Leadership: Selection versus Development

Only !0% of the development of talent (leaders or otherwise) comes from training (or “education”): another 20% comes from “exposure” (such as special projects and ad-hoc assignments); whereas the 70% majority of development comes from experience (Ref R.White) which is otherwise known as “on the job” training. Unfortunately however, it is rare when a large company can coordinate all three aspects to ensure an integrated and holistic development offer. Whilst there might be succession planning for key positions, plans rarely consider the experience as part of the development; more likely the next “experience” is considered as a trial where the candidate will either sink or swim. It is then left to the training department to take care of the “development”. Moreover, when it comes to leadership development, the training is often awarded to the successful candidate post-experience rather than before or during the “experience”.

Research into the possible root causes of this dilemma led me to Morgan W. McCall Jr.’s book “High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders”, Harvard Business School Press, 1998. His extensive research of organisational cultures led him to conclude that there are two widespread, fundamental and self-perpetuating myths about leadership. The first is that “a single (and usually short) list of generic qualities can be used to describe all effective leaders and that those qualities are relatively stable over the course of a person’s career.” (In other words leaders are born rather than made.) The second is that those who have the “right stuff” will “through the survival of the fittest, eventually rise to the top.” This becomes a self-perpetuating myth by those already at the “top”. As a solution to this problem, he highlights the difference between leadership selection and leadership development.

Here is a summary followed by my culturally biased critique (“et alors”).

Leadership: Selection versus Development

The author describes the symptoms, the assumptions and implications of these two different perspectives.

Symptoms

Selection: once in challenging assignments, people are on their own. Performance reveals whether they really have the “right stuff”.

Development: once in challenging assignments, people are given help to improve the chances that they will learn. The goal is to help people succeed.

Assumptions

Selection: Leadership attributes (or “competencies”) are fixed. You either have them or you don’t. Experience is used to test the attributes.

Development: Leadership attributes are complex and are acquired. What you don’t have now, you might have later. Experience becomes the source of attributes.

Implications

Selection: Identify the key attributes and develop measures for them. Search for candidates with said attributes. Give them challenging assignments to test their skills. Darwinian: survival of the fittest.

Development: Identify the strategic challenges the leaders must face. Identify experiences which can prepare people for those challenges. Seek candidates who can learn from experience and support them to learn. “Agricultural”: development of the fittest.

Et alors?

Where a culture has the occasional “great man” in history cited as the example of leadership; where leadership is only associated with charisma; where there is a high power distance (where the followers accept the leader’s “natural” rather than acquired right to power); and finally where the culture is implicit (the “right stuff” is understood amongst those who have it but not otherwise explicitly communicated), then that culture is likely to support the belief that leadership attributes are fixed. Moving away from a leadership selection culture to a leadership development culture would therefore be a challenge in such an environment.

Everyone likes to believe that notwithstanding the quirks and foibles of their immediate boss, the boss of all bosses, (i.e. the person at the "top") must surely have the “right stuff”! In terms of corporate culture, it is not only the people at the "top" who perpetuate the myth, but people in the “system” who want to believe in the “system”. This makes it particularly problematic to move from a leadership selection culture to a leadership development culture and this is even before you get into the issue of just how many resources would be required to move away from a Darwinian model to an “Agricultural” model.

Many companies are looking to improve innovation. Extending the author’s theory I would postulate that when the leadership model is one of selection and therefore based on survival, in such an environment, most leaders will not take risks; they will not be creative; they will not step outside of their profession or “safety” zone; and they will not allocate any time to anything other than surviving. If leaders themselves are not allowed to fail in relative safety then creativity and innovation are bound to suffer. On the contrary, a development model could not only help the leaders to succeed and to learn, but for the whole organisation to learn and innovate!

A leadership selection culture can go some way to explaining why so many “foreign national” expatriations fail. Quite often in a centralised multinational company there is a startling difference between the failure rates of head office “locals” expatriated overseas and the failure rates of “foreign nationalities” who are expatriated as staffers to head office. The former have low failure rates in terms of career progression (even though the overseas experience might not have been considered a success by all involved); whereas the latter have a higher failure rate in terms of career progression (derailment, “repatriation” etc.). This seems to be explainable in the context of a leadership selection culture in which the “right stuff” is intrinsically related to the head office culture and/or the national culture of where the head office is located.

If a company wants to achieve strategic success, if a company wants to attract, develop and retain talent, if a company wants to innovate and successfully expatriate all nationalities, then there are some very strong arguments to move to a development culture to include experience as well as education and no longer rely on just leadership selection!