Preparing Workers to Take on Leadership: the Four Fundamental Skills They Need

BY Wanly Chen | October 17, 2023

Sarah had done everything right: she was skillful, hardworking, and well-respected in the company and quickly earned herself a promotion. Yet in her new role, she began to fail.

She took on more responsibilities but failed to make her presence known as a decision-maker. She was a team leader, but couldn’t cultivate the productive work environment she needed her team to have. It was as if all the rules of work changed after her promotion and she didn’t know how to adapt.

Sarah is a composite character created to illustrate a common pattern: 60% of new managers fail within the first 24 months in their new role, according to research from CEB Global.

Dan Russell, a partner in the leadership and development consulting firm RHR International, uses the archetype of Sarah to tell the story of leaders who simply weren’t prepared to be leaders. In a presentation at From Day One’s September virtual conference, Russell, who is RHR's head of products, data, and insights lab, unpacked the issues with leadership succession in today’s companies and how companies can best support the path to developing stronger leaders.

Shifting From Individual Contributor to Team Leader

In cases of newly promoted leaders like Sarah, Russell acknowledges the work environment does indeed change for them in drastic ways.

What makes an individual contributor succeed on a team is far different than a team leader, Russell explains. In Sarah’s story, she leaned heavily on what made her succeed as an individual contributor such as her technical skills and valuing group consensus instead of delegating and growing her team’s capabilities, which made her fail as a team leader.

“Technical expertise was important early on and now seeing the broader connections across the business is much more important. Where individual effort was once important, getting work done through others, through direct reports, or indirectly through other functions, is now more important. Being right and accurate was previously paramount, and now the questions have no single right answer,” Russell said.

To better prepare employees for leadership roles, Russell recommends companies coach future leaders through a readiness-for-scale model that teaches employees to understand what it means to be a leader for the business, people, and the individual self.

Leading in the Interest of the Business

Shifting the mentality from team member to team leader is instrumental in supporting the business and company. By understanding the business needs, leaders can effectively strategize to continue the long-term growth and sustainability of the business.

“Leading business includes all those capabilities that the leader needs to understand the economic competitive and competitive landscape. Leaders then need to turn those insights into timely decisions in the interest of the full enterprise and understand the impact of those decisions across the whole organization,” Russell explains.

In the case of Sarah’s struggle, she needed to weigh the risks and rewards of decisions posed to her, without the need to consult with her boss all the time. This would allow her to develop an executive presence who was confident in her ability to make more strategic decisions on behalf of the company.

Leading the People

Dan Russell of RHR International led the virtual thought leadership spotlight (company photo)

When transitioning leaders struggle, so do their team members. When compared to direct reports of a high-performing leader, direct reports under transitioning leaders may report 15% lower performance and are 20% more likely to be disengaged or leave the organization.

Having engaged and motivated team members is a test of leadership and an essential part of a business. 

A good leader can mobilize team members and share the vision and values of the company, says Russell. “Leading people is about galvanizing and aligning others around a shared agenda. This includes things like setting priorities and direction, being collaborative, and having influence. It also means challenging the status quo when needed and also finding common ground when needed and knowing when to do which one,” Russell said.

Sarah needed to understand that she was no longer a peer, but a leader in which her employees look to her for setting goals and priorities. As a leader, she was responsible for carving out and improving the team culture that continued to inspire employees to work.

Leading the Self

The Center for Creative Leadership lists four fundamental leadership skills needed by any role to succeed: self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility. These skills are the foundation for a great leader, Russell says.

“It’s all of those qualities within leaders that enable them to lead the business and people. It's about learning agility and curiosity and being able to connect the dots and unique ways to solve problems,” Russell said. “It’s about being calm under pressure, demonstrating resilience in the face of obstacles, and having a desire to continue to take on even more. It’s about having self-awareness and emotional intelligence to understand the impact that a leader has on others, and the willingness and ability to grow.”

To lead the business and people, Sarah needed to know how to lead herself first. By understanding herself and recognizing where she needed to improve, she would be able to take on the leadership role and the pressure that came with it with more ease.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, RHR International, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.

Wanly Chen is a writer and poet based in New York City.

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