Mentor Liderlik Danışmanlık

Last week, we dealt with the question, “What are most challenging topics for managers?”. This week, we’ll continue with a different perspective and ask, “What are the most challenging topics for companies?”

If we say, ‘financial crisis’ this page won’t be enough to answer so let’s review another common challenge, “need for leadership”. If we consider that this is an area where companies don’t stop investing in, even at crisis, in fact make new investments, we’ll start being convinced that this is a bigger challenge than the crisis.

When I was at the beginning of my Human Resources career, at the international conferences I was attending with great excitement, the most interesting speeches were the ones from people who define themselves as “futurists”. They would tell us how the business world would be in ten or twenty years by analyzing the present data. A lot has changed about how we work, and what they told became reality. Cell-phones, e-mails, what we do through web, videophones, meetings with phone or video conference, teams we remote control that are not on our doorstep, less titles, more duty and responsibility, 7/24 lives; meaning a lifestyle where you make international meetings at night and attend your child’s school show the next day. It all happened. They would say that the uncountable values like talent and knowledge would be more important than countable values like buildings, machines. It happened. They would say the most important topic for Human Resources would be keeping the talent in the company, retention, talent management and leadership development systems. That happened, too. And it happened so drastically, since the subject is attractive, market is so demanding and so limited in opportunity and service range; the other side of the table got more and more crowded all over the world. When the offer got more crowded, taking service got easier on one side, hard to choose on the other side.

If we put it shortly;

• Every company needs their top executives to be good leaders.
• When they calculate, “If the performance of these executives increase 10%” and translate it into money; they know they’ll get so much more than their investment. Every company wants to be sure that if their higher executives leave or retire there already are people to step up for the position. And for today, they know that’s not the case in most of the companies.
• They know there’s no magic pill for being a leader and to expect this is futile.
• So they feel they have to do something in order to develop their leader even in crisis, and even more at crisis to come out stronger from the crisis.

In 2000, a comprehensive research conducted by Warren Bennis who is now Harvard Business School’s leadership professor, the most effective ways to develop leadership were abstracted as; a formal education (MBA), being close to the top levels of the company and understanding their agenda, receiving mentorship from an experienced executive within the company, having a management coach outside the company and learn with action ( taking place in project teams, learning by doing different and real works). The leadership competences featured in the same research changed a little but the methods are still up to date.

From this perspective, HR managers can work with many parties so that the managers in their company can develop their leadership. And they don’t have geographic limits.

Business schools (Harvard, INSEAD, London, IMD, Wharton Business School) train global leaders with new programmes every day.

Manager Coaches—there are almost 100 thousand—are offering a service which gets more common everyday for the last 10 years, even though it is very complex and don’t have professional standards yet. Related organizations like EMCC, ICF, WABC, APEC are in touch with the companies to set the standards and provide their members with jobs.

Assessment firms are a part of the job because you have to assess what you’ll develop before and afterwards, to convince and gain your investment capital. Managers character, capability, emotional intelligence and skills are also assessed.

When you talk about leadership, it involves who that person is, his behaviors, his attitudes so psychology world began being interested in the business world they had no interest in before and develop services on this matter. As a result, when companies set out to receive a service in this area they had to specialize in another field, too. But that wasn’t all.

From this point on, I think, the real challenge is how the companies will benefit from their ever-developing leaders and how they’ll overcome the systematic obstacles these people face.