Mueller - Promoting from within, have a succession plan

Just the other day I was participating in a courses I offer, "Leadership Training for Managers." We drew an organizational chart for our companies. We identified those who have the potential to move up, those who are effective in their jobs right now, and those who have the potential to be effective in their jobs. We identified people who are not doing well and never will. This was all done in a diagram form that allows for easy readability.

What did this tell us about our organizations? For some, it was clear that should something happen to the leadership in the company, an obvious and effective replacement was available. For some, the opposite was true.

This exercise also showed that perhaps we had people in the wrong places in the organization. These people may not be doing well now, and yet they were identified as having potential. And of course, it was easy to see the dead weight of the group.

The husband and wife owners of the Dale Carnegie Training office where I work performed this exercise last spring. They had identified someone in the organization as a result of this exercise who would be in a key position to replace our CEO, the wife. Sadly, Carol was killed in a car accident just a week later

As a small, intimate company, we were grief stricken over the loss of Carol, and yet we still had leadership in troubled times. Because there was someone in the company who had already been identified as promotable to Carol's position, the decision and transition went well. Everyone should have a succession plan in place.

This exercise allows us to examine who is a target for training. We really must look to see how many people are not achieving, and yet still have the potential to do so. These are the primary targets for leadership and skill development.

Leaders should be focused on balancing our time and training efforts to develop all our people. We can fail to realize someone has potential and we just have not provided the mechanism for them to realize it.

We also need to look at these individuals and ask, "Is this a people or a process problem?" Sometimes we do not have the proper processes in place to allow for our employees to succeed. Good communication and innovation with all staff can help put the right processes in place to ensure success for everyone in an organization.

Companies must always be looking for ways to educate and train our people. Companies always see the need for technical training, and tend to forget about developing the interpersonal and leadership skills of the persons who are working on the machinery.

About 10 years ago, the secretary of labor issued the SCANS report, which basically outlined the need for interpersonal skills and leadership development for young people who are entering the workplace. There was a plea for school s across America to incorporate more of these ideas into the education process. Leadership, interpersonal skills, communication and teamwork are a lifelong educational process.

Effective leaders must always be working to strengthen the interpersonal and leadership skills of the people who we serve in our organizations. Without communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills, production or customer service can come to a dead stop.

Take some time this month to reflect on who is going where in your organizations, and what you can do to facilitate an orderly process for that growth. And identify who can benefit (probably everyone!) from quality training and planning. Paint the vision of what things will look like as a result of that training, and call me -- we will make it happen.

Sharon Mueller is the regional manager for Dale Carnegie Training-St. Louis. Dale Carnegie Training is the world's oldest and largest training company. Dale Carnegie Training can provide a keynote speaker, public courses, or comprehensive organizational training programs for your organization. Mueller can be reached at 332-0900.