How Can I Quickly Prepare Non-Technical Seniors for Leadership Roles? Seeking Practical Ideas

Hi Experts, I want to prepare some of my seniors (non-technical) for leadership positions or the next position in the hierarchy. I have to specifically develop and assess them on two competencies:

Execution Excellence

- Includes knowledge of business acumen, delegating, assertiveness, fair judgment, time management, prioritization, and a sense of urgency and agility in execution.

Tenacity of Purpose

- Includes being performance-driven, problem-solving, and achievement-oriented.

What are the options I can go for? One is a case study, but I need some others. However, they should be able to do it in a week's time and on their laptop.

Please share some TED talk links or other links to prepare them as well (if possible).

Thanks in advance.

Developing leadership competencies is a time-consuming process. To build the competencies that you have mentioned, it would take a couple of months or maybe a year. Two important competencies you have missed out on are Conflict Handling and Decision-making skills. Time management depends on these two important competencies.

Industry and Leadership Levels

Secondly, what is the nature of your industry? Which level do these leaders belong to, i.e., GM, VP, etc.? Which departments do these leaders belong to that you have not mentioned?

Please provide a little more information, and then it will be possible to provide the right solution.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Dear Dinesh, thank you for your reply. The industry is IT services and solutions. I do not want to develop these competencies in detail as of now. Consider it as an assignment where I want to judge at what level my employees actually are. To facilitate this assignment, I am providing them with some useful links or videos. The employees are Senior Managers.

For example, I used to give them cases, and they had to submit their solutions within a week. Finally, when they were evaluated for their readiness for their next position, this task formed a part of the evaluation, as they had to present it in front of the assessor.

Regards, Sahil Kataria

What you are doing is just checking the knowledge of competencies. However, possession of knowledge of competency does not mean the possession of the competency itself. As written in the previous post, it takes months and years to build competencies. After their test, what needs to be done is to assign senior managers to some guide or mentor, wherein he/she helps the manager in the implementation of the knowledge. Competencies cannot be built without feedback. With no feedback, the managers may have a feeling that what they are doing is adequate. Rather, they could start gloating for having completed the test on competencies.

Secondly, what is your level to judge the senior managers' knowledge? What is your designation and what department do you belong to? Will they accept you as an assessor? Or is it your perception that they will accept whatever you tell them?

Lastly, you have written that "I do not want to develop these competencies in detail as of now." If not now, then when do you want to do the complete job? Whatever incomplete job you are doing now, if it is considered a complete job by your senior managers, then what are you going to do?

For Inner Genius: 360 Degree Appraisal, however catchy or tempting this concept may be, its introduction requires a lot of organizational maturity. What worked in top-notch IT companies may not work in SMEs. You need to have a supporting organizational culture; else, it does more harm than good. There are cases where "360 Degree Appraisal" became "360 Degree Perception Survey" about a person, and this very OD tool became the cause of employee attrition.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar