Yesterday wasn’t my day. What is happening to me at the workplace is happening to many, many more people. My colleague is fed up to his nose and will soon leave, like the guy who was on his position before. This guy simply left without notice. I will not go into details about them or me because I regard this as a widespread phenomenon.
I just found an interesting article in “Wirtschaftswoche” a German weekly magazine (just a side note: my employer about 30 years ago). Here is the link to the article Wenn aus qualifizierten Experten mittelmäßige Führungskräfte werden. I will insert screenshots of German paragraphs and explain them in English.
The criteria to promote people into leadership positions are the wrong ones.
It is promoted, who controls his current job well, who exactly is competent and experienced in it. But only in his current tasks, which he has done well until then. However, only a very few have the talent for leadership – and when it comes to promotions you do not pay attention to that by default.
Instead of coaching people they continue doing their tasks only in a higher position. Often, highly qualified experts become mediocre executives. Also missing are other development opportunities for qualified experts.
Of course, every leader can be supported through training and coaching to improve their leadership skills. But: This is only possible to a certain extent. Without the right talent, sustainable success as a leader will be difficult.
Therefore, it often comes to inappropriate behavior. Mediocre talented executives can safely accomplish their task to a tolerable result.
By contrast, executives who naturally have management-relevant talent can focus on each individual and their needs, recognize their strengths, challenge and nurture their employees, and create a we-feeling to achieve common goals.
Businesses and organisations should urgently rethink their promotion criteria. The most important decision companies can make is who they are going to promote into leadership roles – at all levels of the organisation. But even if a company comes to the realisation that the previous promotion practice was wrong, it can not change all executives overnight. Such changes take a lot of time. … Unfortunately!
My experience far too often was “They don’t know what they are doing”. It is even worse. Which talent as politicians do our politicians have? Do they care about the majority of people? Most of the time their major talent is selfishness, doing the best for themselves. Mediocrity, having the wrong people in wrong positions is a perfect recipe for failure.
If you like, let me know how you think about leadership.
The Wonder Called Me 