What if we chose leaders differently?
Here’s the opening from a Washington Post article titled “This CEO lets his workers elect their bosses.”
“Americans vote for their president. They vote for their local officials. They vote for aspiring pop stars on television shows. But they do not, in general, vote for who will be their boss.”
The article discusses SumAll, a 42-person, venture-backed startup. Every quarter, SumAll’s workers vote on who will lead their team. SumAll’s experience doesn’t really tell us much and it’s only one experiment in different ways to choose leaders. Even so, it makes you think about how leadership development will change if we choose leaders differently.
Leadership development and succession
In most companies today, leadership development is tied to the idea of succession planning. It rests on the idea that you should spot potential leaders early in their careers and offer them special development opportunities.
Someone has to identify those high potential future leaders. Someone has to tailor their development opportunities to their strengths and weaknesses. And someone somewhere up the org chart is deciding who becomes a formal, positional leader and who doesn’t. If that process changes, then what will it change to?
Leadership development questions
If workers choose their leaders you need to make sure everyone has the skills to do leadership work. What’s the minimum viable package of skills? How and when do you deliver them?
If we change the way we select leaders or if we change the leadership components of jobs, then we also have to change the way we develop leaders. The time to start thinking about that is now.
