The New York Times recently ran an article by Natasha Singer titled “Helping Managers Find, and Fix, Their Flaws.” Here’s the lead.
“MANY management coaches teach executives specific skills toward becoming better mentors, delegators or supervisors. Not the minds at Minds at Work, in Cambridge, Mass. The company, founded by Robert Kegan, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Lisa Lahey, a development psychologist who also teaches at Harvard, guides executives through a step-by-step process of self-examination and gradual behavioral change. The program is based on the idea that, like dieters with a weakness for doughnuts, many executives want to change but behave in ways that impede their progress. So, rather than teaching technical skills, Minds at Work gives managers structured exercises to help them pinpoint the ingrained habits and beliefs that are undermining their goals.”
Is it really “technical skills” or “self-examination and gradual behavioral change?” Is it, in fact, all about the leader? I think it’s more complex than that. For me, development challenges for leaders or anyone else fall into three broad groups.
Whatever your job or career path, you have to deal with a dynamic mix of them. To illustrate, let me use the fictionalized example of Allen, who works for a large manufacturing company.
There is the challenge to learn the core skills of the basic job. All leaders, whether plant managers or product managers or crew chiefs need to master a basic set of skills that go with the job at every level. Allen will continue to develop these skills throughout his career because every job he has will call for leadership skills.
There is the challenge of mastering the special skills needed for every new job situation. In his career, Allen will manage plants in different communities. He will have an assignment at headquarters and at least one outside the US. There may be a move to another company. Every situation will be different and require him to develop new skills. Promotions will require Allen to shed old practices that defined success before and develop new ones.
And, there is the challenge of mastering the things that make each of us unique. When Allen showed up on the first day of his first job he brought the personality he will have for the rest of his career. He will have to work his whole life to identify his strengths and develop them and to identify his weaknesses and make them irrelevant.
We all have a unique “leader’s journey” filled with adventures and trials. We’re all challenged to develop our general skills, modify specific skills and learn how to make ourselves the most effective we can be.
To quote Dee Hock: “Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing.”
