Wouldn’t it be great if we could do all our leadership development by checking off things on a list? Consulting firms make it easy for us.
Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan from McKinsey tell us that “the secret to developing effective leaders is to encourage four types of behavior.” Korn Ferry says that “the No. 1 predictor of executive success is learning agility.” Boris Groysberg names “The Seven Skills You Need to Thrive in the C-Suite.”
Reality check. Leadership is about more than doing a few things, even if almost all successful leaders do them.
All leadership is situational
Being an agile learner and mastering those four types of behavior and those seven skills are great but they’re not enough to assure that a person will succeed in a particular leadership position. To assess that, you have to move from generalities to the specifics of the person and the job.
Evaluate Job Specifics
The specifics of the job define the challenge. Start by thinking about the company and the industry. What kinds of people and companies succeed here?
Think about recent history and competitive situation. Some leaders are good at tweaking a good system to make it better. Others are better at ripping things up by the roots to plant something new. There’s an array of challenges between those two poles.
Evaluate Person Specifics
Every person is unique. For each one you should evaluate strengths and weaknesses, as well as personal leadership style.
Look at experience. What kind of challenges has this person met in the past? Where has he or she succeeded and failed?
Compare the Two
Now compare the person and the job. In addition to having all the approved leadership traits and behaviors, is this the right person for this job at this time?
