Leadership positions come attached with obligations, responsibilities, and commitments. Not everyone is ready to accept them.
Few team members are excited at the prospect of coaching others to success, crafting strategy, making decisions that affect others, and being accountable for team outcomes, among a myriad of other expectations. Even fewer people want to develop their skills and excel at these duties.
People are more likely to be attracted to the perks of official leadership. They like the idea of the status, influence, and the increased compensation usually associated with most leadership positions. Especially the compensation.
So, they raise their hands to become leaders, managers, and supervisors when they are ill-prepared and unmotivated to do the job. This is a big problem for organizations.
Promoting, hiring, or assigning team members into leadership roles comes with the risk that the individual selected to lead will do a lousy job at it.
Once in the position, it becomes increasingly difficult to demote or move them backward into a contributor role. Even when leaders know they are not up to the task, they often insist on maintaining the role so as not to surrender the many benefits they enjoy by sitting in the seat.
Good organizations always lay out the expectations and obligations that come along with the choice in leadership. They have thorough and specific conversations with candidates about what is required to do the job.
More importantly, they cut through the false attraction associated with the role and look for candidates who have already begun working on their leadership skills before they receive the title.
Perhaps the best practice is for those in leadership positions to talk team members out of taking on the role before talking them into it. This alone will help the screening process of separating those who want the title but not the obligations that come with it.
While every team member should be expected to lead from where they sit, very few are cut out to become great leaders in an official capacity. Leaving talented individual contributors in their current assignments should always be the default decision.
With every mistake an organization makes by promoting the wrong team member, the enterprise is weakened. Very few team members have the drive, skill, and commitment to excel as titled leaders. Those who raise their hands don’t always excel at the job. Good organizations never forget that.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
