “one cannot practice in a vacuum, without guidance or direction”, Ericsson adds. It is only through feedback and coaching that improvements can be made. While mentoring was needed, different mentors are needed during various stages of the learning curve.
As a person starts out as a novice, Ericsson says local teachers and parents are needed in order to cultivate interest and provide positive feedback. As they move up the learning curve, they would need advanced teachers who are field specialists who can help instill technical excellence and provide constructive (and even harsh) feedback. Lastly, with a strong foundation, expert teachers who are renowned practitioners in their field can help accelerate learning and take it to the next level. In a corporate sense, this would involve applying learned principles over a diverse range of problems and issues.
Chang adds when people are subjected to these two elements of deliberate practice and critique, it would help provide the conditions for high performance. In fact, according to Ericsson, the striking difference between an expert and amateur is the capability to deliberately practise and identify weaknesses in a detailed manner.
“But what about talented people? The answer is obvious; their potential for high performance would be greater. Maybe, they would be a high performer much faster, because their comprehension, processing level and absorption rate is higher,” Chang says.
Practising it
Because SGX wants to facilitate a higher level of learning among senior executives, one strategy SGX is looking into is to send senior executives out into other industries to observe and engage in dialogues about their business practices and models. The executives would later return to help debrief on what they have learnt from other markets, industries and how they can readily adapt those new ideas in their existing environment.
“If you look at things in the same context, you will always derive the same information. But if you change the context, the information becomes different and the decisions and ideas change as well. So for senior leadership, acquiring new perspectives is critical in driving renewal.”
Looking outside the box also helps with driving innovative thinking, which Chang maintains is crucial for a company such as SGX where a large percentage of revenue comes from other countries. “Our challenge is to develop our product and initiatives that will grow our business outside our home market. We have to continuously attempt new ideas and create new products, new arrangements, new markets and new opportunities.”
Feedback time
Chang defines critique as painful and unpleasant information, but one which helps an employee improve on his or her work flaws.
In order to generate constructive feedback, employees’ career development discussions have been separated from the performance management process and is held in the middle of the year. That way, “we spend more time on the individual than just looking at the goals and the objectives,” he adds.
Employees are also given one hour each month with their manager to discuss any topics or work-related issues they may face. “Employees can use that one hour to dialogue with their manager and in that situation, hopefully, constructive critique will come out of it.”
For senior leaders who are highly self-critical, seeking a third opinion from someone other than their direct supervisor is important, as their actions have a larger effect on other business units. Hence, senior leaders are asked to develop a circle of people that they can go to for an opinion, whom they can share thoughts and ideas without fear of judgment.
“Executives who do that often are better-off, well-rounded and open to things that are happening around them,” Chang adds.
