The big day has finally arrived. All your hard work has been recognized. You are being promoted to the next level of
management. You call your spouse. You make reservations at that favourite
restaurant. This is a cause for
celebration. Within a few weeks, you
discover something isn’t right. Many of
the skills and techniques that worked in your last job don’t seem to be working
anymore. You keep pulling the levers
that made you successful, those that got you promoted in the first place, and
they don’t seem to be attached to anything anymore.
This bewildering and slightly frightening scenario is not
uncommon. Most managers will admit to
experiencing this at some point or multiple points in their career. Ram Charan and his co-authors describe this
common phenomenon and how great organizations deal with it in their book The
Leadership Pipeline.
The theory of the book is that there are what the authors
refer to as six passages, or turns, in the leadership pipeline of all
organizations. The passages are from
managing self to managing others, managing others to managing managers, from
managing managers to functional manager, from functional manager to group
manager and from group manager to enterprise manager. Their hypothesis is that each of these
passages represents “a shift in organizational positions- a different level and
complexity of leadership- where a significant turn has to be made.”
The book contains chapters on each passage and its unique
characteristics, helpful hints to identify when someone is having difficulty
making the passage, and coaching tips on remedies to keep the pipeline from
getting clogged.
Managers who discover themselves at one of the turns in the
pipeline, leaders coaching others through a career transition and HR talent
managers will all find this book extremely practical and helpful in the day to
day practice of building leadership capability.
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