FREE online courses on CRM - Developing People-The Key To Success - Support
- Prepare for Promotion
A survey by
Charles Margerison of 1000
Chief Executives revealed that Five major reasons for their success
were:
- ability to work with a wide variety of people
- early responsibility for important tasks
- a need to achieve results
- leadership experience early in career
- wide experience in many functions prior to age
35
What is
significant is that, while a and c are
‘innate qualities' the other three are entirely
within your power to grant. Keep these findings in mind for developing
staff. Now a word on promotion policies:
Instead of
assessing the candidate's suitability for the job he's being considered for
promotion to, we promote him for performing well on his present assignment!
So he may end up as another example of the Peter Principle in action…a
pity and a great waste.
To prepare for promotion,
your staff needs to be (a)
trained to acquire skills associated with the particular post, and (b) developed by
delegation, where results can be quantified and accountability fixed. Often, there is a risk is involved, to
be shared by both of you, just as you would both share the ultimate fruits of
successful outcome of such delegation.
Note that the amount of learning is in direct proportion to the size of
the error.
As covered
in Module 8, delegate by ‘active absenteeism', leaving the
subordinate to swim in the ‘deep end' alone…after a preliminary exposure under
your watchful control, of course.(a) You get feedback from various quarters about his performance (b) You are seen as ‘not indispensable'---
hence available for promotion (indispensable people don't get promoted). [One young executive, seeing a potential future officer in his
boss's secretary, started giving her increasingly larger portions of his routine
work till one day she expressed resentment at doing his work. He
explained that she was welcome to go on as before, but if she could do his job, she could have it; the boss
could train/ develop him to take over his office and move up himself.
She got the message; twenty years later, she is the
Company Secretary of a multi-national company---with a fleet of secretaries of
her own!]
Staff at all levels can be developed in this manner; the earlier they are so
exposed, the better. Their motivation and abilities are strengthened, as is the
company's pool of trained manpower, ready, willing and able to compete, in
healthy rivalry, for available slots. You have to think about developing senior
executives for the organization's future needs … NOW!
QUESTIONS:
1.On what
factors, in your valuable opinion, should ‘promotion' be based? Why is promotion
necessary? Is it redundant?
- Explain the promotion policy in your
organization (if there is one!), giving your reasoning on how it can be
improved.
